38 years ago Saints were playing Leeds United away, but the following day Lawrie McMenemy took his team to play a friendly at Darlington, to raise funds for the club who were in financial trouble, a group of us made the trip too !

The Saints trip to Leeds was always going to be an important game, but when it was announced that the following day we would play a friendly at Darlington, it sounded a good little trip for the weekend.

The only problem was that as most of us were around the 19 or 20, we didn't have the money for a hotel, that was if there were actually any in Darlington, back then before the internet it wasn't as easy as popping on to Expedia, also the budget hotel had not been introduced to England, so hotels were expensive.

The solution was to hire a transit van for the weekend, this was a mode of travel we had used before for various away games, I am talking transit van here and not mini bus, the only seats in the "Tranny" were the three in the front.

This would be an advantage when we slept in the van on the Saturday, but not so much when travelling too and from Darlington.

To make it a bit easier we did the trip in conjunction with Clive Foley's coach that was running to the game, so of the dozen who were going to Darlington, 9 went up to Leeds on his coach and I drove up to Leeds in the van alongside two very well known Saints fans, both sadly no longer with us Jim Steele (not the player) and Bobby Evans, some of you will have known them.

The game at Leeds was pretty uneventful and saw a debut for Mark Wright, although Leeds who were battling to avoid relegation went ahead in the first minute, David Armstrong equalised 10 minutes later and then two goals from Kevin Keegan gave us a 3-1 half time lead which was the final score.

Now the tricky part the roads outside were filled with fashion crazy Yorkshiremen in Three Star jumpers all baying for our blood, for those on the coach it was not a problem, they were being held in and getting a police escort, but we in the van were parked in a normal car park (not a problem in that the van did not have Southampton written on it in fact the opposite it said Kenning Van Hire, so many Leeds fans thought we were actually Dutch, an impression we were keen to let them think)

So the three of us had to get back to the van and then arrange to meet the 9 on the coach who had gone back there to pick up there things, luckily this went off without too much of a hitch and we were on our way up to Darlington through the Yorkshire countryside.

We arrived in Darlington at around 7pm and found that it was closed, we wandered around the main streets and literally it was all shut barely a pub in sight.

We were in sight though of the local police who seeing a dozen youths wandering the street investigated and suggested that we should not spend the night in Darlington, but go to a local village and then we could rink in the local pub and park up there.

This worked fine till closing time, but by then we were starving so headed back into town to find a kebab shop, but none existed, indeed the good people of Darlington we encountered had never heard of a kebab let alone eaten one, so we wandered aimlessly for an hour before heading back to our palatial residence for the night which was now parked outside Feethams which was then the home of Darlington FC, to be pedantic we were parked outside the cricket ground with the football ground behind it.

It was a cold night, people had bought sleeping bags and blankets and there was a couple of old mattresses, but I will spare you the details and the unique smell of 12 lads sleeping in a transit van, those who experienced it in the 70's early 80's will shudder just at the thought.

In the morning there was no where open, so we ended up driving just outside the town to Scotch Corner which had a service station there, so we had something to eat, for most their first thing since a pie in the ground and played football waiting for the pubs to open.

We also stopped at a posh country house hotel on the way back into Darlington which I ended up staying in 20 years later when we played Sunderland once, but I digress, there we just laid on the grass and had a beer and basked in the sun for a while.

We then went into Darlington where we saw our second game of the weekend. we had no trouble the Darlo fans were grateful for Saints going along to play the game and grateful to us for going to, Feethams was a typical lower league ground, a couple of wooden stands on one side with some terracing, a small covered end behind one goal and a medium sized open terrace behind the other.

I can still remember bits about the game, for some reason Bobby Kerr Sunderland's cup final captain in 1973 guested for us and according to the excellent book In That Number we lost 5-2 with Mick Channon & David Puckett scoring.

A little research jogged my memory and future Saints player/disaster David Speedie scored a hat trick for Darlo and he would be sold the following month for £80,000 to Chelsea.

I also recall the Woman's FA Cup semi final between Cleveland and Southampton was played before the game and we saw some of that , our team were the holders but lost, so a bad start to the days football.

I remember a massive pitch invasion after the game and we walked across the pitch to get back to our van and head for home.

We arrived back somewhere around midnight and I then had to get up and drop the van back to the hire place and then go into work for 9am after barely any sleep that weekend.

Great days when travelling away was always a logistical challenge and a mixture of fun and danger, a trip to Leeds was always dangerous for everyone young and old as anyone who attended the 1979 League Cup semi final there will tell you and back then a dozen lads walking down the high street of a town like Darlington was almost an invasion that the locals would always be keen to repel.

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