I sent them a frivolous preview of the game and they published it.
The article was what we call “a colour piece”.
Later on I became mates with sports editor Ian Wood after I discovered we were on the same wavelength
We had many amusing late night conversations, after the paper had been put to bed, about football, tennis, boxing and golf. I told him things that my dad had told me about Dixie Dean, Gordon Smith, Sugar Ray Robinson, and so on.
We talked about Kenny Dalglish, Paul Gascoigne, Bobby Robson, all the big characters of the Eighties, and told him a lot of unpublishable things that were going on in English football.
Ian once told me about a match at Rangers when Walter Smith was the manager.
Rangers were playing very badly in the first half at Ibrox and losing 1-0. Walter couldn’t wait to get them into the dressing room to tell them what they should do in the second half. He got all his players sat down and looked round the room at their faces. And then he looked round the room again : one of his players was missing!
Walter erupted: “Where’s Gascoigne?”
Gazza had run off the pitch with his team-mates but the maverick Geordie didn’t run down the tunnel. Instead, Gazza raced up the stairs into the stand and went into an executive box and picked up a bottle of champagne from the dining table and drained it.
(If anyone knows what happened in the second half, please let me know.)
Every other year, when the fixture was annual, Ian Wood came down with his chief sportswriter Mike Aitken and we would meet up at Wembley. Happy days.
Gascoigne’s goal at Euro ’96 is well remembered , although too much of a fuss was made about that one. It wasn’t one of the greatest goals we’ve ever seen.
I wasn’t there for the Scotland game in ’96 but went as a fan and saw England stuff Holland 4-1 in what was their best performance at Wembley since 1966. And, with different friends I saw them lose to Germany.
And I was in the press box for the final between Germany and the Czech Republic, when Oliver Bierhoff scored the only golden goal I’ve ever seen. A unique moment of cinematic freeze-frame.
In recent years, a lot of us have learned not to care about England. We don’t expect much.
If Rooney and Danny Rose turn it on tonight, or somebody else turns it on, and England take the Scots apart, maybe I will start to care again.