No Thanks: Being punched

Ah, one from personal experience. I’ll hand you over to, um, me, with an extract from my book Suited and Booted (still available on Amazon), outlining an experience from our FA Cup tie in 1999.

I learned a valuable lesson thanks to that cup tie. I learned that in the mascot suit you always need to keep your wits about you. By now I was interacting with the crowd a bit more, and I’d usually make my way up and down the touchline shaking hands and having pictures taken. With a bumper crowd, it was an excellent opportunity to interact, so I started high fiving and autograph signing my way along the Linpave stand (I think it was the Linpave, the Coop stand now).

I got a little lost in the moment and my joy turned to horror as an autograph turned into a punch in the face. In my naivety, I’d passed the home fan barrier and strayed into the away fans sectioned in the extreme left of the stand. As I reached for a pen an inebriated fan thought it would be quite funny to punch me in the face.

There were a fair few people stood with him who agreed it was good comedy. I wasn’t one of them.