Our resident scribe Chris Smith returns to the days when a Derby game meant something a little more glamorous than a trip down the road to Sincil Bank.

I can’t believe those nice folks at the Supporter’s Trust are really interested in reading my deluded ramblings but I’ve been asked to reminisce about the good old days when we lost regularly (no change there then) but to a better quality of opposition.

Only jesting. In fact, there are a number of teams who are in or have recently been in the Premiership who Town turned over on a regular basis. Or beat sometimes. As I write this, Town are on a Derbyesque (last season) run of league form and I therefore thought I’d try and unscramble the grey matter and see what I can remember through the haze about our encounters with said team.

A fair few of our younger following will have visited Pride Park for that excellent 1-0 win in the Carling Cup in 2005 and what a far cry the ground is from the Baseball Ground. I could be naughty and say that when Leeds fans rioted there in the 1980s, they did considerable improvements to the ground, but I’m not naughty so I won’t. Forget I mentioned it.

One entrance to the ground was via a row of derelict houses as I remember, otherwise known as a preprepared ammunition dump. In fact I was browsing Bravo one night (honest guv, I thought I was on the documentary channels) and I happened across the Real Football Factories. This particular evening, (as I would never be interested in watching such programmes tut tut!), the East Midlands was featured. A Derby lad was standing in one of the backstreets and saying that there were two ways to get to the Baseball Ground - the right way or the wrong way.

Where he was stood was the wrong way and I had to laugh ruefully. It really was like that. It has to be remembered, and it is quite poignant now, that the country and especially industrial areas such as Derby, the coalfields and fishing ports had already entered a period of sustained economic depression which added to the gloom, dereliction and real sense of menace. I’m not saying that such circumstances cause violence but I think anyone would feel more ill at ease in some blighted post industrial landscape than the pleasant greenery of say, Wycombe. Whilst there was still a fair bit of engineering in Derby, the town was obviously hitting bad times.

Town played at the Baseball Ground in 1979 in the second quarter final replay of the League Cup against Wolves, a game I couldn’t afford to go to. It was my first season watching Town, and to be quite honest, it was the best, with two good cup runs and the Third Division Championship. I went to my first away game at Barnsley on Easter Saturday, which gave me a taste for away travel. A Mike Brolly free kick in the 16^th minute meant we took all two points and the away bug was well and truly caught.

I went to University at the start of the 1980/1 season and horror of horrors, started missing home games. However, I managed to persuade some mates at Uni that it would be a good day out at Derby and one, Joe, kindly drove us up there from Colchester despite having no interest in the game at all. Ged, who I stayed with when we played up at Newcastle, was game for a laugh (what a crap programme that was) and Dave, an Evertonian, came along too having forgiven us for knocking them out of the League Cup the previous season. 

The first thing to mention was the size of our away support, which was a continuation of our large followings from the previous year in a largely northern third division. The lads thought I had exaggerated the size of our support (which I did to be fair), but they were taken aback at the c. 5000 fans who had travelled to Derby to watch a team that had just broken into the top half of the table.

We were housed in the upper and lower tiers of the Popside and despite our best efforts, we lost 2-1, scoring in the last minute. This was my second ever away game and I missed our goal as my friends were a bit twitchy about the post match entertainment and wanted to move away. I didn’t know that this would be the start of many missed goal disasters, caused largely by the London Mariners’ inability to leave a hostelry before kick off time.

I think we had two football special trains that day and it was tremendous to be in a packed away section and hear the noise of yet more Town fans outside. Town finished 7^th that season, coming close to promotion and I think we were level on points with Derby. Swansea and Notts County went up with West Ham, with Swansea finishing only 5 points above us. We beat County and Swansea on the run in.

My next away game was at Luton where we won 2-0 a few weeks later and where our attempts to look inconspicuous in front of a hostile home crowd were foiled by a Town fan wearing a Santa costume in February. My, how we ran.

But I digress again. The 1981/82 season saw Town struggle and we played at Derby after losing our previous away game at Luton 6-0. Mind you, we did get out of Kenilworth Road easily after that so it wasn’t all bad. A 1-1 draw was a good result all things considered, but I missed that one as my grant didn’t quite stretch to it. After all, I had to spend money on books (not bloody likely matey).

I did however see the home game. Grimsby had a massive fixture backlog at the time, as did many teams due to the severity of the weather that winter. Town hadn’t won at home since beating QPR in September, but we won 1-0 and eventually managed to stay up with a game to spare.

The 1982/83 season saw Town start very well and a 1-1 draw at home to Leeds was followed by six straight wins. Just as well really, because we stayed up by the skin of our teeth on the last game of the season. Unusually, I saw both the home game and the away one and we got a point from the home game if my brain cell remembers rightly.

I very nearly got something too as I was walking down Osmaston Road on the way back to the station after the away fixture. I was asked by a fan how the Rams had done and when I replied that they had won 2-1, a plain clothes group of Town fans were about to set upon me until I was recognised as a fellow (sad) traveller. That would have been ironic.

Our away support had also taken a knock, as this was a year when we were seriously battered in some fixtures, culminating in an abject performance at Cambridge. In fact, I saw our away game at Fulham that season on ESPN this year and there weren’t many of us there. Even I gave it a miss. Just as well - we lost 4-0.

The next season, as I mentioned in the Newcastle article, was a revelation with Chris Nicholl shoring up the defence and a rejuvenated team making a serious bid for promotion. We played at Derby at the end of September and they were going through a terrible time, sliding towards bankruptcy and the Third Division. It couldn’t have been a better time to play them. Town hadn’t won away from home for a year, but there was still a good turnout of Mariners and despite going 1-0 down, we came back to win 2-1.

What was impressive was the performance of the Derby fans (with the exception of the ones who were a little feisty, shall we say). Even at this early stage, it was patently obvious that they were going down, but the ground echoed to chants of “The Rams are going up” and the C Stand chanted “C Stand” just in case we couldn’t read the name on the structure that housed them. I thought Town fans could do irony, but Derby’s fans certainly could and at least it would have put them in good stead for last season.

With an away win under our belts at last and a long unbeaten home run, Town then went the next six months with just a handful of defeats. When we played our home fixture, Derby were still struggling and we ground out a 1-0 win to record a rare double. We finished fifth behind Chelsea, Wednesday, Newcastle and Man City, now the richest club in the Premier League.

The game that season remains my only league win at Derby, as I missed our 3-1 win at Pride Park on Boxing Day 2002, being marooned in the South. I did visit the Baseball Ground again several times in the 1990s with the London Mariners, when we would use cheap rail tickets to subsidise our lunchtime boozing. Unthinkable in the 1980s, it was now possible to safely visit a large number of good hostelries.

Whilst we were turned over twice in the 1992/93 campaign, we murdered them 1-1 at home in 1993/94, a season where we drew twenty matches. A Derby fan commiserated with us as we headed back South, as the league table indicated that we had drawn many more games than we should have. However, we were very hard to beat and I certainly don’t recall going to games at that time and worrying about getting hammered. It just did not happen and whilst not taking our chances could be frustrating, there is no doubt that we were an attractive team to watch. No matter what the result, we didn’t come back from these games feeling short changed. And we knew how to have a good day out!

It was in 2005 that I made my first trip to Pride Park and we were well worth the 1-0 win that set up the Tottenham tie. It is easy to dismiss new grounds as characterless, but I like the stadium, which has fantastic acoustics, even though it does remind me that we could still be playing at such stadia or have one of our own.

I visited the ground again last year to watch the FA Cup tie against Sheffield Wednesday, which was heavily discounted in price. Whilst the 2-2 draw was entertaining for a neutral, both sides were poor but nevertheless I enjoyed the atmosphere. It did however bring home to me just how far we have fallen.

We competed on fairly level terms with Derby for a number of years, getting 14,000 for one home game and getting the best part of 10,000 for others. These statistics must amaze our newest recruits and it is a shame they are unlikely to be repeated. Whilst not the happiest of hunting grounds, Derby did provide some great days and I really am glad I was there.