These Colours Don't Run: Inside the Hibs Capital City Service by Derek Dykes & Andy Colvin

Author:Derek Dykes & Andy Colvin [Dykes, Derek]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781905769377
Publisher: Fort Publishing
Published: 2012-05-14T22:00:00+00:00

13

HIGHWAY TO HULL

The last thing you could expect as a Hibs fan was a glamour friendly. The pre-season fixtures in 1989 were against Hull, Burnley and Aston Villa. The three games were to be played in the space of a week and that was a no-no for a lot of the boys because they had jobs to hold down. Let’s face it; you’re not going to toss away a week’s holiday to go to Hull and Burnley, are you?

I wasn’t even certain most of us knew where the hell Burnley was. I certainly couldn’t have picked it out on a map of Britain. It’s fair to say enthusiasm for these games was not at its highest. In fact, it was so muted there were only fourteen of us planning to do all three games. That’s when you get into dangerous territory because we were a known mob by then. There was no question we’d be sorely tested because we were so short-handed. At least most of the boys were planning to go to Birmingham for the Villa game. But until then it was to be an intrepid little band heading off for the not-so-bright spots of England.

We hired two Transit vans and chucked mattresses into the back of them. Nothing like travelling in style. And that was nothing like travelling in style but needs must when money was tight. Six or seven of us would travel in the back of each van, and that was also where we would sleep. We reckoned all three games would be tasty. Burnley had a known mob, Villa had a known mob and Hull’s a dump. You tend to find that crap towns have decent mobs, I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because there’s nothing else to do in these places.

Hull was the first stop for us and we headed down the M1 in the vans. We had been right about the place being a tip. It was horrible. Their ground, Boothferry Park, wasn’t much better but once we’d parked the vans, we grabbed a bite to eat. Then it was off to the ground and we thought we may as well start as we meant to go on. We were going in blind because we hadn’t even sussed out what size their mob was but, nevertheless, we paid our way into the Hull end. Just as well Newcastle weren’t there. They’d have been cursing us. But that’s what we did. We paid our way into the home end, all fourteen of us. We were as nutty as fruit bats.

As we were walking around the terracing we spotted this fat guy in a Hearts top, hurling abuse at the Hibs players and the wee knot of fans in the away end. He did for starters. As we walked past him one of the boys decked him with a peach of a punch and it kicked-off from there. It got the attention of their mob and some of their scarfers fancied a go as well. That was what we came for and we were battling before the game had even started.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.