Today I'm going back to 33 years to 1989 and the North Yorkshire derby between York City and Scarborough played at Bootham Crescent in front of 4,872 spectators.
For some reason, despite my proximity to North Yorkshire, Scarborough were a team that I never saw very much of. I made one visit to Seamer Road, the self styled "Theatre of Chips" in homage to Manchester United's Theatre of Dreams and a reference to the major presence of McCain in the town, in order to recomplete my 92 grounds and I saw Scarborough playing away from home a couple of times including today's featured match but that was all. Scarborough FC were one of England's oldest clubs having been formed in 1879 but, sadly (depending on your point of view). they were wound up in 2007 with debts of £2.5 Million and a new supporter-owned club, Scarborough Athletic, were formed to fill the void. I say "depending on your point of view" because true York City fans are supposed to "hate" local rivals Scarborough but, if your local rivals cease to exist, what are you supposed to do with all that unallocated hatred? Maybe there were one or two York supporters out there who regretted the demise of Scarborough? Still, at least the new club, Scarborough Athletic, have risen to the point where they are now only one level below York and it's not impossible that they could gain promotion this season and be facing off against the Minstermen once more? I'm sure there must be a play on the "el Classico" motif to apply to the North Yorkshire derby? "El Crapico" perhaps?
I read in a recent issue of "When Saturday Comes" that the classic team photo is dying out. I'm not sure that I fully agree with that view but it's certainly the case that you see less of them than used to be the case. Back in the day, I would buy Shoot magazine and carefully remove the full colour team line-up from the centre pages each week and stick them up on my bedroom wall. I had pretty well every team from the top two divisions on display (even Arsenal!) and a few more besides. I remember when my Nan came to stay that she felt uncomfortable getting changed in that room because of all the men's eyes watching her! Nowadays individual player photos are more in vogue than team photos. I guess that the problem with team photos was that they quickly became dated as players joined or left a club. Indeed it was frequently the case that the team photo was already out of date before Shoot was even published and a note would be made against a player's name to say that they were "now Barnsley" or similar. New signings would often be grafted onto the team photo via the use of a head in a bubble floating above the rest of the squad like an angel from above. The classic team photo would comprise one row of players sitting on a low bench with a row standing behind them and sometimes a third row who would be stood on benches at the back. So the team photo shown on the cover of York City's programme during season 1988/89 was almost innovative with its use of an all standing V-formation. Like flying geese if you will!
The match itself was something of a disappointment, finishing honours-even but goalless. John Bird's York side contained goalkeeper and County cricketer Chris Marples, Peter Reid's brother Shaun, toothless defender Steve Tutill, striker Ian Helliwell and, coming on as a substitute, Iain Dunn who would go on to have a fine career at a higher level as well as a commentary position on Radio York. In Colin Morris's Scarborough line up was future York player-manager Neil Thompson and Arthur Graham's brother Tommy.
At the end of the season, York found themselves in eleventh place in the final standings, some 13 points behind Scarborough who participated in the Fourth Division Play-Offs, not bad for a team who were in only their second season in the Football League. Sadly for Scarborough they were beaten in those Play-Offs by Orient who would go on to gain promotion against Wrexham in the Play-Off Final.
CRB Match No. 604
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