Friday 17 February 2012

The (nearly) golden tickets - as featured in '606 stories' on BBC Sport website

It’s 1996 and in the last game of the season we faced Martin O’Neill’s play-off chasing Leicester City at Vicarage Road.  We needed a win and other results to go our way to stay up.  I went to the game with my best friend Nick, (a Fulham supporter).  We learnt on arrival, however, that the match was strictly an all-ticket affair, so ticket-less, we were turned away.  How could it be?  I couldn’t miss this game!  We walked despondently away from the ground, back through town.

    Nick had arranged for his mum to pick us up after the game so he now rang her up, informing her that we were, unhappily, ready to be picked up now, before the game.

    And then something quite remarkable happened.  A middle-aged man who neither of us had ever seen before, approached us and said something like, ‘Do you want to go to the game lads?’ to which we both moaned that we would be, but for the fact it was all-ticket.  He then pulled out two match tickets and said that he’d got given them through some charity he works for and would we like them?

    I could have kissed him.  Despite us trying to throw money into his hands, he wouldn’t take any of it, then after thanking him for about the millionth time, we legged it back to the ground.  Before we got there, my friend phoned his mum saying, ‘We don’t need picking up now – we just met god!’

    How could we really stay up after that?  I just knew I never had that much luck; I was a Watford supporter after all!  The game itself was an anti-climax and we lost 1-0.

    Relegated.

    But wherever you are my friend, thank you.  Thank you for giving your tickets to us.

No comments:

Post a Comment