I'll put in a little mention for my dad here even though he passed from this life a little over two years ago. He was a great North Ender who continued to support the side through that dreadful doldrum period in the 80s - what a dismal experience that must have been for someone who could remember the glory days of Tom Finney. In fact it was a loyalty that nearly killed him - he actually had a heart attack in Holme Slack walking home from a game near the end of that decade and didn't attend any matches for a season or two afterwards. But he resumed and his 80th birthday present just after we got back to this division was his first ever season ticket.
In retrospect some of my fervour for for us to get to the Premiership was probably because I would have liked my dad to have seen us in the top flight once more. But it was not to be and, in fact, after what I suppose must have 70-plus years watching the team his direct association with the club ended in flat anti-climax. The last match he ever attended was that appalling 3-0 home defeat by Colchester as the Simmo era ground to its miserable close. In fact he left at half-time, not in disgust at the performance but because he literally had not got the strength to continue. (Though in his later years he always did leave matches a few minutes before the end because he was anxious about catching his bus. If any of you remember a man in a beige jacket making his way out of the STFS towards the Kop end just before the end of matches that was him). He died a couple of months later and oddly the very first match that he did not live even to hear about was the first match with AI in charge - curious that.
I write this now rather than in advance of the formal Gentry Day because of tomorrow's match. My dad was an acute judge of footballers and on that score the match I remember watching with him most of all was that 3-0 victory over our Tangerine-shirted neighbours during the David Moyes era - the one where we had to wait until the 78th minute before we opened the scoring with that brilliant freekick by David Eyres.
I had driven all the way up from London to go along to the match with my dad and given that we were up at the top of the table and our Fylde Coast bretheren were down at the bottom end - in fact didn't they get relegated that season - I was expecting us to dominate the match and win it easily. But, as so often, it did not turn out that way - at least initially. For most of the first half we looked nervous and disjointed and they looked much sharper and quicker. In fact only a couple of good saves from our keeper - was it David Lucas, someone whose shot-stopping kept us in more than one game from which we eventually got something - stopped us going behind.
Now here is the thing. After 15 minutes or so when all I could see was an apparently energetic opposition stopping us from playing and looking like they were going to make me wish I was back in south London my dad turned to me and said, I remember his words exactly: "This lot are no good. They'll crack." He meant the team from the town with the Tower, not us. I don't know to this day what he saw, but he spotted something febrile about them - a superficiality, a lack of real resilience. It took another hour or so, but exactly what he said came true - once we scored they collapsed and we got another two before the game ended.
Anyhow let us hope that those qualities are just as evident tomorrow and that the men in white shirts with the Lamb & Flag crest on their left breast run out victorious. That really would be the best way to mark the memory of all those North Enders who are no longer there to see for themselves.
