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My Dad, sensing my disappointment promised to take me to the next home game, later midweek. It was against Mansfield Town and again we sat in the main stand. Yet again the visitors took the lead, but eventually in the second half, Rovers equalised. Then, with about 2 minutes left, probably the weirdest decision I have ever witnessed to this day happened. A Mansfield player crossed the ball in low when on the break, and one of their forwards converted from close range. The linesman raised his flag - the player was offside. The ref didn't see the flag however, and gave the goal. Despite attempts from Tranmere players to point this out, the ref carried on running back to the centre. The linesman stood his ground for a while with the flag still up, but when play resumed simply took his flag down and carried on...... Yet again we were beaten 2-1 at home.
I didn't go again until boxing day, we were at home versus Burnley. My Dad took me as an Xmas present! Again we went 1-0 down and I thought I'd never see a point, let alone 3, so I was surprised to see us equalise, and then score from a free kick on the edge of the area. However, the ref disallowed the kick and we had to take it again. Even greater surprise when we scored from the second kick. The game finished 2-1......my first win at last! A few weeks later and my Dad took me to a Friday night game. Since it was late, he decided we should stand up in the cowshed behind the goal. We were playing Leyton Orient and were comprehensively beaten 3-0. I can remember my Dad's face of disgust as each goal went in!
It was around this time that my elder brother began to cotton on to the fact that I was enjoying going to Tranmere and even though he wasn't a big fan, he decided to take me along. I'm not sure if it was the same season, but I can remember being the 3rd person in when we went to see us play Swansea at home. Heaven knows why we arrived at 1:30 - it wasn't as if the place would fill up! The game finished 1-1 and I if memory serves me well we missed a good opportunity near the end which their keeper tipped over. In those days, the away fans were housed were the family enclosure is nowadays. The tunnel was the divider and was covered in green painted barbed wire! I went along to see us play Wolves - it was 2-2, but the highlight was learning a new song - the "wanky Wanderers" one!
One Friday night we were playing Torquay at home, who had a massive keeper whom my Dad named the "lurch". This proved great fun for me & my friend but not for Tranmere who had several good shots saved by him. Torquay were one of those teams adopted the back pass as their number one game. The must have done about 10,000 that game. However, with about 10 minutes left, Ian Muir hammered in a close range shot that the lurch could do nothing about! Unfortunately a couple of minutes later, Ronnie Moore tried to play Torquay at their own game, but his back pass was poor, and the Torquay forward latched on to the back pass and rounded our keeper to score an easy goal.
So for two seasons I went to games with my Dad, and brother, but I cannot remember any great games when we clearly won. The early days were therefore better best forgotten, except for the fact that I started to adopt Tranmere more and more......... |
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