Went to wembley to watch the gas play tranmere (my sad mate is a gas head and had a spare ticket) Anyway the deal was that i would wear my city shirt if i was to watch the gas play my mate thought i was mad but it turned into one hell of a day out! Services on the m4 erupted to the chant of sh** head as i walked in for a pee, we went for a beer half a mile from wembley full of gas and tranmere fans (we'd just lost 5or 6 nil to tramnere) after a beer or so of freindly banter (ish) it started to rain quite hard!! Sodding pint glasses all aimed at little old me. At this point we decide to head for the afternoons entertainment(???) and for one of the funniest football moments i can remember half way through god save the queen the blue end of wembley stood as one to announce the arrival of me!! All through the game result i cant remember the banter was fairly freindly, heading back to the car i was circled by around 40 gas heads who decided they had took great offence to the presence of a red in their midst several made attempts to remove the beloved shirt even one attempting to set light to the shirt whilst still on my back! At this point years of training came to mind as the shirt was swiftly removed thrown in the face of the ring leader and my school record for the 100 meters was shattered as i legged it across wembley carpark being chased by unfit overweight gasheads! Scary away day??? I have never felt my bowels so vunerable before or since! Cracking day out though and laughed all the way back to bristol!
About 1972 away at Swindon we City fans 'took' the Town End with ease. We must have outnumbered them 4 to 1. A few weeks later it was Cardiff at Ninian Park and we attempted the same with their Grange End. BIG mistake.
Leeds away in the cup in '74 was very intimidating. I also went to Chelsea v Man U in around 1970 as a kid and that was very very intimidating
Living in Swindon I have been to a few derbies at the County Ground. I have always been nervous that someone would recognise me and my allegances and expose me to the animals in the town-end! Touch wood it hasn't happened yet. I went to the last game of the season at PNE in 1998 when we got to the second tier the last time. The game was a shocker - we lost 2-1, but me and mrs redandwhite were in the Tom Finney stand with the Preston fans. I can still remember the sick scared feeling I had when the stupid cow jumped up and celebrated in a quiet stand when we scored our goal - terrifying!
Many years ago when "gasheads" was doing better than us,I was coming back from an away game and stopped off at the Swan at Almondsbury,the wife an I went into the rear bar and ordered food and drinks at the bar,we sat down looked around,there was 8 or 9 fellas playing pool and generally having a laugh,looked up on the wall and there was a blue and white battenburg in a glass fronted case on the wall above us,scrawly signatures all over it and loads of "gashead" paraphernalia all around us,we had only walked right into the middle of the local "gas" stronghold. We ate our meal,the drinks were flowing and I got talking to the local yokels as you do,there were more gathered by now, Of course I let it slip that I was a Red and off it went piss taking and disguised threats,I even had a near punch-up with the local hardnut,you know the one with all the mouth,anyway it was sorted out and I promised the landlady we would leave when we finished our drinks,I went to the gents and upon my return,my wife had disappeared,thinking she had gone to the carpark I whipped out fast to be with her,the car was there ,no wife,I started to panic,returned to the bar,no one knew where she was,the landlady checked the ladies,no one,I checked the other bars,nobody,I am getting right worried now and returned to the original bar,started to theaten to call the police and noticed some of the idiots were sniggering at me,feeling enraged I asked them what they were laighing at and it turned out they had kidnapped my wife,only in fun I hasten to add,she was OKAY,they had bought her a brandy to keep her quiet and out of the way,I saw the funny side,left quickly and as I was leaving I shouted out,I'm gonna report this to the police,I never did,ran to the car and qiuckly drove home and the wife had a row with me for taking her into crap pub.. I've never been back to that pub in years......
Several incident with the Stokies spring to mind. Some time in the 90's 4 of us went to Port Vale to watch the boys back in the days when the fans could wander up and down the enclosure running along the side of the pitch, luckily we were in the stand above. First half, all seemed relatively normal but at the beginning of the 2nd half, a large gang of "Port Vale" fans moved from, their end to the middle of the enclosure and it kicked off right in front of us, absolute carnage. Turned out that as they were away, a load of bored Stokies had turned up specifically to have a pop. Afterwards, we were in the usual stationary traffic queue when I spotted 4 blokes casually wandering up the line all armed with baseball bats looking in the cars. Somehow (cos it wasn't obvious) they sussed us and ran towards the car and got a couple of blows off at which point our driver pulled onto the other side of the road (which luckily the Police had blocked) and floored it up to the Police horses, a very narrow squeak... Then there was the Freight Rover at Wembley 2000 just before they pulled it down. We parked up in Acton (I think) and waited on the tube platform. Carriage after carriage full of City fans rolled past and the one that stopped in front of us had a massive flag of St George in the window with no name visible, the doors opened and in we wandered to the carriage, full of Stokies.... It started off reasonable but by the time we got off, I am sure that it was only the fact that we took the girls with us that stopped us getting smeared all over the windows... Funny enough though, we had no problems at all at the Britannia...
Here's a couple involving Cardiff City. The season we should have gotten promoted with Preston North End - 1998/99. We were joint top with them after 36 games but somehow managed to lose form 7 of the next 9 games (our wins came against Chesterfield who were relegated and Bristol City the week after they'd gotten beat by Stoke in the Freight Rover Trophy) so that we had to go to Ninian Park to play a relegated Cardiff City and get a win to claim the last play off spot. I went down with a mate who's a Cardiff fan and sat with him to watch us play so ineptly we lost the game 1-0. The atmosphere in the ground was quite frankly hostile as Cardiff were going down anyway and they wanted nothing more than to scupper our season - which they did. After enduring a long walk back to the car, avoiding the stares of the knuckle dragging locals, I had to queue for the best part of an hour before getting out of the car park but whilst driving back on the M4 had to laugh at the Gasheads sat on the grass verge drinking a load of beers whilst waiting for the breakdown van to come and sort out their stretched limo that they'd hired to go to the game in. The following season we played Cardiff City again in the FA Cup. This time I went in the away end with over 1,000 Gasheads. Alex Bruce opened the scoring for Rovers with a looping own goal header, but then things went a bit awry and we lost a 6 goal thriller 5-1. This seemed to please the nutters in blocks A, B & C of the main stand at Ninian Park who'd decided to not watch the game, but instead chose to spend the entire 90 minutes taunting us and generally getting aggressive. When we went 4-1 down, some of our fans left so that when we went 5-1 down I was somewhat isolated and I think I really got them riled as I remember that I started laughing at how badly we'd played (it was live on Sky as well) and became the target for some bottles filled with some liquid I daren't guess at. When the game was over I made a quick exit to avoid the nutters who were pointing me out to others as a potential victim. I managed to get to the car but did notice a rumble had started at the other end of the car park and it looked like a car had been set alight. The only time I've ever been remotely threatened was at Cardiff City as well. I had a ticket for their FA Cup game at home to Manchester City. Before the game I was walking outside the ground towards the nearest pub to the ground when a Man City fan (who was a regular in my local pub here in Cheltenham) came up to me and said "Oi, are you phuquing Welsh?" to which I replied "No". He then looked around at the 200 or so Cardiff fans who'd all stopped and stared at this twat.
Another narrow squeak was the JPT final v Carlisle at the Millenium stadium. After the game both sets of fans mingled quite ok and me, the wife and my son who was 7 at the time walked down towards the station, but then we changed our minds and decided to go for a meal instead. Very wize decision, as the City fans were 'jumped' by hundreds of Cardiff fans who ambushed them at the station. We could hear it going off from our table in the restaurant. When we finally went to the station it was carnage - all the windows of nearby buildings were boarded and there was blood on the walls and on the floor - everywhere. It was horrible. There seems to be a common theme here doesn't there?
