I missed that day. Jeff maintained he didn't signal to bring players off but instead signaled to someone else in the team to take over as skipper after he'd been given his marching orders. The team though interpreted it otherwise!

A sorry day that and not a funny one!

Wire v Wigan at the HJ. The Wigan crowd were singing "The referees a winker!!" after another decision had gone the way of the home team A speccie behind me turned to his mate and said "I wish his father had been"

In the early 80's my Dad (who was a fan all his life, and knew a lot of the players), was giving me a lift home, we were going down Huddersfield Rd past Sedbergh, in front of us on the footpath jogging were Brian Noble, and just in front of him Ellery Hanley, my Dad stopped the car and shouted across, ' Hey Nobby aren't you a bit old to be playing cops & robbers', Nobby nearly fell on the floor laughing, Ellery (with sort of a smile) shouted F*** off you cheeky fat barsteward.

I remember going to watch us at Rochdale in the cup around 96. There was an older man next to us that exclaimed "sh.it the bed Bradford!" every few minutes. We had literally never heard that phrase ever before but were utterly delighted to hear it for the first time and throughout the game. Is it a Bradford phrase?

Off topic slightly, but when Cas played Leigh in the 80s some old bloke kept shouting "You an't got t'brains God giv geese". Which might be a Leigh phrase.

Change 'geese' to 'yers' and it makes perfect sense

But nowhere near as funny.

True

All right, whilst Leigh seems to be in mind, I've remembered another which involved myself back in the seventies.

Leigh, the town where not much happened. Well, nothing of interest physically happened when I was there. I just turned up to watch a rugby match and got a bit of a shock.

It was half-time. I was munching a pie and daydreaming at the time, when an announcement came over the P.A. asking for information about a serious attack on a woman the previous night, somewhere in Leigh. The police wanted to speak to a white male between 18 and 24 years, somewhere between 5 feet 8 and six feet tall, who had long, dark, curly, and bushy hair and had been wearing black boots, blue jeans and a red, bomber type jacket, and if anyone knew, etc etc..

From about halfway through the description, my attention was drawn ever closer to the announcement, since just as if they had been taking it directly from a photo of me, the suspect was clearly my double. My five feet ten, 20 year old self, fitted it from the very bottom of my black Chelsea boots to the very top of my fashionably coiffed long, dark and curly, bushy mop.

Well, let’s be honest, lynch mobs have been set up on flimsier evidence, so a shiver went down my spine and I gave sharp intake of breath as I opened my eyes to look upon the hordes of people who were now staring intently and pointing fingers at me – except they weren’t. I was being totally ignored. Even leaving the ground when I walked past two policemen at the gate they didn’t give me a second glance.

Innocent as I was, I still wonder about the point of these appeals..

The post from Bulliac mentioning Leigh reminded me of a cup match at Hilton Park in the mid 1970's. Northern were coasting to a comfortable win when Leigh forward Allan Rowley (Paul's dad) took a drive up but promptly had his shorts ripped apart in a tackle. Whilst waiting for a fresh pair, he lifted his shirt up towards the crowded main stand to reveal a fully developed beer belly and a battleship-grey "elastic support".

It raised a laugh but God forbid anyone doing that now in these enlightened times, even though there was no question of Allan actually flashing! Son Paul must have got the "moral and integrity" sound bites from the maternal side of the Rowley household.

Quite right. It's a complement paid to high achievers in Leigh.