It was so long ago now that I can't remember the first game my Dad took me to see at Brunton Park, although I do remember playing around in the front of the Paddock while a match against Chelsea was taking place. The first game I can really remember was the infamous Jim Tolmie disaster against Charlton back in 1986, the long walk back to the railway station and the train journey home to Skipton that evening wasn't much fun to put it mildly. We were still living in Carlisle in the early 1980s, I'm guessing the Chelsea game was in the 1982-83 season when we won 2-1 as I vaguely remember some Chelsea fans trying to dismantle Brunton Park in protest at the scoreline. When we moved away to Skipton in 1984 that seemed to be the end of our time in the Paddock for some reason, was it season ticket holders only in those days? So that brought around a whole now lease of life now as we travelled up by train or car for home games. I think we probably came to half of the matches at Brunton Park in a normal season, with the Scratching Shed now our home for viewing. There was some grim fare on show too in some of those games in the late 1980s, that in front of some plummeting attendances as well as football as a whole in this country went through some dark times. There are some away games that stick out from that era too, the first I remember being a 2-1 win at Rochdale in 1987 where Malcolm Poskett scored both goals and we finished the game with nine men. We were sat in the main stand at Spotland for that game, my Dad never used to like to go in with the away supporters. I remember sitting at a few games on the road in those days wishing we were in with the rest of the Blues where the real atmosphere was. On the subject of Rochdale, when I was old enough to start going to games on my own and therefore go in the away end I remember two things about that old terrace behind the goal. The first being the outside "toilets" where for people taller than me you were still able to watch the match over the wall. With the second being the man in the pie shed, it was literally a shed, with him almost filling the whole of the thing, I presume he was the taster as well as the seller, although maybe people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Going back to atmosphere, one memorable occasion of that type for me came in early 1991 in a 2-1 defeat at Burnley with us sitting in the Bob Lord stand. Quite how going in with the home fans was less dangerous than being with our own supporters was something that I never quite managed to fathom out. The most interesting part of the game being when substitute Paul Fitzpatrick stood on the sideline while warming up and offered a Burnley fan outside who had been giving him some verbals. Of the home games who can the forget the 1989-90 capitulation season where we collapsed from top spot in February to eighth place by stumps. The soaking wet Tuesday night match at Brunton Park where Tony Shepherd scored in the second half to defeat Exeter 1-0 in front of nearly 8,500 fans to the Kevin Rose calamity 5-2 defeat at the Maidstone dustbowl. That campaign also seeing the one-goal wonder match when Sunderland-loanee Dan Cullen scored a cracker in a 3-1 Sunday afternoon victory over Stockport. There weren't many high points at Brunton Park in the few years after that season, and with Eric Gates and Tony Fyfe in the forward line, there weren't many goals either, although playing in a bad side hardly helped the cause of either player. I was reaching the age now where I was about to go away to college after finishing my 'A' Levels so the chances to get to games, and the interest in them with the rotten quality on offer, started to wane a little. And then along came Michael Knighton, but I think we'll save that story for another day. |