It’s not just Burton who suffered a heavy loss

I WAS disappointed by Burton Albion’s 9-0 defeat by Manchester City but credit to them for getting to the semi-final and to City for treating the game seriously. Nigel Clough came over again as one of football’s gentlemen.

I started watching the Rams in 1946, the season after they won the FA Cup. I was still at Nether Heage Primary School and only eight years old. Together with my school mate George Rowland, who was a year older than me, we would walk a couple of miles or so to Ambergate railway station, travel to Derby and then walk to the Baseball Ground. Just after the war was an innocent time.

In the 1950s George stopped going so I cycled the 15 miles or so from Bull Bridge to the Baseball Ground with my mate John Asher. They

seemed to lose a lot and what with the rain it made the ride home really hard work.

Many a week, when we got as far as Milford, I told John I was never going again but always on the next Friday before a home game John would ask me if we were going and I said yes. I remember seeing the Rams losing 6-1 at home in the FA Cup to non-league Boston United, who had about six of our former Rams’ favourites. Our ride back that day was awful.

Another game we saw was when some team I can’t remember beat them 7-1 at Derby. Round about 1956 or ‘57 I had to stop going as I was working as an underground miner at New Denby and as England needed coal we were working a sixday week and so I didn’t have time to get to Derby.

So it’s not just Burton who have suffered heavy defeats.

Granville V Stone, Swanwick