Richard Sutcliffe: Long, fruitless away trips eventually lead to laughter

OH, how my Dad laughed. There I was, newly arrived in Moscow after a day spent battling through often arctic weather, relaying the news that the football match I had travelled 1,500 miles to watch had just been postponed.

A bone-chilling temperature of minus 28 in the Russian capital meant that the evening's UEFA Cup tie against Spartak Moscow was off.

An inspection of the pitch at the Dynamo Stadium in the north west of the city had taken place around the same time the plane carrying me from London via Frankfurt was just leaving German airspace and referee Anders Frisk's verdict was a firm thumbs-down.

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Naively, I had assumed Spartak might just be prepared for the weather that hits Moscow every winter but, as eye-witnesses from the Leeds press corp later recounted, the surface was more akin to concrete than grass.

The first inkling something was wrong had come when checking into the Rossiya Hotel just off Red Square, but it was more rumour than fact with the suggestion being that the game had been postponed but would be played the following night instead.

Looking out through the giant hotel windows at the snow falling on St Basil's Cathedral, I did wonder just where this mystery warm weather front was going to come from but others were adamant the tie was going ahead.

Telephoning home for a more definitive account than the Chinese Whispers spreading through the main reception bar of the now demolished Rossiya, the guffawing at the other end of the line suggested news of the postponement had already broken back in Yorkshire. My Dad's mirth was payback for the countless times I had ribbed him over a fruitless long journey to watch his beloved Burnley.

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Exeter had been his own 'Moscow' with the visit of the Clarets one year having been postponed just an hour before the scheduled kick-off.

By then, the Supporters' Club bus he had left Colne on at 7am had arrived at the nearest service station to Exeter where the police were preparing to accompany them on the remaining five miles to St James' Park.

His return to our local in Keighley later that night brought a huge cheer, and the day he went to Exeter and back for a game that never took place soon became a huge source of amusement. The leg-pulling that followed meant I could expect little else but the laughter that greeted the call home from a freezing Russia.

Once the chuckling had subsided, he broke the news that the UEFA Cup tie against Spartak had, actually, been postponed and rearranged for the following Thursday in Bulgaria.

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Unfortunately, the Moscow episode was not the end of me travelling huge distances only to discover that a game was off with a trip to Funchal in Madeira almost two years later, a journey that is 100 or so miles longer than one to the Russian capital, ending in identical disappointment.

Leeds and the UEFA Cup were again involved, though this time it was not the weather that was the problem but the September 11 attacks on the Twin Towers in New York.

UEFA decreed, as a mark of respect, that all games scheduled to take place the following day should be cancelled so United's tie against Maritimo was off, though unfortunately for those of us on the press flight the decision was not taken until we had landed in Madeira.

It meant another frustrating flight home, though this time there was, sadly, to be no gloating from my Dad as he had passed away five months earlier.

Somehow, through, I knew he was looking down and chuckling at me going 2-1 ahead in the 'fruitless long trips for football' stakes.

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