Saturday April 18th 1998. Funnily enough it was my birthday but that’s not the talking point here. The night before Shez and plenty of us Leve Blues had been up at the Riverside to see us slip to a Friday night 1-0 defeat against 10 man ‘Boro which saw us slip closer towards relegation to the third tier.
Anyway, Saturday came and instead of wallowing in the disappointment of the night before, the Leve Blues had a pre-organised visit to Spotland to take in a match between Rochdale and Exeter City. The reason being that Buster Phillips was our branch president and City had sent him out on loan back to his hometown club. About 30 of us rocked up at Rochdale’s clubhouse bar and we had the added bonus of the kick-off being delayed by 45 minutes IIRC due to the Exeter team coach getting stuck in traffic, giving us some extra drinking time pre-match. We went in the Exeter end which I think pissed off the Rochdale chairman because they’d agreed to put Levenshulme Blues on their digital advertising board for a short while!
The match was a non-event first half but we had a right laugh with the hundred or so Exeter fans, joining in with all their chants and stuff.
It started to get really interesting in the second half though. Exeter had a left-winger called Jimmy Gardner and he was playing on our side of the pitch. Every time he got the ball, someone started serenading him with all manner of songs. To the point that Gardner was even turning to the bloke and acknowledging him. I don’t think he could believe all this attention he was suddenly getting and believe me, it went on pretty much throughout the whole of the second half despite Exeter slumping to a 3-0 defeat.
Of course, there was only one person in that whole ground who could do such a thing - actually, the whole country even - and that person is Shez of course!
