School day memories

Back from a great but knackering week in Florida with work. I spent the last night of the trip with a client that owns the imposing Westin Diplomat in Hollywood north of Miami. They were very accomodating and it was a restful way to end the trip, which started in similar fashion last Sunday with a few beers with New York Addick on Ocean Drive in South Beach.

A weekend of not doing an awful lot is on the radar, although the weather here doesn’t appear to encourage doing much outside. Hopefully I can catch some of the FA Cup games on the telly, although the one I’d like to see doesn’t appear to be on.

I was at school when Luton met Millwall in that fabled Cup tie in 1985. I knew of many school mates that donned Millwall garb under the deception that they were ‘fans’ and had travelled up to Kenilworth Road with the sole intention to cause or more likely watch and glorify in what we all saw play out on the television news later that night.

I remember one of my class mates was seen on the pitch in some of the photo stills in the papers and he became some sort of hero, I don’t think he had been to The Den in his life, certainly less times than I had. Football has changed a lot since the 80’s but it seems necessary to have 300 police officers at the game tomorrow. Millwall have an allocation of just 1,528. I wonder if my old school mate will be one of them?

We go to Hull for what looks like a tough game. The Tigers are one of the teams falling over themselves to put up some sort of challenge to Cardiff at the top of The Championship. Addicks target Sone Aluko is out with an Achilles injury and this just might be one of those away games where we can frustrate the home side and come away with something.