It was too good to be true really, Graham getting to the matches at Goole and Frickley on time. But he was back to his old self for the evening game at Chorley as he relates here...
CHORLEY 1 BARROW 1 HFS Loans League Premier Division 6 April 1993 by Graham Murphy
I've been to Chorley's ground at least twice before, so I didn't anticipate any problems in finding it, even without Gazza, my disappearing navigator. It couldn't be easier to find. Take the A6 south through the centre of town, follow to the traffic lights by the 'Chorley Lightning'. Turn right and the ground is half a mile on the left on the other side of a park. Then you leave the car by the park railings, walk back down the road, past a school, down a narrow alley and there's the turnstiles. So I've done all that. Or at least I'm parked by the railings, but I don't remember this bit. There's a football ground on my right! A game is in progress in front of a small stand and about a hundred spectators. It doesn't look like the Chorley ground I remember, but then if my head was loose, I'd probably forget that one day. My watch says it is 7.25, so either that's slow or the kick-off was early. So I get out of the car to investigate. Some ten minutes later it dawns on me that I can't recognise any of the players on either side. This can mean one of only two things... either Heathcote's returned and replaced everyone with ex-Stalybridge, Hyde and Mossley players, or neither team is Barrow. Blind panic sets in. I've come on the wrong night and Chorley are playing someone else. I've done that before. Memories flood back of the evening a couple of years ago when I went to Northwich for the advertised game against Barrow, only to find that it had been postponed for an FA Trophy replay between Witton Albion and Newcastle Blue Star. Then I find that one of the teams isn't even Chorley, for there, on the side of the small stand is a sign with the inscription Leyland Motors FC. I was thunderstruck. This must be how archæologists feel when they open some long buried Pharoah's tomb, except that at least they are in the right place. I'm not. I'm in the wrong part of Chorley! This is where things went from bad to worse, even by my standards. There's no time, so I dash back to my car, jump in, start the engine, get into gear, take the handbrake off and accelerate away. Just like Nigel Mansell in the Indy 500. And just like Mansell hurtling into a concrete wall I have to jam on the brakes so hard I nearly hit my head on the windscreen. There's a car hurtling down the road towards me at about 45mph, so he's obviously in a hurry, too. Quickly I hit the reverse and pull back to the kerb to avoid having my front end removed. As he flashes by I wonder why he's in such a rush. But then, I can't believe my luck. The car has an EO registration. A Barrow registration. For the benefit of our non-Barrovian readers, it's a little known fact that all cars in Barrow have the letters 'EO' as the last part of their number plate. This has always provided us with many hours of amusement on our journeys to away matches, or to Barrow itself. Each one of us tries to be the first to spot a car with one of these plates. Then, on the return trip, we try the more difficult skill of identifying the last EO. What fun we have! Well, seeing an EO speeding down a Chorley street on the night Barrow are playing means only one thing. Like me, he's late for the kick-off, but he obviously knows where the ground is. By the time I pull away, EO is at the end of the road, turning left. As I make the turn he's two hundred yards ahead, speeding down the centre of a residential street between two lines of parked cars which restrict the road width to that of one car. I hope there's nothing coming the other way as I try and catch him, but he seems to be going faster. A T-junction, and he disappears right, and then left. As I get there I can't see him. Then I catch a glimpse of him taking a corner by the Leyland-DAF factory. This is turning out like a scene from Night Rider where that actor (and I use the term loosely) who is in Baywatch used to drive that black car like a madman around America, giving villains their comeuppance and always ending up with the girl. Anyway, banishing all thoughts of lost causes to the back of my mind, I flash past Leyland-DAF, round that corner, and I see him waiting to turn left at another T-junction (the EO that is, not the bloke from NightRider. After all, this is Chorley, not LA!). He goes down the hill, and turns right into an entry further down. Ah, the ground at last. Except it isn't a football ground. It's a school or a hospital or something. I don't really want to know what it is. I've just been on a wild goose chase across half of Chorley, driving like a maniac. You can imagine how I feel. I retrace my route. What a dickhead! EO's shouldn't drive their cars in the vicinity of a Barrow match unless they're actually going there. This is a fundamental law of nature. I can't think of anything to do except return to the Leyland Motors ground. But this time, as I'm approaching it in the opposite direction, I spot the floodlights of Chorley's ground behind the park opposite Leyland Motors. I was originally in the right place, after all! Originally appeared as 'We Don't Need Another EO' in issue 017 - August 1993