Inspired by something someone said on the Saddler out threat.
What is the craziest thing you’ve done to get to a game?
I’ll offer 2.
When the fuel strikes were happening some years ago, we were playing Luton away on a Tuesday night. I had just enough fuel to get us to Luton but we went with no idea if we would find fuel to get back.
And
Collaped at home with pneumonia, found on the floor by my mates checking in on me who rushed me into hospital. Spent the week in the high dependancy unit on a cocktail of antibiotics trying to convince the doctor I was fine to let go because we were playing Leeds on Saturday who then told me another half an hour and I’d have been dead and if he let me go I might not make it back into hospital. Eventually under protest, let me go about 2:15 on saturday. Raced home, grabbed my ST and was in my seat for KO still wearing my hospital ID band.
We have proper supporters like ‘Locky’ yet the Management continue to treat us like an irritation, appeasing us with a warehouse canteen but continuing to accept failure from our football team as acceptable.
Similar in a way, remember collapsing at home with internal bleeding on Sunday and spent week in hospital. We had Barnsley at home on the Saturday in massive game to stay in championship and seriously had to play my face to get out if there in time so i could be there and then had to drag moaning ex girlfriend along to game just to pacify her so she could keep tabs on me. Worth it though, won 2v1 if i remember with ten men and stayed up in the end!
Fell down the stairs and broke my foot at about 1.45 before a game against Newport in the 80’s and had to hop to the Spring Cottage bus stop in Shelfield (to get the special) which was about 3/4 of a mile from our house in High Heath, then the same back after the game.
Jacked my job in on Friday night when asked to work the following day before the 7-0 win at Macclesfield. Which was lucky for my ex-boss, because God knows what I’d have done to him had I been at work listening to that score coming through on the radio.
Jumped the train aged 14 to go to Millwall away on a Sunday with a fiver in my pocket, couldn’t get in any of the bogs on the train to hide from the guard because there were all these weirdos with cases of musical instruments taking up the room in every bog on every carriage. Eventually managed to squeeze in to one and asked them what was going on, turns out they were Dexy’s Midnight Runners heading down to London.
Mine was a few years ago, 2011 i think it was, i got diagnosed with testicular cancer. Had the op to get me better, when i came round from the anesthetic my first words were “will i be ok to go to the game on Saturday?” My op was on a Wednesday. Who did we play on the Saturday? Carlisle away. I went, and i kept up my run of not missing a game home or away for the 5th consecutive season. Which in turn, won me the fan of the season. The things we do for Walsall FC
Catching the first Eurostar out of Paris one Sunday morning as the all-expenses city-break weekend prize our quiz team had won clashed with the playoff final in Cardiff and the flight home back to Manchester (where my car was parked) meant I’d have missed it.
First time around, getting married on a Friday so I could go to the game the next day. As it happened, our honeymoon was in York and they were our opponents that Saturday - although the match was at our place so we didn’t start it until the Sunday. Stangely, she later cited Walsall FC as one the reasons in the divorce petition …
Less than 24 hours after an op to fix a detached retina (the 3rd of 4 I ended up having), agitating to be discharged early and for my dad to pick me up (as I couldn’t drive with 1 working eye so soon after a general anaesthetic, and wife number 2 wouldn’t have anything to do with it) to take us to the cup game at Stourbridge - where we were sat in the extra temporary seating in the home end as I’d missed the away tickets being on sale due to being flat in my back in bed for 10 days following op number 2.
I did miss the friendly against Villa that was our last ever at Fellows Park because the consultant said my enlarged liver risked rupturing my spleen if I didn’t stay in the hospital bed (I still wanted to discharge myself but my family wouldn’t bring me my clothes!) However, I had driven to Bristol City for the last game of the season on the previous Saturday despite being glow-in-the-dark yellow with jaundice from the hepatitis I’d come down with (that kept me off work for the next 4 months).
Missing a couple of days of lectures at uni so I could travel back home from Sheffield to catch the coach to Liverpool for the Milk Cup semi-final game (no practical way for me to get from Sheffield to Liverpool and back direct) - and returning next day with cracked ribs after the crowd surge following our second equaliser had slammed me into the corner of a metal barrier.
Managing to get to Swansea in my Yugo 511 despite the heavy snow that stopped all but a handful of others making it.
The accelerator of the same car (adapted from left-hand drive by being on a plate only welded to the bulkhead) coming off on the way to a game at Northampton’s old County Ground. It was wobbling and I had to chase it around the footwell to make it there, but then came off completely so we had to be towed back by the AA.
In 1962 we were in Division 2 (That’s The Championship to you young 'uns), and Don Revie the Leeds manager had set a new UK transfer record by signing Bobby Collins for the prodigious sum at that time of £75,000. I was still at school, due to start work in the Autumn, and living near Formby, Lancashire having moved from the West Midlands for domestic reasons. So as we were due to play Leeds Utd on April 14th I decided I had to get to Fellows Park for that game.
Unable to drive or fund any public transport, the obvious decision was to cycle down and back (you don’t half do some daft things as a teenager). Left home around 6pm Friday April 13th, in to Liverpool, Ferry 'cross the Mersey to Birkenhead, then just follow the A41 south - easy!! Arrived Pleck in the early hours of Saturday morning and grabbed a few hours sleep at my Grandma’s - 57 Oxford Street. Went to the game, about which I can’t recall a damn thing except we drew 1-1 - back to Grandma’s for tea then set off North.
The return journey was uneventful except for three instances … (1) Just outside Birkenhead the sight of a soft grassy roundabout tempted me to assume the horizontal, only to be woken by PC Plod with a flashlight wanting to know what on earth I was doing at this god-forsaken hour … (2) On reaching Birkenhead proper the ferry was not operational at said god-forsaken hour so I cycled through the Mersey tunnel … (3) Cycling through the Liverpool suburbs the fatigue really kicked in, and I swear I saw lamp-posts moving!!
Seems Saddlers fans will risk life, limb, arrest and divorce to support the team.
I know people states side know how much we love our football over here but suspect our current owners will still be suprised just how deep it goes if they read this thread.
In 1983 I was at college in Stoke. For the cup tie at Arsenal I got the train back home and then went with Ashley Turner and Neil Ravenscroft on the football specal train to the match. Slept at my parents’ house then caught a very early train back to Stoke as we had a coach trip to the Imperial War Museum - so I was straight back to London! I remember being happy I could buy the Evening Standard there and read the match report.
Firstly, I gave up my job This would have been mid to late 80s. My employer decided that I was going to be working away down in south Devon somewhere for 3 weeks, and it just so happened we had 3 home Tuesday night games in those weeks…I couldn’t miss the games, so I left that job, and got another one
Then, in common with many, there was Valentine’s Day 1984, when we had a certain match against Liverpool at Fellows Park. It was my first Valentine’s Day with the lass who would become my first wife and I had to tell her I would be spending it with my first love
Ooh, finally, play off match 2nd leg against Barnsley under Whitney… I set off from home at around 7am, got to Walsall for late afternoon, went to the match, we lost(!!!) and I jumped straight back in the car and onto the M6 for the 450 mile journey home, through the night. The sting in the tail was that the M6 was blocked by an accident between J15 and J16 and it took me 2 hours to get past Stoke!!
A fair few but my favourite was Wolves away when Butler scored. My nephew had just been born and wasn’t well. He was born in Nuneaton but rushed to intensive care in Wolverhampton. Touch and go stuff. I stayed with my sister in Nuneaton until she was well enough to travel up to Wolverhampton. So we got there on the Tuesday afternoon of the game. There was a bit of hanging around and you just feel helpless. They wouldn’t let non-parents into intensive care so it was literally pacing up and down stuff. I had my Wolves ticket but wasn’t sure what the right thing to do was. But I was here….in Wolverhampton.
I walked around the hospital a bit and went in the shop. They had loads of Wolves stuff but up a corner was a single Walsall baby blanket. I brought it, gave it to my mom to give to the baby when she could. I convinced my dad that there was nothing we could do, it could be days, Molineux only 15 minutes away so any developments we could rush back. He reluctantly agreed so off we set for the match. We parked in the centre and tired, stressed we began walking towards the floodlights, barely talking and certainly not on the high spirits of the rest of our travelling contingent.
Of course we win. At full time, it’s like all that stress had gone, I’m hugging strangers but also friends, in particular @Blazing_Saddler . It’s all a bit emotional for us. Everyone elated.
Back to the hospital and as no other parents are around, the nurse allowed me to meet my nephew for the first time. I couldn’t give him his blanket. Poor little sod had wires and tubes all over. But I could put my hand through the hole in the incubator. He gripped my little finger, like babies do. I told him that it was all meant to be. He was meant to be here in Wolverhampton tonight, I was meant to see that blanket which made me feel going to the match was OK, Walsall were meant to win and most importantly he was going to be OK.
I came out of intensive care and with great authority told the family including my sister that he’d be fine. It was all meant to be and that I’d be heading home for Liverpool that night.
Next morning I got the news that he’d been moved from Intensive care and into the Special Baby Care Unit and that he was responding well.
Fast forward a dozen years and he’s a season ticket holder. And yes, his mom has kept the blanket.
