Hello! How are you, hope you’re doing well? Tonight at 7.45pm (western European time) sees the mighty cannon take the train (etc) up to Preston, Lancashire, to take on Preston North End in the second of our Carabao Cup games for the 2024/5 season.

So it’s back to Deepdale. I lived (suffered) on Deepdale road, albeit at the other end many, many moons ago. But in that time only managed to see PNE once, one year before I moved to Deepdale road and that was versus Tranmere Rovers, in the FAC 1st round, as all my other money was spent travelling down to Highbury.

I knew some people who were Tranmere fans (“oh Birkenhead, is wonderful, oh Birkenhead is wonderful, its full of tit, fanny and Rovers, oh Birkenhead is wonderful” -and despite their claims, I didn’t ever get over the Mersey to check out and see if it was true), and you could still pay on the door at the away-end so they persuaded us to tag along. The day was cold and grey, and the match no better and ended up a cold, grey 1-1 draw. Thinking we could sneak off pretty quick we decided to not bother with the police escort back to the train station, which was nuts, as we lived only a few hundred metres away from it.

Eventually we blundered out of the ground and stepped into one of the most bizarre experiences I ever had. The air became suddenly really thick and heavy, everywhere you looked there was hand to hand combat between PNE and Rovers fans, it was like the final moments of Custers Last stand. Time seemed to slow down and every move you made was as cumbersome as concrete and all you looked at was in slo-motion. There was no feeling of panic or danger just utter confusion as to what was playing out in this theatre of mass fighting.

We started to dodge our way through, and heard a voice behind us, the lad who I was mates with-who was pretty hard and always in fights himself, turned around and said:  “we don’t want any trouble”. The voice had a three month baby in his arms which he put on the floor and shouted “I’m trouble!”, so we realised there’s no compromise or discussion to be had here and legged it and Mr Trouble came after us for is early evening quarry but he was too slow in the end to catch us. 

We eventually caught up with the Tranmere fans and the police escort just as a hail storm of bricks and other missiles were trying to make contact with our heads, and the police saw us and laughed, asking us if we were being chased, we replied in the affirmative, and they said just join in the escort and don’t worry. You could see the PNE fans running along the terraced streets following the escort and I thought, “we’re going to get ambushed here”, but thankfully we didn’t as at some point they gave up the hunt. I  had always been sold that lower league games were full of bonhomie, meat-pies and camaraderie. Hello sucker.

I’m sure is a bit of kitty anecdote compared to that of true hard fighting fans but fighting doesn’t hold much interest for me, I’ve seen what it can do at close quarters, my sister in-laws father was booted to death at a party and my bruvs best mates father tried to kill his wife and the kids who harassed me on my paper round calling me a fkn little wnker week in week out (they didn’t get me riled though) ended up killing their mum. I worked with a guy who bit his wife’s lip off. Big laughs. So I’ll stay a kitty. Like Clint Eastwood says, macho is overrated. Fear, always controls people, making them bullies, verbally and physically violent, and their hurt loves to hurt others in multifarious ways. And anyone who calls it out or doesn’t want to be part of that is a kitty. Meow.

 PNE’s record attendance was against the Arsenal back in 1938 (42, 684). Their trophy haul is 1st Div Champs, x3, ru x6. FAC, won x2, ru x5. 2nd Div champs x3 rux2, 3rd Div champs x2, 4th Div champs x1 rux1 and one time runner up in the charity shield. Amongst all that was a league and FAC double.

Aside of both clubs sharing the Invincible tag. Proud Preston can lay claim to winning the double in their Invincible year and didn’t concede a goal on their route to winning the FA cup, but there were only 12 teams in their Invincible year of 1888/89, none of which were from the south, plus the FAC was 1st, 2nd, 3rd round proper, then semis! 

We both had attempts by suffragettes to burn our stadiums down, the attack at Deepdale was foiled, but at the old Manor ground in Plumstead the grandstand was burnt down to the cost of a thousand pounds. Later that year we moved up north to Highbury. Just for the record Liverpool are really proud of their Kop, but it was actually the Arsenal (at the Manor ground) that had the first Spion Kop. Thieves!

Their manager Paul Heckingbottom, has a 33%win rate at Preston, and a career total of 39.78%. Preston lie in 19th position at the time of writing this.

Well that’s it, lots of bits and pieces that I’m sure have made you feel like going off and doing something less boring instead. And I don’t blame you.

Even so, here’s to a great game for us and lucky horses! 

COYG and keep on keepin’ on!

Mills