Boro are in action at Huddersfield today and I can’t help thinking about the last time I was at the John Smith’s Stadium.
It was the season before last and you could hardly see what was happening because of the thick fog that descended onto the pitch.
Boro took the lead through Scott McDonald but our fans in the away end didn’t see the goal because they were at the wrong end of the pitch so they started singing: “Who the (delete expletive) hell was that?”
During my career I played in some bizarre weather conditions at home and abroad.
An away trip with Nottingham Forest took me and the rest of the squad in the desert for an end of season friendly in Saudi Arabia.
Not surprisingly, it was absolutely boiling but, all of a sudden, there was an incredible downpour, it was like a monsoon, and we had to go off the pitch for about half an hour. It was impossible to play.
Then, all of a sudden, the clouds parted, the sun came out and we were able to carry on.
One aspect of the game that has changed hugely over the last 20-odd years is the quality of the playing surfaces.
Pitches are far better now than they were in my day.
In fact, the two show pitches at Rockliffe Park are better than many you will find in the Championship and rest of the Football League.
The playing surfaces are pristine these days, they are like bowling greens.
Clubs even have lamps that they shine on the grass in winter time to enable the grass to grow!
Players these days are lucky that they nearly always train and play on good pitches.
They learn their trade on superb surfaces and don’t know any different.
It’s a far cry from some of the pitches players of my era had to contend with.
As a Boro player, we used to train at Hutton Road and you had to be careful where you put your foot.
When they cut the grass it used to reveal all sorts of items!
Ayresome Park had a quality surface, though, it was well known for it.
I remember as a young lad someone saying to me the pitch at Ayresome Park had a camber on it.
At the time I didn’t have a clue what a camber was.
Then I discovered it was the way the pitch sloped away slightly from the centre.
Not many pitches were as good as ours.
The Baseball Ground at Derby County was notorious.
I played on it when it resembled the surface of the moon – there wasn’t one single blade of grass on it, it was completely bare.
You just had to get on with it and, to be fair, it was the same for both sets of players. It wasn’t a big deal.
Before my time, Brian Clough deliberately used to water the pitch at Derby when he was the manager there and it ended up looking like a mudbath.
It wasn’t much better when I was playing a few years later!
That said, I can remember Jack Charlton watering the pitch at Ayresome Park before a big FA Cup tie – I think it was against Arsenal – in the 1970s!
Managers would try to produce a surface that the opposition would struggle to cope with.
The safety of the players is paramount now, I don’t think the authorities were quite as strict 30 years ago.
You could get hurt if you fell awkwardly on a frozen pitch.
You could also get hurt if you fell playing on the artificial pitches that came into the game around that time.
QPR had one and so did Oldham Athletic.
Being honest, I didn’t like them and I don’t particularly like them now.
They are far better these days but so are natural grass pitches so I don’t think professional football needs to go back to artificial surfaces.
The pitches at Loftus Road and Boundary Park were notorious within football, the ball used to bounce so high off the bone hard surface, making it hard to adapt if you weren’t used to it.
I think those teams that played on them every home game and trained on them regularly had an advantage.
And, if you fell on those pitches, you used to get some awful skin burns which took ages to clear up.
In the 1980s we played on a variety of surfaces that required different types of footwear.
I remember when Forest went to the Vetch Field for a Division One fixture against Swansea City.
It was one of those days where the country was in turmoil, the roads were lethal due to the weather.
There were loads of games postponed that day but we went down on the train and managed to get there in time.
On arrival we discovered the pitch was rock hard, we didn’t think the game would go ahead.
Brian Clough was our manager and when we were told the game would take place by the referee, he sent a staff member out to buy the players those trainers that have the ‘pimples’ on the bottom.
It must have worked because we won 2-1.
Win over Swiss will lift pressure on Roy Hodgson
It's fantastic that England beat Switzerland in their opening European Championship qualifier on Monday night.
It was was a really important result and hopefully it will lift some of the pressure that has been on Roy Hodgson.
After recent results there would have been some tension in the dressing room before the game in Basel but they went out, played well and recorded a vital win.
Beating the Swiss will give the players a massive boost going into the rest of the qualifying campaign and I hope we now go from strength to strength.
I’m sure the next time the players get together for an international, the mood in the camp will be much better.
They will all be looking forward to the match.
