Didsbury Dave
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- 1 Feb 2007
- Messages
- 38,091
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.
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.