It was always Preston North End and I still tip in to about a couple of games a year.
About a decade ago, I actually had season tickets at both Maine Road and Deepdale purely because of the way the fixtures fell.
Once they got rid of the terraces and turned it into a proper ground, it lost some of it's magic. I'd started watching them as a lowe league side affair and they kind of out-stripped what they were supposed to do.
Them playing City was never in my thoughts and it was a very surreal situation when the two met in 1998-99. I had a dual season ticket at the time but when City went to Deepdale, I gave my ticket away, got one in the away end and felt bloody gutted when PNE scored after about thirty seconds. It really did look too like we were going to meet at Wembley in the Play-Offs and I boycotted North End's play-off semi-final as a result as I couldn't bring myself to stick up for a team that I thought would have been a bigger threat to City.
It's very strange but when you have a second team, when they play your first team, you hate that second team like they were Manchester United!:)