[Archived] Worst Away Day?

[Al]

Similar happened to me once at Tranmere. Directed to park down a road by the Police and after the match all the Rovers fans had tickets on their windscreens.

I remember going to Aston Villa for a cup replay in 1990 I think. We lost 3 -1 and Andy Kennedy scored a cracker and I think we missed a penalty.

Anyway, we were a bit late arriving and looking for a parking spot when a friendly policeman guided us to a space just off a slip road to the motorway or dual carriage way. He assured us it would be safe - great.

After the match the car was nowhere to be seen. About 5 cars out of the 25 or so parked on that road had been towed away. No sign of the policeman.

By 'coincidence' there were a number of taxis ready to take us to the garage where the car had been taken. It turned out all the cars that were towed had non-Birmingham reg plates. ie all Rovers fans.

Police, taxis and garage all in on the scam.

£10.00 for the taxi, £75.00 to recover the car and a defeat! Pretty bad away day

Typical. The police are worse than the criminals. In fact that sounds very like fraud to me.

[Claytons Left Boot]

A great away day was the FA Cup game at Swindon in 1984. We took a good following and won the game 2-1. The best bit was after the game. Making our way to the M5 we all said, do you fancy a pint? We (car full of four or five) did and made our way into Cheltenham. Most Rovers fans had had the same idea. It was rammed with blue and white much to the horror of the Whooray Henry types in this posh West Country town. We stayed in Cheltenham all night and must have got back to Darwen in the early hours. I was working in Accy at the time and one of the lasses at work was going out with a lad from Cheltenham. She brought in a copy of the local rag from the Monday showing loads of photos of p!ssed up Rovers fans. Happy days. One town, one football team, everyone together. No money, no expectations but everyone bled blue and white.

[Friarsnig]

Leeds Road, Huddersfield, mid 80's, stood on the open end facing west into the teeth of a blizzard blowing horizontally off the Pennines. Large icicles were dropping off the floodlight pylons. Rovers fans chanted 'let us in, let us in, let us in' (to the main stand) to no avail!

I was going to mention that one too. It was absolutely bloody freezing, you could barely open your eyes with the blizzard blowing into our faces. I remember being in the bogs behind the terrace at half time with a few other Rovers fans trying to warm our hands around the solitary lightbulb. Still Rovers won the game, and Rovers fans being what they are someone started a conga which plenty of folk joined in with.

[Jock]

Is this the match where Garner pushed Burridge causing him to handle the ball outside of his area? We got a free kick and scored from it.

[Hanks]

A great away day was the FA Cup game at Swindon in 1984. We took a good following and won the game 2-1. The best bit was after the game. Making our way to the M5 we all said, do you fancy a pint? We (car full of four or five) did and made our way into Cheltenham. Most Rovers fans had had the same idea. It was rammed with blue and white much to the horror of the Whooray Henry types in this posh West Country town. We stayed in Cheltenham all night and must have got back to Darwen in the early hours. I was working in Accy at the time and one of the lasses at work was going out with a lad from Cheltenham. She brought in a copy of the local rag from the Monday showing loads of photos of p!ssed up Rovers fans. Happy days. One town, one football team, everyone together. No money, no expectations but everyone bled blue and white.

I can agree with your first two sentences, after the game it was a different story for us. We had a free coach laid on by the staff club at Brockhall. The coach was a 30 seater from Seeds of Gt Harwood and I don't think the driver had been to a match before. After the game we were told to wait for a police escort but the driver disagreed and set off, ten minutes later we were stuck in a traffic jam opposite a bit of waste land full of rubble and a lot of angry Swindon fans. A lot of the windows got put in, a couple of minor injuries needed treating at the A&E and it was about one am before the windows got replaced and we left Swindon. Got back to Brock at around five am, had 2 hours kip and started work at seven

[tomphil]

The curse of Swindon away, i'm sure i remember my mate when we were at school going on about some trouble involving Rovers fans and their lot down there a few years earlier. If i'm right our chairman or someone at the time was on one of the local tv news programes going mad about it. Might have been that cup game but possibly an earlier encounter ?

Anyway another example was down there in the play off second leg where Rovers did what they specialized in then and turned in a crap second leg display. Mackay left Garner on the bench despite us being behind from the first leg and we quickly folded down there only making a go of it for the last 10 after Garns came on.

Took forever to get down there and the Swindon fans did a mini version of Palace the season before and began lining the side of the pitch whilst the game was still being played. This sparked an angry reaction at the Rovers end and in came heavy handed plod and stewards. After the match and back to the large pub car park the police had sent all the independent away fans travelling in mini buses and vans as was the norm back then, most of them hire vans marked Blackburn etc. It looked like nearly all of them had been bricked, tyre slashed and unsurprisingly the pub was closed and the police didn't want to know.

Mate was driving having only just passed his test and borrowed his mams Clio, thankfully it was undamaged so we cleared off quick as the mood was very ugly. God knows what happened after but i'd be surprised if the pub didn't suffer some sort of revenge. All in all a pretty bad away day although we did manage to have a good craic for most of it.

[LDRover]

Which made it all the sweeter when they were demoted for financial irregularities a month or so later.

[MCMC1875]

Easy target, unlike West Ham.