Page 86 - 368603 LP250721 AWY AWY AWY Book (238pp A5)

spiel and Mal had replied, “Fuck off, you horrible little cunt!” I’m not sure why but Mal went up in my estimation after that.
As I was at university I had little money so I hitched up to Sunderland for the Palace game. I bumped into one of my favourite teachers from school, Jeff Wylie, as I walked over the bridge to the match and he was going to the game too. I had a ticket for the Clock Stand, which wasn’t my usual turf but you had to take whatever you could get of course. Our team lined up as follows:- Monty, Malone, Bolton, Towers, Jeff Clarke, Moncur, Kerr, Longhorn, Holden, Robson, Finney with Billy Hughes coming on as sub for Longhorn. This was almost the same side that had beaten Stoke.
A train bringing most of the Palace fans had been delayed and so they arrived about half an hour after kick-off. There was a photo in the Echo of some of them running from Seaburn Station. The crowd was nearly fifty-one thousand but it was all a bit edgy and Palace beat us when their star player Peter Taylor crossed for Alan Whittle to score a second-half goal at the Fulwell End. The gloom descended and I hated the sound of that mournful Palace chant of, “Eeee-ger-erls” that echoed around the ground. I had to hitch back on the next day and it was snowing as my Dad dropped me off at Carrville. Just before we got there he quick-wittedly flashed down a car sporting a Palace scarf out of its rear window and raced up to have a chat with them with a view to taking me to London. He came back in a bad mood and
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