My Swindon Away Story - 1996

[Prestwich_Blue]

I'd forgotten there are people on here who know exactly who Alan is!

Alan? Alan? Who the fuck is Alan?

And Steve Coppell meets Didsbury Dave and resigns that night. Well I think we now have the answer to the question that's been eluding us for all those 25 years.

 

[Didsbury Dave]

Alan? Alan? Who the fuck is Alan?

And Steve Coppell meets Didsbury Dave and resigns that night. Well I think we now have the answer to the question that's been eluding us for all those 25 years.

I told him that we as a fanbase expected nothing less than 100 points and 100 goals that season. Next thing you know he's citing the "enormous pressure" of the job and handing in his notice.

 

[yerwot?]

Some of the best posts on BM are the stories of away-day trips, usually abroad but not exclusively. Main topic is often police brutallity, not good reading but eye-opening,
The match reports depend on the results, everyone's shit if we lose, euphoric after a win, just like any match thread, but the most entertaining are the personal trials and tribulations of just getting there and back, the opposition fans and the stewarding, all to a background of gallons of beer. Covid has severely curtailed travel and so the number of such posts, among other things (obvs). Hopefully there will be more in future.
The 70's and 80's trips to anfield and leeds and stoke were hairy enough for me, clearly not hardcore enough, but i imagine there are many more like me who enjoy these threads.
/

 

[lancs blue]

Seeing as we've drawn Swindon I thought I'd reminisce.

November 1996. City are plummeting down the leagues and turning over managers at a rate of knots. United are winning everything. The jokes are going around like bushfires. Heard the one about the new sky blue Oxo cube? Laughing stock. Franny Lee faints at the league chairmen's conference. "Where am I?", "You're in the conference, Franny". "What happened to division 2?" Boom boom tish. It really was the winter of our discontent. But our away support was huge and kept going on booze and gallows humour. "We're not really here" and "We never win at home and we never win away" alternated with "What the fuck is going on?" and "We're shit and we're sick of it".

Intel were Swindon's shirt sponsor and my best mate was a customer. He managed to get hold of four Director's Box/Hospitality tickets for the game at their place. We booked a hotel and went down there, arriving at lunchtime. Now hospitality at Swindon in the 90s was a far cry from the the modern day. We basically had the run of the entire club's Main Stand interior including Intel's own lounge. Nobody from Intel was even supervising us and we were in our mid twenties and inexperienced with corporate matters. The bar was free. There was only one way this was going to go. We started on the pints and lined our stomachs with buffet food.

The game was miserable, a 2-0 defeat. We were in the director's box and City had a big support stood freezing in the pouring rain behind the goal. Is there anything more miserable than an away defeat a long way from home on an open end in the rain? We got told to sit down for roaring on City on a rare attack. We got steadily tanked up and it was only after the game things got interesting. We'd been having some semi-good natured but slightly barbed "banter" with a couple of gobby Swindon fans. We were sitting in the lounge after the game having an argument with them about Nicky Summerbee who recently joined us from Swindon. We were claiming he would come good and I can still remember this bloke saying loudly "He's gone shit at City. What the fuck has happened to him? What a wanker". Right behind them, in our view, appeared Nicky Summerbee who stood listening intently. "Why don't you tell him that yourself?" said my mate and gobshite replied "I would" to which we just pointed behind him and went "Go on then!". He went white and started stammering. To be fair to Summerbee he handled it well and sat down with us and had a beer whilst these Swindon fans made themselves scarce like rabbits.

Nicky invited us down to the player's bar. On the way down we passed our new manager Steve Coppell and we all shook hands and expressed our best wishes and confidence in him. He seemed in a rush to get off and in retrospect it was no wonder: he resigned that night. The players all had a drink and we met them all. Gio was drinking orange juice and my mate got an autograph like a dick. Kit Symons was getting picked up by his wife. The others were sniffing around my mate's attractive wife, and he was basically telling her he didn't mind if she copped with one of them. To her credit, she didn't. We stayed with them until the coach arrived and shook all their hands as they left as they assured us they'd turn it round and win promotion. Lying twats.

Absolutely steaming by now we got a taxi to the hotel. More beers and food was being served in a sort of canteen style where you chose your dish and took it to your table. We all got big meals, walked back and sat down. Alan who always gets staggeringly, slurringly pissed was on his way back to the table and he dropped the entire dinner with a massive crash right on the restaurant floor. Oh god we were laughing then. An angry old cleaner/kitchen woman came over to clean it up, bent down and Alan did a gesture as though to feel her arse behind her. This was well before the #metoo stuff, and a joke rather than real, in his mitigation. But he misjudged it and I don't know if he touched her or she just saw it but she shot up and slapped him one and absolutely bollocked him in front of the whole restaurant. It remains one of the funniest moments of my life but he hates us bringing it up. His wife came back from the toilet and was really not impressed at him or us because were were doing that thing where you try not to laugh but it keeps escaping.

That was more or less it. A trip I'll always remember and that we sometimes reminisce about that somehow sums up supporting City in that era.

You lucky sod, all I can remember about that match was getting absolutely soaked on the open end and having the heating on full blast in the car on the way back until I stopped shivering! I couldn't even have a drink to ease the pain of watching Darren Wassall.

 

[GazM]

My abiding memory of that game was that Kinkladze was on a completely different wavelength to the other players. A bit like a classical orchestra conductor playing with 10 other blokes who couldn't even hit a triangle. Oh yes, the rain too. And being envious of Swindon having better players than us.

 

[dennishasdoneit]

My memory,roundabouts roundabouts oh and more roundabouts

Mine too.
1st trip late 80s,our supporters club were playing Swindons so we got there about 9.30am..Swindon town centre..I looked out the window of the mini bus to see roundabout after roundabout.( 6 mini r/a,s inside a big 7th?) .the driver shouted " what the F*** ..!!??..there were cars going in all directions. Chaos.i n the end we just bull dozed our way through.
Never seen anything like it.

 

[Didsbury Dave]

Mine too.
1st trip late 80s,our supporters club were playing Swindons so we got there about 9.30am..Swindon town centre..I looked out the window of the mini bus to see roundabout after roundabout.( 6 mini r/a,s inside a big 7th?) .the driver shouted " what the F*** ..!!??..there were cars going in all directions. Chaos.i n the end we just bull dozed our way through.
Never seen anything like it.

Haven't Swindon got the only roundabout in England that goes anti-clockwise?

 

[dennishasdoneit]

My memory,roundabouts roundabouts oh and more roundabouts

Mine too.
1st trip late 80s,our supporters club were playing Swindons so we got there about 9.30am..Swindon town centre..I looked out the window of the mini bus to see roundabout after roundabout.( 6 mini r/a,s inside a big 7th?) .the driver shouted " what the F*** ..!!??..there were cars going in all directions. Chaos.i n the end we just bull dozed our way through.
Never seen anything like it.

Haven't Swindon got the only roundabout in England that goes anti-clockwise?

It certainly woke all our lot up..I still have nightmares now...literally no one knew what was going on..I have no idea what the score was in our supporters match,but if we lost ,the manic roundabout scare was the reason ; )

 

[Didsbury Dave]

Mine too.
1st trip late 80s,our supporters club were playing Swindons so we got there about 9.30am..Swindon town centre..I looked out the window of the mini bus to see roundabout after roundabout.( 6 mini r/a,s inside a big 7th?) .the driver shouted " what the F*** ..!!??..there were cars going in all directions. Chaos.i n the end we just bull dozed our way through.
Never seen anything like it.

It certainly woke all our lot up..I still have nightmares now...literally no one knew what was going on..I have no idea what the score was in our supporters match,but if we lost ,the manic roundabout scare was the reason ; )

Just looked it up and remembered it when i found it. They call it "The Magic Roundabout":

Magic Roundabout (Swindon) - Wikipedia

 

[Scareye]

Just looked it up and remembered it when i found it. They call it "The Magic Roundabout":

Magic Roundabout (Swindon) - Wikipedia

We had an office down there. I would shit bricks every time I went near that thing.