(Oct 11, 2015) Phil Brough said:

I actually went via Brighton, watching another draw when the Reds were winning very easily, this time 3-3. More rain (did it ever stop?), I hitched to Brighton, slept out, was searched by a couple of early morning police officers, was the first in the Train Station buffet and then managed to get some sleep in the Library before the match. The rain never stopped and I used my paper as a rain hat, but having long white hair the newsprint spread all over it and as we left the Ground one Reds fan said "bend over lar, I want to read the racing results."

Anyway, when I had stopped laughing I caught the ferry over to Calais and managed to get a lift with a coach driver who was returning to Eindhoven, got a space in a Hostel and had a good night out. I think I got to Amsterdam by train, hitching was not easy in Holland, discouraged by the police, and, once more, got a bed in a Youth Hostel, just off Dam Square. What a place that was, bullet holes in the wall and the clientele was global and shifty. A couple were on the run from the Chilean Secret Service, another young hippy guy had almost died hitching across Australia and a Russian guy I got to know well was biding his time in Amsterdam organising arms deals for the upcoming crisis in Chechnya.

AZ moved the match to the Olympic Stadium in the hope of a big crowd but only about 15,000 turned up on a cold night and we were scattered around the place like pigeons and could hear the players shouting at each other. Under the stand it was particularly cheerless, nothing to eat and an old woman on lavatorial duty selling strips of toilet paper at enhanced prices. I did meet a good few Liverpool lads who had absconded from Thatcher's Kingdom to work in the Eastern Block, did they have some stories to tell?; even Yosser Hughes would have made money.

First published in the New Liverpool Programme Collectors Club Bulletin, June 2015.