"Thankyou very much for our Tony Rougier,
thankyou very much, thankyou very very very much"
"Where's your Rougier gone? Where's your Rougier gone?"
and so on.
In fact, it should have been the tiny number of Vale fans singing the last of those back to us on 2nd September 2000, as Rougier was injured and in any event would have been off on World Cup duty.
Port Vale (often known as Port Fail, for reasons that I think are obvious) have had a few years where they were ahead of their near neighbours Stoke. Now that that period has come to a very definite close, we can expect to see them slide further down the League. Their Chairman is doing his best to help them on their way, by all accounts. The sale of Rougier prompted threats of protest marches and the like. And of course, now we have Alex Smith from them as well.
Some Port Vale information:
Record defeat - 0-10 against both Sheffield United and Notts County
Crowd for first home game in 2000/2001 - 3,814 (just 10,320 less than Reading managed)
Last Reading victory - the last time we played them, of course - 2-0 at Madejski Stadium in January 2002
Nearest station to ground - Longport (although because there are few trains that stop there on a Saturday, Stoke station is often better)
Trivia - early in the 1999/2000 season my brother had a bet with a Port Vale fan that Reading would finish ahead of Port Vale during 2000/2001. Bear in mind that at the time the bet was made they were a division higher than Reading! The Vale fan might as well have paid up then, though. Needless to say, the money has now changed hands as well as the bets on the two individual games. I wonder if the Port Vale guy knows any Rushden fans.....
There aren't many Port Vale fans, so it's no big surprise that there aren't many message boards either. Here's one:
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