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FANTASY FOOTBALL
I had been looking forward to this one for absolutely ages. Well, ever since the season had ended four weeks earlier and yet another mind numbingly boring Boroless Summer set in with only one County cricket match at Acklam Park to keep us entertained. And that would almost certainly be rained off.
At least we had the European Championships to look forward to during this particular Summer and what a feast of football it promised to be. All the big names were there, except Brazil, Argentina and Mexico and the billing for the matches looked like we were in for a right old treat.
The opening ceremony was one of those ritzy glammy affairs that served only to whet the appetite for the forthcoming action even more. Why they have to go through all that pullava I will never know. I popped open another tin of McEwan's as I waited patiently for the action to begin.
After what seemed like an eternity, the shenanigans were all over and the host nation and their opponents took the field to a cacophony of noise and colour. But I think that I had had one too many McEwan's because instead of the teams lining up and standing to attention whilst some dreary foreign national anthem that sounded like an Eastern bloc funeral march belched out of the sound system, the whole stadium burst into life as the sound of 'The Power Game' took hold of everyone's eardrums and kicked the shit out of them.
For any readers too young to remember our early to mid seventies 'glory days' at Ayresome Park, 'The Power Game' is the theme tune that Boro used to run out to and it goes, der-der- der-der-der-der-der. DER-DER! Or something like that.
I thought that I was supposed to be watching a European Championship match but Boro had taken the field and were about to play Italy. And there was the World Cup sitting right next to Sepp Blatter as he applauded each name as they were announced by Me Mark Page.
Number one, Mark Schwarzer. Hooray!
Number two, John Craggs. Hooray!
Number three, Gary Pallister. Hooray!
Number four, Graeme Souness. Hooray!
Number five, George Hardwick. Hooray!
Number six, Steve Bloomer. Hooray!
Number seven, Bolo Zenden. Hooray!
Number eight, Paul Gascoigne. Hooray!
Number nine, Brian Clough. Hooray!
Number ten, Bernie Slaven. Hooray!
And number eleven, David Armstrong. Hoo - bloody - ray!
And I watched in amazement as Boro thrashed the Azzuri 8-0. Cloughie played a blinder and scored with every touch that he had but there was a bit of a barney between him and Bernie Slaven towards the end when the Scot accused the old master of pushing him out of the way so that he could score yet another. During the fracas, one of the Italians got the ball and took it upfield but just as he was about to shoot, George Hardwick made a sliding tackle that sent the Italians kneecap hurtling into the stand. Apparently, you could get away with that kind of thing in George's day.
Boro had to play Scotland and Holland in their other group games and to keep the team happy, Cloughie was rested and Bernie was given the sole striker's role by managers Stan Anderson, Colin Todd, Bryan Robson and Willie Maddren. Wilf Mannion replaced Bolo Zenden for the game against the Jocks and when Bernie got his first goal of the evening, he ran to the touchline where the Boro fans were gathered and started to climb the perimeter fencing. In just a few moments, he was perched on top of a floodlight and was shouting at the Scots in the opposite stand.
"That'll teach ye for nae picking me ya bastays!"
Billy Bremner and Willie Donachie were incensed by this and complained bitterly to the ref who sent them both off and then asked the Boro managers to try to get Bernie to calm down. Stan Anderson tried to coax Bernie down from the floodlight but he was stuck. So Paul Wilkinson was brought on in his place and finished the Scots off with an eighty three yard lob which sent keeper David Harvey the wrong way. Boro were definitely through to the second round now.
In the game against Holland, most of the team that had played the first two matches were rested and Boro lined up as follows:
1. Willie Whigham
2. Gary Parkinson
3. Tony McMahon
4. Mick Baxter
5. Bill Gates
6. Paul Sugrue
7. Bobby Murdoch
8. Stan Cummins
9. Nobby Stiles
10. Emerson
11. John Hendrie
Johann Cruyff and Johann Neeskens tried their hardest to execute all of the handy flicks and tricks that were their trademark but Boro frustrated them at every turn, Nobby Stiles proving more than a match for the Dutch maestros and Willie Whigham producing some cat like reflexes that kept the scores level until injury time.
Then Bill Gates took the ball out of defence and passed a long ball to pint sized midfielder Stan Cummins who took it past Ruud Gullit with his first touch, dribbled it away from Marco Van Basten and played it on to the onrushing Hendrie who blasted it beyond the flailing Edwin Van Der Sar. Pigbag blasted out all over the stadium as Boro moved across country to face Yugoslavia in the next round.
Wilf Mannion starred in this one and that was everything to do with the Boro manager's tactics of playing only two across the middle in Hardwick and Pallister, six strikers, Clough, Slaven (who had finally been rescued from the floodlight), Hendrie, Wilkinson, Bloomer and Alan Foggon with Wilf and Stuart Ripley on the flanks. The Yugos were no match for a sparkling Boro side, even though Wilf's shirt looked like a tent and his shorts like something that had been clobbered together from the jacket of his demob suit.
In one stunning attacking movement, Wilf passed the ball the full width of the field to Rippers who found Alan Foggon first time. The Flying Pig made no mistake in sending a rapturous Boro into the quarter finals and a match against Argentina.
During the quarter final, greasy wop drug addict Diego Maradona punched the ball past a helpless Skippy and for some strange reason, the referee gave the goal. Until Brian Clough stepped up and pointed his finger in the ref's face.
"Now look here, young man. You want bloody shooting for giving that goal. That was handball and I'll have you bloody replaced if you don't change your mind." So the ref ordered a video replay of the incident.
Because there were no video screens available in the ground, they had to wait until that evening's Match of the Day to see the replays and it was plainly obvious that the dago had indeed handled the ball into the net. It was nearly midnight by now and most of the crowd had gone home, so the game was awarded to Boro by default.
The semi final was played against up and coming young upstarts Denmark, who were no match for Boro on the day. A crowd of 323,000 saw Paul Wilkinson, Paul Gascoigne and Graeme Souness send Boro into their first ever World Cup Final against hosts Germany.
What an occasion. An awesome spectacle was viewed by another record crowd and the Boro game was even top billing on Gary Lineker's Saturday evening football programme.
But the Germans were a crafty old side and had worked out that if Franz Beckanbauer could cut out Gascoigne's through balls to Armstrong as he attempted to play Foggon down the centre, then Jurgen Klinsmann would be free to make a run and receive the ball in space. The tactic worked a treat and at the interval, Boro were trailing 2-0. Wholesale changes were made at half time and Boro returned with the following line up.
1. Jim Platt
2. Curtis Fleming
3. Frank Spraggon
4. Tony Mowbray
5. Gareth Southgate
6. Stuart Boam
7. Danny Mills
8. Tony McAndrew
9. Juninho
10. John Hickton
11. Eric McMordie
This new defensive line up (7-0-3) was the brainchild of Colin Todd and for once, his tactics worked as the Germans could not find a way past our super solid backline.
On sixty two minutes, Stuart Boam made a great interception from Uwe Seeler. McMordie picked up the loose ball and played it right into the path of Juniho who took it past six German players and slotted it home to put Boro back in the game. The Germans closed up shop after that but Tony McAndrew managed to get the equaliser in the eighty ninth minute with a deft overhead kick from the half way line. The Boro crowd went mad.
Extra time was a drab affair and so we went into a nail biting penalty shoot out to discover whether the World Cup would be hoisted aloft by Germany or by Middlesbrough. The Germans went first and scored, but Curtis Fleming levelled. This continued and with the score at four all and with just one penalty left each, Der Kaizer stepped up and blasted his shot straight into the arms of Jim Platt.
It was now down to John Hickton to deliver the golden trophy to Boro and as he started retreating to take his run up, the groundsman began to unlock the gate at the back of the stadium. Big John retreated and retreated, out of the stadium, over the Rhine Valley and into Poland...
I woke up with the contents of a can of McEwan's all down my shirt and realised that life would never really be as good as this dream and The European Championships were always going to be a let down from now on.
We'd have stuffed those Greeks, I'm sure of it.
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