Played at Mannion Park, Middlesborough on June 28th 1997, as part of the EuroNet 97 tournament.
Leicester Team for the tournament:
John Barr (Reading)
Martin Brailli (Reading)
Ian Brownsword (Oldham)
Philip Corti (Reading)
Paul 'PORL' Coulson (Leicester City)
Stuart Hill (Leicester City)
Mark Hows (Reading)
Alison James (Leicester City)
David James (Leicester City)
Neil James (Leicester City)
Derek Marshall (Leicester City)
Anne 'NOBBY' Newbery (Reading)
Tim Robinson (Crewe c/o Hil Robinson!)
With the weather still not letting up at all and some soft paps trying to persuade the organisers to cancel the event, the 10.30am kick-off time was upon us and still we were waiting for the arrival of 4 more of our team. Neil and his party had been spotted in a nearby pub not long before, or so the rumour goes, so we were starting to have kittens over his non-appearance. Thankfully Neil et al made a grand entrance shortly after Craig Hignett and Wilf Mannion (ask yer Dads!) officially opened the tournament and we were introduced to Neil's mate, Ian, sporting an unfortunately Oldham shirt but who seemed quite normal otherwise. We're aint proud - he joined the team!
With the team all assembled and in various states of undress, and our 11.10am kick-off fast approaching, Porl announced his revolutionary match tactics. I must admit I thought a 6-2-2 formation was a bizarre approach but guessed that was the way they did things in Middlesbrough. (I'll be the first to admit that I laughed Porl out of town when he told me his plans on the way up but, all credit to him, in retrospect it was considerably better than it sounded and rumour has it that Charles Hughes is currently updating his 'Soccer Tactics and Skills' accordingly).
Our first game was against Aston Villa. They looked the biz in their matching kit on loan from the club with a lot of fit *young* bodies inside them. I think it was then that alot of us first started to wonder what we had let ourselves in for. There was an assortment of Reading, Leicester, Crewe, Oldham and (for some reason) Italy shirts in our line-up and Villa were probably thinking we were disorganised enough to be easy pickings. They were soon to find out how they (and indeed we) had underestimated our abilities.
Much to the amusement of the other teams, Tim took us through an organised team warm-up with a view to terrifying the opposistion and giving the impression that we knew what we doing. By the time the match kicked off we were all knackered and soaked to the skin and Neil quickly learnt the perils of wearing dark grundies and white shorts on a rainy day!!
After witnessing Villa's bizarre pre-match ritual of pretending to be
Subbuteo players (they can't help it - they're brummies!) and a victim had been roped into reffing, we finally kicked off.
This is when we learnt that Porl's somewhat defensive formation wasn't as ludicrous as first we thought. Far from being the whipping boys that most had expected we were holding our own for much of the game. We were even confident enough to hold each other's! It was just a brief lapse of concentration 10 minutes or so into first half stoppage time that allowed Villa to score the only goal of the game. Late in the game the impressive Stuart took a nasty knock and, with his foot hanging by a sinew, was forced to limp off with assurances that he would be fit for the next game. Soon after I joined the injury list when I blocked a thumping goalbound effort (from a guy who looked spookingly like Terry Nutkins) with my ribs. I left the field of play in agony and was replaced by a passing Swindon player but thought that the pain of a collapsed lung had got to be better than the shame of fielding the Scum so immediately fought through the pain barrier to return to the fray. (Besides, it only actually hurt when I breathed ... or moved, or lifted up my arms!).
Despite the defeat, we were actually very heartened by our performance and the way all our players commited themselves. For a team that progressed convincingly into the latter stages of the competition, Villa had been well pegged back by our unorthodox game plan.
After several offers from various players to check my injury, I finally discovered one of the Celtic players was a doctor and he pronounced that I was to take no further part in the tournament and that swinging from chandeliers was to be put on hold for a week or so.
