In Europe or out? I don’t know, and I don’t give political advice, other than to always look for the ulterior motive and beware of the very confident. I suppose that is giving political advice. Anyway, Europe is not something which is likely to worry us in a football sense, unless we ever get round to this end of season tour abroad that is sometimes mooted. I will give my apologies. Not that I haven’t enjoyed the odd football tour in my time. Very odd in a couple of cases.
We once took our Sunday side to play a couple of games down in Leicestershire, one in a pretty little village, just outside the town where we were staying. Late on the first evening, while seeking some sustenance of an oriental variety, we spotted a headline on the back page of the local evening paper which said that the Cossacks, our boldy named opponents the following morning, were hosting, and I quote, “a crack northern outfit.” This came as something of a surprise to the northern outfit in question, as most of us were nine or ten pints in by this time and choosing between the chow mein and the curry to complete the evening, the local young ladies having proved not as accommodating as we had fondly hoped. And we had just finished second bottom of the Sunday league third division.
Still we roused ourselves and turned up in good time the next day, somewhat less than sprightly, to find a beautiful ground, a growing crowd and a smart looking bunch of opponents, clean shaven, with matching kit and tracksuits, warming up properly, and claiming a forty goal centre forward. Half of us had lost a boot, no two socks were the same, and the first aid bag contained two beer bottles, empty, and a three eighths spanner.
We were even more surprised therefore to find ourselves four up in ten minutes, which meant we could relax and spend the next eighty with a ten man defence on the edge of our area, before heading swiftly to the adjacent hostelry, having maintained the honourable reputation of the Sunderland football community. Yes, it turned out they were useless. But very good hosts I have to say. Seems it's rugby country in those parts; the side we played on the Sunday were even worse. We made tentative enquiries about entering their league....