|
 |
SUNDERLAND v MIDDLESBROUGH - A PENGUIN JACK FLASHBACK SPECIAL
Penguin Jack is back as agent 0086 in operation Roker Park.
The Time: 16th January 1994 - The Place: Roker Park Sunderland - The Mission: To see Boro take on the filthy Mackems.
Hi, this is special agent Penguin Jack and I am back with an extract from my up and coming memoirs "For Boro and the Penguins".
I chose this particular piece as a tribute to the many great games we have had against our near neighbours up the road on Queerside.
Going back to the time, Boro were absolutely shite. We had a manager called Lennie Lawrence who seemed to be a lame duck manager just waiting for the axe to fall on his neck after a very promising season had turned into a dire one with some very strange tactical decisions along the way. Add to that the dramatic fall in crowd numbers and alarm bells were ringing inside the club. So some things never change eh?
So this was January 1994 and the game was on a Sunday afternoon. Three o'clock kick off and it was only thirty odd miles up the road. No problems at all I hear you say. Bollocks - what a fucking carry on we had to get to this one I tell you.
The story started early Saturday lunchtime when all the lads who were going to the game had got together. We arranged several pick up points around the Teesside area and we were due to take a convey of five or six cars full of young Boro types all ready for some hot derby action.
Trouble was the Saturday lunchtime drinking became a Saturday evening drink then a Saturday night out, then a nightclub session, then a party/ rave all nighter with performance enhancing substances. I was in some state when I eventually got home at ten am on the day of the game and I had a choice go to bed and not wake up for three days or somat, or carry on drinking warm lager, the only alcohol I could find, in the hope I might drink myself sober at some point.
It never happened and when I eventually made my way to the meeting point at one o'clock I wasn't the only one the worse for wear I tell ya. One of the guys couldn't stand up he was that drunk, another had just got of the general hospital and was covered in blood and as for the designated driver, he was a wreck of a man who looked like, and probably had, been on some kind of hallucinogenic drugs all night.
We managed to set off in a rather unstable Austin Metro that had seen much better days to say the least. As we approached the A19 at Billingham, the driver informed us a that he had gone blind and 'couldn't see a fucking thing'. Now this could be tricky indeed, so myself in the passenger seat and seeing double due to no sleep, alcohol and two grams of speed had to guide the by now frothing at the mouth in panic driver who also informed me he has lost the use of his legs and his heart was beating like a fucking bass drum.
So after pulling up on a grass verge we worked out that none of us had a licence apart from the chap who by now was comatose in the back seat. One of the other guys, the chap covered in blood, said he had done a few driving lessons but was no expert. It was a gamble we had to take so we set off again in a race against time to get to Sunderland for the game.
Our next big challenge was at the service station on the A19 where we had a piss stop and by now I was gasping for a drink. In fact my mouth felt like someone had had a shit in it. We stopped for about five minutes as the clock was ticking and we still had a way to go with a guy driving, who had by now had admitted he had only driven a car once before in his entire life and that would explain why we were bouncing up and down like kangaroos. And as for the gear box, it's a wonder it was still attached to the fucking car.
One slight hick up we had on getting back to the car was that the guy who was the original paralysed driver had fallen into a deep sleep and we had locked him and the keys in the car. We knocked like hell on the windows, we shock the car, we shouted like raving lunatics at the top of our voices but did he hell wake up? No fucking way.
We actually thought he had passed away and that would have really messed up our plans on reaching the game, a fucking dead body on our hands, until one of the lads saw him twitch slightly in his sleep.
We had no other option but break a window, which we did with a rubbish bin and then we drove or should I say jumped and screeched our way out of the service station and onto the road.
Further tests showed that our first driver was in fact alive and well as he awoke from a deep sleep somewhere in the outskirts of Sunderland to complain that 'it is fucking freezing and shut that bastard window' to which he was told of the damage to his window because we couldn't wake him up. His response was classic and one I will never forget to this day. 'Don't matter, it's not my car. I nicked the keys from a party at some bird's house I was at last night, then I drove the car away'.
Well I can laugh now but we quickly swapped drivers just outside Sunderland, parked up, made the short walk to the ground and found the Boro already 1-0 down. We went on to lose 2-1 with Steve Vickers scoring for us.
The journey back was a almighty scramble to find seats in other people's cars as we were sure the police would be on the look out for our Metro and with its smashed window, it would not be hard to spot.
What an adventure and one which earned agent 0086 Penguin Jack a mention in dispatches.
More daredevil tactics in the name of following Boro coming soon.
Penguin Jack
BACK TO FLASHBACKS INDEX
 |
|
|
|
