Two for the price of one this week as I take you back to November 2002 and a trip to London with an old school pal Brian Williams.
John Owen had kindly arranged for two tickets to the Autumn Series international at Twickenham between England and New Zealand, and we thought it would be nice to stay on and take in a Premier League game on the Sunday.
So West Ham and Leeds was the obvious choice and both games provided plenty of action, points and goals.
Mind you, the trip was almost a disaster. On the train journey the stop at Preston saw Brian nip off to buy a paper. Despite pleas to the guard that he hadn’t returned the train set off leaving my mate red faced on the platform.
Fortunately he was able to catch the next train down to Euston and after a bit of a wait we were reunited in time for the taxi ride to our hotel – dumped our luggage and got back in the taxi for Twickenham.
It wasn’t as comfortable as we were expecting and Brian’s heart condition didn’t encourage any extra hurrying.
Time was running short as we climbed the steep steps of the stand to find our seats and remarkably the referee Jonathan Kapian from South Africa was just blowing the whistle to start as we sat down.
Jona Lomu was in his pomp, powering down the wing (a fearsome sight) and he scored two tries of the four scored by the All Blacks.
But it was England who emerged as 31-28 winners with Johnny Wilkinson supplying 21 of the points from a try, two conversions, three penalties and a drop goal.
I recall the All Blacks outscoring England by four tries to three but the boot of Wilkinson made the difference. The visitors put over four conversions but no penalties.
The hotel was comfortable, the food good and as Brian wanted an early night to rest up for the trip to Upton Park, there was no sampling the bright lights. But there was the sound of gunfire at one point during the evening and information the following day was that a well known local criminal had been shot around the corner from where we were staying.
West Ham and Leeds was a goal feast and the Yorkshire visitors, being managed by Terry Venables at the time, won 4-3.
Glenn Roeder was the Hammers boss and some of the pre-match write-ups were calling it the P45 derby!
West Ham were appalling in the first-half as Leeds rattled in four goals – usually the result of some amateurish defending. The Hammers were booed off and the ground had already started emptying.
Paulo Di Canio had equalised Nick Barmby’s opener but two from Harry Kewell and a fourth by Mark Viduka left West Ham with the proverbial mountain to climb.
They made a good effort to scale the heights with second-half goals from Di Canio (penalty) and Trevor Sinclair but couldn’t quite make it, losing out 4-3.
There was one more dash after the game to catch the train home but it was a contented pair of West Cumbrians who arrived back in Workington after a thoroughly enjoyable sporting weekend
