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You could hear the home fans wincing as we piled on the pressure and it was so nice to hear another team’s fans suffering as we’d so often done.
Not long after half-time, though, they equalized through Willie Morgan and we had the whole of the second half to sweat it out, in more ways than one. There’d been a sudden influx of more boisterous and vocal home fans at the break (crowds could be very mobile back then) but mercifully Keith kept his mouth shut in their presence. Anyway, their mood was improved by Man Utd getting a dodgy goal, scored by McIlroy, which ended up being the winner. Morgan looked to be well offside near the touchline on the far left from our viewpoint when the crucial pass was made but he was judged to be not interfering with play and so the goal stood. The three of us kept quiet and bit the bullet but at the final whistle I was proud of the way the Lads had rallied and they certainly hadn’t been outplayed in a very hostile environment. As the massive crowd, which wouldn’t be bettered for many years, gradually filtered away the p.a. played ‘Juke-Box Jive’ by the Rubettes.
We had about six hours before the overnight coach would take us back to London and the joys of a boozy evening in central Manchester awaited us. We went in a pretty quiet pub on Piccadilly and played darts for a couple of hours with two friendly Man City fans, who mocked Man Utd fans of course. One of them, who was so cockeyed that I kept checking to see if he was talking to me or Pete beside
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