In the New Year, the season didn’t improve much in terms of league results, with abject defeats away to Coventry and Arsenal, as well as a 1-0 reverse at home to Southampton. A 4-2 win against Sheffield Wednesday in mid-January briefly raised our hopes, but they were soon put back in their box after Liverpool destroyed us 5-1 at Anfield. Cheeky chap Robbie Fowler checked his invisible watch after scoring the first within a minute or two of kick off. The Spice Boy twat.
To make matters worse, our midfield dynamo, Emerson, was playing hide and seek in Brazil and didn’t seem to want to come back to these sunny shores. The tabloid media had a field day with it.
The FA Cup came along as another distraction from the horrible league form that threatened to pull Boro into a relegation battle that would have seemed ridiculous to most Boro fans only a few months ago. Chester City were given the usual short shrift given to lower league teams with a 6-1 spanking, and Hednesford showed typical non-league pluck to their huge travelling support but were eventually vanquished, and Boro conspired to get into the quarter finals, which they had never got past in their history. Derby County were the next opponents, but we would have to beat them on their patch at the Baseball Ground (they were soon to move into their Riverside replica at Pride Park).
In February, Boro played Stockport for the honour of playing in the Coca-Cola cup final at Wembley. A 2-2 draw in the away leg set up a tense, nail-biting second leg at home, but Boro managed to hold off the lower division team, and as the crowd sang, “tell your mam, your mam, to put the champagne on ice, we’re going to Wembley twice!” Boro staggered over the line and into their first major cup final. Belief was still running strong. Even the wretched results in the league and the 3-point deduction weren’t taking away from this moment. They were in one final and could even make a second. Surely they would put 120 years of barrenness behind them this time. Martin O’Neill’s Leicester City were to be our opponents.
Back to the reality, the bread and butter of the league and a loss to Newcastle at the end of February was particularly hard to take. For the first time at a match I felt a tangible needle in the air, and on the walk back to the car I passed some scuffles breaking out near the South Stand as the victorious, gloating Geordies exited the stadium. I was beginning to really understand the depth of feeling against the black and white masses from up the A19. I’m sure that the feeling was mutual, despite Geordie protestations that they don’t see us as rivals.
March saw the league form finally starting to pick up, helped by the recent signings of defensive hero Gianluca Festa and Aussie shot-stopper Mark Schwarzer, and Boro went on a good run, beating Derby County 6-1 at home - we were never short of goals when in the mood - as well as Blackburn and Chelsea, 2-1 and 1-0 respectively. The latter game featured one of the best Boro goals I have seen live: a diving header by Juninho at the near post after a nice one-two with the much-maligned (especially by Mr Ravanelli) Danish forward Mikkel Beck.
In between these games we stuffed Leicester City at their place, with another virtuoso performance by Juninho, who seemed hell-bent on single-handedly keeping Boro in the Premier League. He might have been better to reign it in for that game, because that performance was noticed, not just by Boro fans, but by Martin O’Neill. Another meeting with Derby saw Boro make even more history and progress to the FA Cup semi-final with a 2-1 victory. It was getting hard to keep up with games, and was seriously stretching the pockets of fans, even those who only followed at home, like myself.
The League Cup Final, then. It was some weekend. I travelled down to London in a mini-bus with a gang of friends from work and elsewhere on the Saturday afternoon. We spent a boozy night in the capital, falling over more from the price of beer than from the effects of it, culminating in a meet-up in Piccadilly Circus where thousands of Boro fans cavorted in the fountains and clambered over various statues to sing songs about the coming triumph. It was fantastic to be there and witness the atmosphere. Boro had, of course, been to a minor Wembley Final before (if a final can be called minor) in 1990 to play Chelsea in the Zenith Data Systems Cup. They had lost, but that was history now. The League Cup was a proper trophy, contested and won by big teams like Liverpool and Arsenal.
The journey up to Wembley on the tube and the game itself are now a blur in my mind. I remember being distinctly underwhelmed by the dilapidated state of Wembley Stadium and far from impressed by the view I had from my seat behind one goal (actually a plastic bench) that was 10 rows or more from the front but still just about level with the pitch. I could just about see the goal at the far end through the perimeter fencing. I’m sure the price of food and drink was a complete disgrace as well, as it invariably is at places such as these. Still, it was good to be there, under the warm March sunshine, my hangover wearing off and hopes running high for the game.
As it was, the game was terrible, judging by the limited action I could see. Juninho - virtue of his brilliance against the same opponents a few weeks ago - was man-marked out of the game by an insistent limpet called Pontus Kaamark, and Boro never really got a rhythm going. One equally-unsighted wag said he’d received news from afar that it was 2-0 midway through the second half, but it wasn’t, and the game dragged into extra time. It was then that it got interesting. Through the fence, I saw a scramble at the far end of the ground and Ravanalli fired in a rebound (I think) to take us into the lead. The sight of him running with his shirt over his head towards our end was enough to tell me what had happened, and the Boro contingent erupted. I was almost sent tumbling forward a number of rows. I had never heard such a noise or seen such movement and colour, as flags and scarves were waved ecstatically. It was truly beautiful and moving. The singing I tried to belt out stuck in my throat with emotion. I had been a Boro fan such a short time, but was carried away by the sheer joy around me.
It wouldn’t last. Pesky Heskey bundled the ball over the line in the last minute of extra-time as Bryan Robson dallied over making a substitute and the mood changed beyond recognition. The noise and flag-waving was emanating from the opposite end of the ground, and the colour was all blue, not red. That last-minute equaliser felt like a win to the Leicester fans and felt like a crushing defeat to us. I didn’t have the heart, let alone the funds, to go to the replay at Hillsborough, which Leicester duly won with a typical Leicester goal from Steve Claridge.