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BLIND, STUPID AND DESPERATE
 
99/00: Reports:

FA Carling Premiership, 3/5/00
Leeds United
versus
Watford
 
Tall tales
By Pete Fincham

Hull 1992 was my first time living away from home. Bright eyed and full of life, I looked forward to life as an undergraduate with the zest that all virile men and women do. As my mother drove away from The Lawns halls, where I was to spend the next ten months in various degrees of sobriety (or lack of it), I realised that despite Watford playing away at Swindon, I was a Hornet amongst strangers. My block consisted of a guy who followed Sheffield United, another with Wednesday alliances. I think Simon was a Villa fan and most of the others were kind of bit part followers of teams near from where they came. However, on further analysis, there appeared a greatly disproportionate amount of Leeds fans to the amount of people from Leeds, or even the North. Five months before they had won the last meaningful Football League Division 1 title, and now in the Premier League, the glory boys were out in force.

I wandered around in my Watford top for about the next...erm, three years, meeting Hornets along the way. But for the first few months at Hull I got into so many rows with these pretend Leeds fans, they made me sick. However, famously, a few weeks into term we beat them 2-1 in one of the most thrilling nights I've experienced at the Vic. Not one Leeds fan from the Uni travelled down to it, while I wearily arrived back at 9am the next morning parading my top and scarf from the night before for all to see. I won enough money off those dicks at Uni to have the rest of the term's beer paid for! Leeds finished the season just missing relegation, and not winning away from home. The Glory Leeds fans soon stopped supporting Leeds and moved onto Man United, Blackburn, Newcastle or whoever had a bit of success at the time. One even reverted to supporting his boyhood team of Colchester, until he was kicked out of Uni for being thick a few months later.

But I'm still a Hornet.

Thought: Never bet against an angry Hornet!