I remember that Oldham game well. Never got in till after ko just in time to see Ian Bishop put us ahead. We had to win and Blackburn had to lose to Grimsby.

It all ended in tears as per usual. Bob Stokoe came to the away end at the final whistle to placate the fans to choruses of ‘[censored] Off Stokoe!’
I think Joe Johnson won the World Snooker that day IIRC.

35 years - blimey!

Thinking about it though - even if we had stayed up, how long would we have stayed there with Jenkins at the helm.

I was well gutted, I knew we were down in my heart before the Oldham game.

The strange thing for me is that I started going the next season and only starting attending regularly in 87-88.
From that day until a few weeks ago I'd always understood that the own goal and subsequent defeat to Charlton relegated us and was our last game in the second tier.

I had no idea that we still had a chance to stay up in our last game until a Facebook group I'm on showed the results and tables from that day. I was genuinely gobsmacked to see Carlisle played 41, such is the iconic reputation of the Tolmie OG!

We had a terrible start to the season, akin to the Collins season when Simpson took over.We were miles behind everyone else points wise and always playing catch-up.
A good run from March onwards culminated in it being in our own hands going into the Charlton game.Beat Charlton, and beat Oldham, and we stay up.
I also remember Scott Mcgarvey getting injured in the week before the game. He was the main man at the time, on loan from Portsmouth and in great form so was a big miss.
We were coasting in the Charlton game, big Wes Saunders with 2 goals inside the first half hour and looking more than comfortable. If we had held it at 2-0 till half time, who knows what might have been.
That Tolmie own goal was on about 40 minutes, and came from nowhere and had to be seen to be believed.
I remember he wasn't far off the half-way line, and he just side footed it into the air and it sailed over Endersby in the waterworks goal.
I've never seen the goal again on tv, or on any football coverage.
I was 13 at the time and I went with my uncle to Oldham on the Monday. I remember it being very toxic at the end of the game, and the mounted police on the bank behind us in the away end.

McGarvey wasn't injured.

He was recalled to Portsmouth by Alan Ball as a favour to his mate, Sunderland manager Lawrie McMenemy. Sunderland being in the relegation mix with us that April.

It seemed to happen in slow motion, as the ball rolled over the line. I never saw him
strike the ball as I was checking the queue for a halftime pie, turned round to see the ball trundling into our net. This team only appeared once but one of our best: Endersby, Haigh, McCartney, Ashurst,Saunders, Halsall, Hill, Cooke, McGarvey, Bishop, Halpin.

Endersby was superb that season, not sure what happened to him after that.

Talking about teams from the 80s there was an article in the News and Star the other day about Malcolm Poskett getting four goals against Crystal Palace.

Quite an attacking line up that day!

United: Swinburne, Parker, Ashurst, Larkin, Rushbury, Staniforth, Coughlin, Craig, Bannon, Poskett, Shoulder. Sub: Lee.

4-2-4, with the back up of the great Big Bob Lee on the bench, his silky skills probably not needed that day. Similar to Denis Bergkamp on the ball, 40 years ahead of his time.

Aye you only need two in midfield when they are Russell Coughlin and Tommy Craig!

Endersby was superb that season, not sure what happened to him after that.

https://www.where-are-they-now.co.uk/footballer/Endersby+Scott/2681

Edited to say I remember McGarvey and Halsall coming in. Halsall was good but McGarvey was crap and looked really unhappy while he was with us. Got a lot of stick from the crowd. Left for Grimsby who got relegated the next season
At the Oldham game we were chanting Stokoe's name at the end. We went on the pitch and the police baton charged us. I slept on Oldham bus station that night, missed the bus to Glasgow

Endersby was a bit of a nutter by all accounts.

Did Scott McGarvey and Wes Saunders not have a bit of a fall out leading to a black eye at an away game.

Wes was a character. Remember coming down once, he was missing when the team ran out, rumours he was caught shoplifting in Boots and plod kept him till after kick off. He also injured a player at Dundee by sticking a chicken leg in his face, allegedly.
Very good player in a terrible team.
Paul Gascoigne's agent and this is his daughter

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMPs2kN89dI

Wes Saunders was good in the air, good on the ground, good turn of pace just struggled to concentrate for 90 minutes. Remember watching him against Darlo away, he had their highly rated striker (David Currie) in his pocket. One stupid back pass, Currie clean through, round the keeper in a flash (a bit quicker than he when he played mid 90's) and 1-0. All the good work undone. But, if had been more focussed he'd never have played for us in the first place., and definitely not in the fourth division. Jack Ashurst and Bob Stokoe handled him well, on his case for the whole game. McGarvey drove a Porsche and looked like a character from Miami Vice, did well on loan, following season did well pre season, injured in first home game. When he got back from injury he wasn't great, didn't appear to be on speaking terms with Mally Poskett and in the end he was worse than Paul Baker. Mick Halsall was excellent under Stokoe, we've not had much better than the Halsall/Bishop Scouse combo.

Thing I always remember about this game was that as a youngster standing in the Scratchers, the amount of people in there seemed double what it had been from previous games and folk were getting very excited that suddenly appeared and weren't at previous games.
They were jumping up and down like it was the biggest game of the lives but had not been there for the previous games.
How odd, I thought.
Remember on the night we got relegated , my mum trying to cheer me up by saying that Steve Davis was losing. At that point, Steve Davis seemed universally hated. Bit harsh really.

My Dad and I had been obliged to take the husband and son of one of my Mum's work colleagues along with us who'd we'd never met and had never been to a game before. Typical neutral platitudes of "well it was certainly eventful" and "to be fair the better team won" were met with an icy silence in the car home.

Weird seeing the photos on the Charlton page, first images I've seen of that day. The sun, the dry pitch etc brings it all back. Awful.

First game I remember listening to on the radio. Even then as a kid I found it a bit odd that Blackburn knew what they had to do to stay up.

There were about four of us sitting on a bench outside the old post office centre in town and then loads of police came round the corner and they were escorting their fans down past us all looking smug - maybe they weren't and it just seemed like it to us.

We followed them down to the ground, I think that it was about two to three pounds to get in and we didn't even have that between us unfortunately - we bumped into a bunch of about five lads down at the ground I recognised from the year below me at school and they were in the same boat, they said that if you hang around for long enough then they open the doors in the Paddock near the end and you can sneak in, we just went back into town.

I seen one of the lads at school in the following week and he said that they had got to see the last fifteen minutes or so of the second half so they must have heard the cheers and groans from outside.