If I squinted really, really, really hard, it could have been Gary McAllister holding aloft the Charity Shield on a gloriously sunny day at Wembley in 1992. When I opened my eyes fully, it was just another bald guy holding aloft a black bin lid at KitKat Crescent on a grey July evening in York, sixteen years later. Leeds were playing out a drab pre-season draw, and I was falling in love with the club.

The summer following the League One play-off final defeat to Doncaster was particularly rough for a thirteen-year-old living in South Yorkshire. All the Liverpool and Scum fans in the area were suddenly popping up in red and white hooped shirts and banging on about James Coppinger being great and Leeds United being shit. I liked Leeds’ team: Jermaine Beckford scored loads of goals, Casper Ankergren seemed a fairly unhinged bloke, and there was a fella in midfield with long hair who people called Jesus, which was fun. But I wasn’t sure it was worth the hassle of being known as a Leeds fan.

Then I went to KitKat Crescent. Latterly Bootham Crescent, even-more-latterly demolished, KitKat Crescent was a proper shithole. And I mean that in a nice way. It had charm, like the South Stand bogs. The little ground was a bit of a shock to my stadium sensibilities, which at that point were solely based on Elland Road and Wembley. The away end was an open terrace that presumably hadn’t been touched since it was built in 1932. The ‘facilities’ were even worse — or better depending on your tastes. I seem to remember there was a burger van crammed in somewhere for catering, but my most vivid recollection is of the toilets, which were a brick wall with half a drainpipe at the bottom to catch fluids. It was grim. As a teenage boy, I thought it was awesome.

I have absolutely zero recollection of the match itself, but as an early pre-season friendly it’s reasonable to assume it was fairly dull. There is a whole nine-minute highlights package on YouTube if you find yourself at a very loose end. The notable moments on the pitch were Beckford’s opener, future Leeds loanee Sam Sodje’s nephew Onome equalising for York, and Enoch Showunmi and Andy Robinson both getting their first minutes in XL Leeds shirts.

The most memorable events of the evening, however, were taking place on the terrace. Someone had got their hands on a bin, and the away end being Leeds, and being drunk, decided this was the funniest thing ever. The bin was passed around like a trophy, and lifted in the air to huge cheers. It was a minor miracle anyone in the away end remembered how trophy lifts worked.

The bin was taken away to chants of, ‘We want our bin back!’ Someone found the lid, and now we had our Charity Shield. Then the lid was taken away, and suddenly the evening sky was filled with empty plastic bottles arcing from one end of the terrace to the other. Ahead of the curve on environmental issues, the Leeds fans sang, ‘We are recycling!’ Someone else nicked the match ball. ‘Fuck off to the football league!’ Some family friends we’d gone to the game with weren’t impressed at all with the behaviour. Thirteen-year-old me was incredibly impressed. It was a laugh, it was daft, it was tribal, it was Leeds. I was hooked. ⬢