Today I'm going back 23 years to 1998 and York City's visit to Boundary Park, Oldham for a League Division 2 fixture (effectively the third tier of English football despite the name).
In 1998 I was living and working in France near Paris and football matches were few and far between for me at the time. A Christmas break back in the UK however gave me the chance to take in a couple of York fixtures over the Christmas / New Year period and the featured game was one of these. The two City games that I attended were both away games and amazingly, given how the season turned out for York, they won them both!
Boundary Park is one of those stadiums where it always seems to be cold, situated as it is close to the Pennines. It isn't the stadium with the highest altitude for a senior professional club in England however. At 526 feet above sea level, Boundary Park comes second to The Hawthorns, home of West Bromwich Albion at 552 feet. These elevations are however, trivial when compared to the Azteca Stadium in Mexico (a stadium that I visited during the World Cup of 1986) at around 7,400 feet or, even more remarkably, the Estadio Hernando Siles in Bolivia at an altitude of 9,800 feet. For those unused to high elevation, I can assure you that the air is thinner there and, as a result, normal activities can leave you feeling a little breathless. And that's without running around as would be the case for a football player so Bolivia and Mexico's home advantage really is quite considerable provided that the players selected ply their trade at altitude.
There have been times in the last 50 years when Oldham and York have played in the same Division. Probably the most notable of these was during the Third Division season 1973/74 when Oldham won the title by a point from Bristol Rovers and York who were both also promoted. City fans of that vintage will recall the visit of Oldham to Bootham Crescent for York's final home game of the season and a game which finished one a piece. I suppose we could say that, had York won that game, they would have been Champions instead of Oldham but I'm not sure that many would really care since the major prize was promotion to the Second Division for the only time in City's history. In more recent times, under Joe Royle, the Latics (Oldham's nickname) have even managed to play a handful of seasons in the top flight but have slowly sunk down the leagues since then to their current level in the fourth tier. Today Oldham are in severe danger of joining York in Non-League football and sit in the relegation positions at the time of writing.
The featured game finished 0-2 in York's favour and was watched by 5,343 but, despite the result, the fortunes of the two clubs involved differed markedly come the season's end. York, with 50 points, finished in 21st place (in the 24-team League) and were relegated whereas Oldham ended the season with just one point more than York and therefore finished 20th and were safe from the drop. Fulham were Champions of the third tier that season with Walsall and Manchester City also being promoted, the latter via an incredibly late late show at the Play-Off Final at Wembley against Gillingham.
CRB Match No. 1156
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