Harrogate Town opinion: A decent end to what has been a positive season for the Sulphurites

The sight of three bananas and a six-foot traffic cone reclining on the grass, all looking slightly the worse for wear, isn’t the first thing you’d normally expect to see on paying your £15 and emerging from the turnstile block close to 3pm.

But this is Salford, it’s the last game of the season and fancy dress is being encouraged in the Harrogate Town end. Me? I’m the one masquerading as a newspaper columnist.

That I’m here only just on time is thanks to our fragmented rail system. Last time my wife and I travelled over the Pennines we were fined for being on the wrong train.

We’d purchased the cheapest return tickets from Harrogate to Manchester via Leeds (as you do) and jumped on the first Leeds-bound train that arrived at the platform on the way home. After all, that’s how trains normally work, or at least they did before privatisation.

It turns out our tickets were only valid for Northern Rail trains and we were on the more expensive Transpennine service.

It didn’t help that we encountered the ticket inspector from hell, keen to make an example of us in front of a packed carriage of people, and no amount of gentle reasoning that it was an honest “mistake” could sway him.

Calling the system "bonkers” probably didn’t help our cause, and my pleas that all Manchester-Leeds trains were ‘Northern’ if you looked at it from a geographical standpoint fell on deaf ears. I didn’t dare tell him that I was pretty sure I’d been flaunting these ‘rules’ unwittingly for some time.

The galling point was not that we were fined, but that he collared us just before Leeds and, by his own train company's rules, if we'd refused to pay up he'd have had to turf us off at the next stop. He didn't tell us this at the time of course.

The episode was rendered further pointless when the Leeds-Harrogate train was cancelled and we claimed more than the fine money back in compensation.

Today I’m prepared when I arrive at Leeds station, but trying to work out which services are Northern and which are Transpennine, when they both go to the same destination on the same tracks, is difficult to say the least.

I head to platform 16 where the next Manchester Victoria train is due to leave, only to find out it’s the wrong service. There’s another one due along in a few minutes, but I’ve no idea what company is running it. And time is ticking … I’ve got a football match to attend.

Just a little frustrated, I head towards a man at the nearest ticket barrier with ‘Northern Rail’ emblazoned on his uniform. "Can you tell me when the next Northern service to Manchester is due to leave please?” I explain the situation, again calling it “bonkers”.

"That’s why renationalisation can’t come soon enough,” he responds with a knowing smile, before checking his device and directing me to Platform 6, where a much slower train is leaving for Chester (meandering via Victoria and seemingly every other station in West Yorkshire/East Lancashire before that) in four minutes time. I’d never have figured that one out on my own.

So, I have this friendly ticket inspector to thank for me managing to arrive in time to see Salford’s fifth-minute opener, an unchallenged glancing header by Callum Hendry from a corner hitting the net in front of the massed ranks of bananas and one solitary traffic cone.

It’s split fairly evenly first half, with the pressure off both teams, as Town come from behind twice to level the score. Abraham Odoh bends a low strike into the corner before Matty Foulds peels away to the near post to back heel in from a corner.

Are we going to see a repeat of last week’s goal fest? And how many more banana references can one man squeeze into a column?

As you’d expect from a ground with banners referencing the Pogues (‘Dirty Old Town’), Inspiral Carpets (‘This Is How It Feels To Be Salford’) and Happy Mondays, the half-time entertainment is indie.

This time we get the Smiths and Pulp before the teams come back out to the strains of the Stone Roses, however I can’t help thinking the Dickies’ ‘Banana Splits’ would have been more appropriate today.

There’s a long pause before the teams kick-off again and the consensus around me is that all the final-day matches are being synchronised. I personally think the referee was just waiting for the PA person to turn the Roses off and they were reluctant to do so, wanting to hear the guitar freakout at the end of the track first.

I’ve never seen us win at the Peninsula Stadium before, it’s historically been a bit of a banana skin fixture for Town, and today should have been the moment as George Thomson, Jack Muldoon, Dean Cornelius and Josh March all fail to net gilt-edged opportunities in front of us in a second period which surprisingly offers up no more goals.

It could have been the perfect away day, but I’ll take ample solace in the knowledge that this is a best-ever league position for Town, the first time I’ve ever seen them finish above Salford and that I’m avoiding the trains by travelling home on the supporters’ coach. Happy days.