Page 96 - 368603 LP250721 AWY AWY AWY Book (238pp A5)

Palace, if I remember rightly, had lost. That didn’t turn out to be true but Palace had one more game to play and if that went wrong for them, we’d stay up. As it turned out Palace won the following Friday to pip us at the post. I was informed of this sad news by the ticket-man at South Clapham Tube Station who said, “Palace won; two-love.”
I was at the home game against the Mags on 7th April 1980 and as I turned the corner of Bright Street a car screeched to a halt and a gentleman leapt out of the passenger side and addressed one of our fans whom he’d suspected of deliberately getting in the car’s way with the epithet, “Ya red and white hoor ya!” He was brandishing a smallish hammer. At the game itself a guy near me berated Kenny Hibbert of Newcastle, who was no oil painting it has to be said, for showing his face in public and scaring kids. Anyway, more to the point we won 1-0.
In August 1980 along with a couple of friends I travelled down on a coach for the Man United match but unfortunately it broke down somewhere on the A1. In those pre-mobile days the driver just stood by the roadside and tried to wave down other coaches and in some way that eludes me now we managed to complete our journey to Old Trafford. Unfortunately we didn’t get there till nearly half an hour after kick-off but we all had tickets and thought that there’d be no problem getting in. The turnstile door was closed and when we knocked on it, it was opened by a big policeman who told us to fuck off despite us brandishing our
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