ralphindevon

Good Friday 2022 Stoke 0 City 1 Good Friday 2023 Stoke 1 City 2 Good Friday 2024 Vale 2 Gas 0 If only every day could be Good Friday in Stoke on Trent.

I’ll volunteer to balance the train up by sitting on the right, I’m lucky enough to see the views all the time. And as tempting as frigates and diesel depots sound, on this occasion I’m more interested in pubs for away fans or fans nor wearing colours? I haven’t watched City there for over two decades and always remember getting a drink was problematic.

Never heard of it! I’ll take a look. Is it very time consuming?

Fair enough, it just seemed an odd sentence for a city fans first post - we are looking for two spares for Plymouth Argyle vs Bristol on Monday, please give me a shout if you have any. Anyway, good luck with your search

Are you a City fan?

Our last game against one of the top 4 who have all been very consistent so far. strangely we haven’t lost by more than a goal in any of the 7 games so far. Can we keep up that record today? Not that I’m hoping for a boring 0-1 defeat.

I hope the clubs ticketing system can cope with 12000 of us all renewing on the last hour of the last day. I might give myself an extra hour………..if I do renew.

I’d absolutely love it if the got Nige on. That’d be so interesting.

TBF at least they all remembered our part in his career. A lot of people think he was at Newcastle then Man United before finishing his career with a few others. It was a hell of a deal for us to actually sign him on after loaning him, he looked so good from his debut onwards, nowadays Arsenal may have just extended the loan for a year and waited to see how he progressed.

Maybe Jon has earmarked Zak to take over from Manning if things don’t improve, player manager, save some money, his own label to pay his wages…………

And we get a mention. While discussing Harry Kane and his not exactly quick rise to fame, Wrighty likened him to Andy Cole saying nobody was sure he’d make a prolific top striker at Aresnal. Then he came to us and something clicked. Wrighty, Roy Keane and maybe one other all called us Bristol, not sure if they just couldn’t remember which Bristol team or just thought Bristol was enough, I don’t know.

I look at GJ’s tenure almost as an outsider as I wasn’t a season ticket holder and didn’t even live in the country for any of it. One thing that stuck in my mind was the motivational quotes he put around the changing room, which he then got made up from hand written bits of paper to proper printed cards. He was so proud of them but you couldn’t help think that kind of thing had a shelf life and once you’d read them 50 times then what? But that playoff season was great and I loved my trips back to watch City that season, even Wembley was hugely memorable and I’m glad we got there despite the result. Edit. Oh and as it’s a Lee Trundle thread, I loved watching him play, in fact I remember coming back for one game, may have been Sheffield United away, and spent 15 minutes before the game watching him warm up with a ball at his feet. Comfortably the best part of the afternoon for me.

This has already been posted on here, last Tuesday think.

As I said on the other thread, our ave attendance now would put us in the top 10 in the country and Torquay have an average almost double now in the 6th tier than they did back then in the 4th. Amazing that a few years after Hillsborough, football went from being looked down on and the fans treated like scum to being THE place to be seen. Thatcher hated football fans but I almost preferred that to seeing the likes of Cameron, Osborne, Sunak all trying to get on the bandwagon pretending they’re loyal supporters of teams they know nothing about.

Yes I was around for those days, though I can never remember there not being segregation in the open end, always a double fence with police occasionally stood between the supporters. I never went before top flight days though.

That sounds nuts. Was there an area where you were expected to go in the ground as an away fan or did you just go anywhere? I can remember going to a Brentford v Exeter game in the 70’s where fans just swapped ends at half time and even that dog without a few scuffles .

Yes I think Wolves were doing a Bristol City and falling from top to bottom. Of course it was just after Heysel and being a football fan in this country wasn’t easy, we were treated like animals everywhere we went. How very different things are now, some much better some not so much.

A Quick Look in my old box of programmes and this one was near the top. TC’s notes tell us we were confident of beating Hereford to secure a place at Wembley, It was touch and go but we did it. Never doubt the great TC

True about the crowds, I saw something on facebook recently from around that time that gave all the matches and attendances on a certain Saturday. I’d forgotten just how dreadful attendances were. I think we lost at Wolves in front of about 3,800. Our current average would see us in the top 10 in the country back then. Ive such vague memories of this game. I was definitely there as I’ve been to every derby game, bar a couple of the Paint trophy ones, since I started going to games in 76/77. I remember travelling up from Minehead and going in the Rovers end but not much else. Ive much better memories of Eastville from the FA cup game and the game where the wind was blowing the greyhound track in our faces all day.

I enjoy T20 and have tried the IPL but it’s definitely not for me. The games go on way too long, even Jos Buttler agrees with that and trying to follow the whole series you lose the will to live it drags on so long. I know a number of overseas players find it difficult to stay for such a long time and we’ve had many leave early for personal reasons. I know ours isn’t perfect and could do with a bit of tweaking but overall I much prefer it to the IPL. Don’t get me started on their incredibly annoying Indian fans who think the whole of cricket revolves around them and the IPL.

Yes he does come across as a character from Everybody Loves Raymond, I can tolerate him but I loved ELR and love his food series but can totally understand people finding him irritating. Bourdain is/was just brilliant though. Greatly missed.

Cam Pring?

Yeah if we get to the promised land the away allocations are often worse than in the championship. There are thousands of season ticket holders of PL clubs that can’t get an away ticket season after season.

He gets to quite a lot of games actually, working for an airline helps though.

Even for the pure cricket enthusiast like myself, test cricket can have it's boring, forgettable matches. The 2005 Ashes didn't seem to have a boring session never mind day or test. International sport at it's very best, it had everything. The 2019 WC final was as exciting as it gets but a few fortunate, lucky moments had us feeling a bit for the plucky losers. I'm a far bigger cricket fan than rugby but the 2003 win seemed incredibly important for England to get over the line, not just for rugby but all of British sport. Growing up we'd get excited if Jeremy Bates or any Brit reached the second week of Wimbledon. Then Tim Henman came along and gave us hope but ultimately disappointment. So the Andy Murray victory was an extremely special sporting moment. So my personal favourite top 3 would be- The Ashes. Andy Murray Rugby world cup