Finished!

Read the last few pages this morning. The second half of the book (almost exactly - I started supporting Leeds in 1969 when I was six) is the history I lived through, albeit mostly from a distance. There were a couple of games in 1982's relegation season that I was at that got a mention - Frank Worthington scoring the winner at Sunderland up the road from college in Durham and then the final home game when Leeds scored two late goals for a win that still wasn't enough to keep them in the First Division. And the game at Birmingham a few years later that ended in a riot. One of the few football matches I have left before the end - maybe just that one and that game at Dens in a blizzard when we got so cold watching. (United's game had been called off so we had gone to see the Dees instead - wouldn't leave a United match early!) Anyway, when the 'fans' at St Andrews started chucking lumps of concrete at Eddie Gray, who had come out to plead for calm, that was enough for me and some others - fathers and young sons mostly. As we walked out we passed the riot police spilling out of their armoured vans, lining up their shields, preparing for battle. A surreal day, with the Bradford fire on the same afternoon. I remember going to a student party hosted by one of the players in our Uni football team and staying over, waking up to the news coverage of the fire on the Sunday morning. Time and again the book talks about the team ethic of the club - as Billy Bremner said "Side Before Self Every Time". I think we need a bit more of that in our reaction to this virus. Take care everyone.