In a footballing sense, the fixture in September 1996 was a disaster, as the brave resistance of the 9 was no match for the 11 internationals and the referee.

Off the field, we had a memorable day. We had our usual daft bets on the first scorer (Ball, Scott, and Ord) at King's Cross, when Frankie Detorri would have brought us about £750,000 for the same outlay. Breakfast was at Del's Diner - same staff (and cutlery) as on our first visit on cup Final day in '73. This splendid hostelry had toilet paper for serviettes, and a bog door that opened straight into the eating area. Not only that, but it wouldn't lock or even close, and was too far away to hold shut. This meant that the only way privacy could be obtained was by standing on one leg with the other at 90 degrees behind you ( if you were 9 feet tall). Suffice to say number twos were out of the question. We had a waiter who resembled a paler version of Sammy Davis Junior’s uglier and skinnier brother, who had the fattest cockney accent outside of Walford but told us that he came from Wallsend,. The food was cheap (I should bloody well have hoped so), plentiful, and good (providing you didn't watch the preparation too closely), but there was almost a riot when someone had the temerity to ask for a plate. It did set us up nicely for stage two of our preparations.; the liquid part.

Del's Diner has since transformed into Cafe Shiraz, and serves toast instead of fried bread. There’s new Labour for you . Shame.

The Lamb in Holborn has long been a favourite watering hole of ours, and there we met the remainder of our party, who had travelled from as far afield as London, Bradford, Shildon, Cheshire, and Gloustershire, and some had spent the morning in the National Gallery at an exhibition of paintings by Cheetah, the chimp from the Tarzan films (honest, and they wore the badges all day to prove in). We even had an Arsenal supporter in the considerable shape of Mike Amos of the Northern Echo, who tried his best to out-sing the 12 of us. Stubber from Bradford left his camera in the pub, and found some interesting shots when he eventually had the film processed (guilty, mate - sorry!). and the landlord still looks forward to our visits (so he says)

The football was a little disappointing to say the least, but Messrs Sixsmith & Horan managed to escape at 4 pm by battering on the gates until the steward decided that the cost of repair was more than his job was worth, and let them out. By the time we got back to the Lamb, they were well down a barrel of Winter Warmer ( a well known light session beer, about 6% ABV), and took a bit of shifting to catch the train.

A lighting raid of the offy adjacent to the station, and we were on our way home, treating the non- football passengers to a medley of Sunderland songs from the sixties and seventies - who can forget favourites like "hi ho, hi ho, we're off to Mexico, with Colin Todd and the Engerland squad, hi ho, hi ho"? This singing continued unabated to Darlington, although the bit after Peterborough was a bit of a blur. We do, however, absolutely deny using obscene language at any time, and it wasn't one of us who dropped his keks and caused the next London trip to be a dry one. Sorry lads, we're not rude, just severely musically challenged. We didn't sing in the taxi across Darlo, but we were asked to stop singing in the Number 22 pub - admittedly, we were a little out of tune by then, and didn't quite fit the image of the typical customer. On the last leg of the journey, we howled with laughter as one of our party slid the full length of the upper deck on his back when the service bus stopped sharply Shildon, and it is alleged that we had further beers in Bishop, but I'm still not convinced about that one.

A good day out spoiled by the 90 minutes in the middle, but our motto has always been " never let the deficiencies on the field spoil the fun off it."