HYDE UNITED 0 BARROW 3 UniBond League Premier Division 18 October 1997 by Michael Gibson
This was the big one, Barrow's toughest game of the season so far. Or at least that's what it said on the Soccer Hotline. But Owen Brown could have fielded eleven pensioners from the British Legion and Barrow would still have won. Hyde were that bad. In fact, Hyde were as bad at football as Richard Branson's Virgin Railways are at running a train service. Like Virgin, Hyde didn't score. And not for the first time this season my travel plans were put into disarray by 'engineering works'. My train was diverted through Birmingham but Virgin decided not to issue a revised timetable. There was a notice saying 'Trains will not call at Nuneaton and journey times may be extended by up to thirty minutes. Sorry for the balls up.' I made the last bit up. But a bit of humility would not have been amiss. I planned to arrive in Manchester at 1.30pm, but as trains to Hyde were every twenty minutes, it didn't really matter if there was a bit of a delay. The train progressed through Birmingham at a snail's pace. Marston Green, Lea Hall, Stetchford, Aston and Witton (from where a famous football ground can be seen - no, not Wincham Park; Villa Park) all rolled past the window. Then eventually Bescot Stadium, home of Walsall. It would have been quicker on the M6. If I'd been an ultra-sad species of groundhopper whose lifelong ambition is to see every football ground without bothering to go to any matches, I would have been very, very happy. But as a Barrow fan trying to get to Hyde by 3pm I was feeling distinctly hacked off. I eventually arrived in Manchester at 2pm just in time to see the 14.03 to Hyde disappear at the other end of the platform. Oh well, I thought, there'll be another one in twenty minutes. There was. But it was cancelled. This was getting serious. My reputation was now at stake. It's almost two years since I missed the start of a game, unlike the editor of G'EB! who makes it a lifetime's mission to ensure he never arrives in time. The next train arrived in Hyde at 14.58 and it's impossible to do the half-mile from the station to the ground in two minutes, even if you're Linford Christie, which I'm not. I was praying that the match might be a couple of minutes late. It took me three minutes to run down Halton St to the traffic lights on the A57. I then had to wait nearly five minutes to cross the road, such was the volume of traffic entering and leaving Hyde town centre. I gave up then and by the time I'd sauntered down Villier St and negotiated the maze of walls and gates that surround the ground I'd missed ten minutes. Barrow were all over Hyde like a cheap suit. And the way Morton and Coates were running rings around their defenders it was a matter of when, not if, Barrow would score. It took them until late in the first half when Hyde's defence stood still and admired the skills of Neil Morton as he scored Barrow's first. Lee Prior got the second from long range just before the interval. This would have been Goal of the Month had the game been televised. As, indeed, it should have been. Two seasons ago the Hyde fans came out with the weirdest chant I've ever heard at a football ground. It went "One, two, three, four, can you hear the Tigers roar!" followed by a futile attempt to make a growling noise. That was the weird bit. They sounded more like a few kittens than a fearsome jungle animal. This time the 300 Barrow fans hit back. "One, two, three, four, can you hear the Tigers roar? Miaouw, miaouw." Every time Hyde gave the ball away or their play broke down there was another chorus of miaouws from the Barrow fans. I haven't enjoyed myself so much since the last time we beat Hyde about four thousand years ago. Just to rub their noses into their Kit-e-Kat, Lee O'Keefe made it 3-0 in the second half with a header from a corner. But I still had the next stage of my journey to look forward to. Three and a half hours of my life spent in the squalor of Virgin Railways. My train from Manchester was half an hour late. Incredible, I thought, as it was supposed to start its journey from Manchester. It turned out that an incoming service (that's a misnomer if ever there was one) was very late. They didn't even attempt to clean up the carriages so I had to sit amongst several layers of empty crisp packets, remains of packed lunches, spilt drinks and used condoms. It could have been worse. The last two could have been the other way round. They hadn't refilled the water tanks, either, because the toilets were out of order. It's nice to know that Virgin Railways regards the hygiene of its fare paying passengers as a top priority. Perhaps that's why there were so many Manchester City supporters on it. Extracted from 'Around Lancashire and Yorkshire in Eighty Days: Day 43 - Happy in Hyde' in issue 033 - January 1998