My Dad, who never really had much idea of what was going on in the game, but liked the spectacle, often came along too and we'd use the car park of an industrial unit not far from the ground. The first time we did this we simply said to the guy on the gate that it was "Mr Sharp", he just presumed that we were supposed to be there and, for subsequent games, even kept a space for us if we were a bit late.
I'd get to most other games by catching the supporters' bus from Harrogate, though there was one memorable occasion when my Dad did drive us down to the match at Nottingham Forest. Stood opposite the main stand, which had the dressing rooms underneath, at half time we noticed what looked like flames coming from under the seats. Within ten minutes the stand had emptied onto the pitch and, instead of watching the second half, we were entertained by firemen attempting the quell the flames with water from the nearby River Trent. By the end all that was left was a smouldering heap of timber. The unfortunate headline in Goal magazine that week was "Leeds ready to set fire to Forest".
Later that season I went to the penultimate game of the season at Anfield ( Liverpool) where a goalless draw gave Leeds the championship. With the Leeds team heralded by the home fans, I left the ground in good spirits and made my way back to the bus. As we were going past Stanley Park I had my scarf nicked, protested loudly and got beaten up for my troubles. It turned out that I'd got a cracked coccyx (the vestigial tale bone at the bottom of your spine). It might have hurt but at least gave an excuse not to play cricket at school: A dangerous game where the fast bowlers could spot any sign of weakness and where my usual tactic was to daydream on the boundary keeping well out of the way of that horrible hard ball.
Leeds United taking tributes from the Kop (28/4/1969)
Since these were the olden days, we used to spend most of our time playing out; climbing trees, making dens in the woods, dams on the beck, tracking on our bikes and generally being places we weren't supposed to be. A lot of time was spent playing football on the fringes of the local cricket pitch. I knew I wasn't very good but, even so, for many years a good part my fantasy life revolved around suddenly developing real talent and somehow being discovered by the scouts at Elland Road.
As a slightly distant child, who always seemed to be thinking about things that the other boys weren't, who often missed the jokes (because of a strong and surviving tendency to take words at face value), who never got picked first for any of the teams and hung out more with the girls than was considered normal, I longed to fit in but didn't quite know how to do it. One of the signs of fitting in was to be given a nick name and eventually, one day, I was, "Cardboard".
Now I'd always presumed they'd called me this because of my general obliviousness to standard boyhood humour, but a couple of months ago, more than 40 years later, I finally learned the truth.
My mother was in a cafe in Ripon when she recognised one of the other customers as one of my early playmates. They spoke about the past, what he and his 3 brothers were up to and the nickname they'd given me. It turns out that it had nothing to do with my slow response to jokes, which (being differently stupid*) I'm well able to live with, but with something altogether more undermining. During all those games of football it turned out they thought I was as much use as a cardboard cut out.
Even though it's a long time ago, and those particular fantasies have been successively replaced by others that have turned out to be similarly foolish, I found this surprisingly upsetting. It seems that the judgement of your peers can cast a very long shadow.
* A politically correct term I fondly imagine I formed for myself when an acquaintance learned where I'd been to college and said "you must be quite clever"
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