Sheffield, 3 January 1999

Off, then, to Hillsborough to see Sheffield Wednesday make their customary first hurdle FA Cup exit, this year to Fulham..
Writing about your own team is always an unsettling experience and there's a desperate need to be overly even-handed but - never having reported on a match from Hillsborough before - I'm quite excited, so excited that I buy a pair of toddler-sized Barney Owl pyjamas from the dismal club shop.
This once stunningly modern stadium has barely changed since what I can genuinely call my day, the times when me and my father would take in yet another defeat to Port Vale or Colchester United and shake our heads, wondering if things would ever get better. They did for a moment, but the current state of permanent cock-up - no chairman, no chief executive, no money, precious little hope, best players about to be sold - is Wednesday as I know, love and understand them.
The hacks’ mood is dark and not merely because there’s yet more blood on yet more carpets (a 10% wage cut? Mmm, nice). Reassuringly, the facilities are prehistoric. To get from the so-called press lounge to the press box, me and my laptop have to squeeze through thousands of what I'd really like to call "my people". Once there, plug sockets are nearly impossible to find; those of a non-dwarfian hue may find their legs are too long; wifi has not been invented and there are no televisions showing replays. Of course there are no televisions showing replays. Silly me.
And just to enhance the uber-Yorkshire experience, the press “lounge” is, like Sheffield United’s, a computer study centre. However, unlike Sheffield United - who offer proper northern pie-based sustenance pre-match - the tea is so bad it’s southern and the only food appears at half-time. I bite into mine and gag before I find out that it’s something called a battered-spicy-baby-sweetcorn. I didn’t know food this bad existed, this side of gruel. Oh and after the post-match interviews in a heat-free room, it’s not possible to sit and type. Wednesday never were great at PR.
And because I’m a clown-footed buffoon, I tripped over myself in front of the press box. The tea went flying, the dignity was shredded, but the laptop I was carrying proved to be robust as well as stylish. Hem hem.
Anyway, it was freezing, there wasn’t a cup shock - I’d predicted Andy Johnson’s late winner long before it arrived - so I had too few words and next morning I discovered the sub had made an apostrophe error.
Still, my long-lost father would have been quietly proud, I wouldn’t have missed it for the world and the toddler looks great in her Barney Owl pyjamas. Swings and roundabouts, swings and roundabouts.