Quote: "Great post as always and I remember running onto Craven Park and carrying coach Tony Dean shoulder high off the pitch and then walking all the way back to town with hundreds of others singing Old Faithful! What a way to avoid relegation. great memories!!'"
Cheers Wilf, always pleasing to receive compliments from the master
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Agree with you totally about Wigan '88. Only the two Wembley victories stand above it for sheer pleasure of memory (with the Aussie tour game '82 just behind). If I close my eyes I can still picture a mud-stained Gary Pearce running towards me at Airlie Street, it was only when he reached the 25 that I realised the players frantically chasing him down were Kevin Dick and Paul McCaffrey and not the encroaching Wigan defenders!
Nevermind that there was just over 6000 of us in there that afternoon (and that's including a reasonable Wigan contingent), by the noise and sheer pandemonium that erupted around the old ground, you would have thought there was 50000 in there celebrating!! I have never, in all my days, seen a crowd go so utterly berserk as we all did at that moment
Can recall being in Town centre later that evening still in a stunned daze at the drama we had witnessed. Almost 37 years after it happening, it still brings a smile to my face every single time the memory resurfaces in my mind. The kind of moment that goes a long way to compensating some of the heart-breaking and/or depressing moments we have to endure as black & whites from time to time.
Also, if we are talking about derby games (as this thread started with another memorable derby victory), I think it would be remiss if one of us old-timers didn't mention Craven Park, Good Friday 1984, and Len Casey
. Completely outdone by Fred Ah Khoi and a moment to savour for all black & whites stood underneath the old greyhound scoreboard at Holderness road end (as everyone went nuts again!!). It still makes me laugh even today, forty years after the event, in fact I'm laughing right now picturing that linesman somersaulting backwards onto the Craven park turf
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