The author recalls a vivid childhood memory of attending a crucial Middlesbrough football match with friends as an 11-year-old boy. Middlesbrough needed a win to ensure promotion from the third tier, and the author's favorite player John O'Rourke scored three goals in a 4-1 victory. After the match, the crowd invaded the pitch and players threw their shirts into the stands. The author walked home late that night and relived the exciting match with his brothers and father.

1. A childhood memory
With four older brothers, and a father who had “given up” on
going to see Middlesbrough, but was an avid fan
nevertheless, football was a big part of my childhood. One
memory remains particularly vivid.
Middlesbrough were struggling in the third tier of football, a
fall of grace, which shocked Dad. But one early summer
evening, on May 16 to be exact, and in the last match of the
season, the Boro had a chance of redemption. They played
Oxford United, captained that evening by Ron Atkinson -
who went on to be the flamboyant manager of Manchester
United – and a win would ensure promotion.
I left school at four. Home was only a brief walk away but
there was no time to lose and with kick off still three hours
away, a couple of friends and I joined the queue for the Boys
End, a section of the ground for those aged sixteen and
under(once a common feature at football but now long
gone).
We were in the ground by about five thirty. We waited
patiently for the adult section in front to fill a little. Then it
was a matter of waiting until the policeman who patrolled
the boundary between the Boys End and the more expensive
adult paddock was distracted. A quick vault over the wall,
and a scurry between hundreds of bodies was followed by a
halfheartedprotest from the police officer. Then it was a
matter of squeezing down to the front and finding a seat on
the perimeter wall.
The crowd swelled. The capacity of the ground had been
reduced the previous summer to about 35,000 to allow
Middlesbrough to be a World Cup host. To this day, legends
abound about how many were really there that balmy

2. summer evening. The record says 39,000. But there were
probably many more.
Anxiety increased as the match approached. Could we do it?
Could we return to the second division? We need not have
feared. An idol of mine, a man called John O Rourke - the
subject of the first letter I ever had printed in a newspaper
(the Middlesbrough Sports Gazette) in which I pleaded that
we should buy him back from Ipswich Town - scored three
glorious goals. After the game, a rollicking 4-1 win, the pitch
was invaded and the players appeared in the main stand
from where they threw their shirts to the crowd. I looked
with desperate envy as a man near me leapt and caught the
shirt belonging to a player called David Chadwick.The next
morning, and following press tradition, the crowd were
described as delirious. We were.
A long time after the game had finished, by this time, well
after ten, I walked the three or four hundred yards to my
home. My four older brothers, all at the game that night had
already arrived. Minutes after my Dad – a steelworker for
more than fifty years - returned home from his two till ten
shift at Dorman Long.
We lived the night again.
I was eleven years old.
No one thought it at all odd that an eleven year old should be
out late; out at a football match; out in a crowd. My parents
weren’t negligent: quite the reverse. It was just what
children did. And very fortunate we were. I don’t know
anyone of my age whose favourite childhood memories
don’t involve events where supervisory adults weren’t
present. I wonder whether children today will be so lucky.