On a cold Friday evening 15 fairly naïve supporters gathered outside the back gate of The Stoop. You could use it in those days before the Health Club! We climbed aboard a fairly basic coach and set off at about 10.00 p.m. through the night to Dover where we boarded a ferry in the early hours of the morning. We were not a particularly gregarious party. Unlike now, when there is greater acquaintance and recognition among Quins supporters, there were no replica shirts, no geezer trousers, but only a scarf or two and maybe a members’tie.

It was a wet night and I remember the lights in the cafes reflecting in the wet streets as we passed the Gare du Nord at about 5.00 a.m. Then we reached the Paris Peripherique. Naturally our driver started going round the wrong way and it seemed an age before we were on the road south.

Breakfast was taken at an anonymous motorway service station and the coach continued on down into the heart of France, finally arriving outside the Ibis Hotel in Brive at about 2.30 p.m. Fifteen very weary Quins supporters staggered into the hotel.

I can remember little of how that evening passed. I dined at a very good restaurant across the road from what turned out to be the Supporters Club Bar and went to sleep the sleep of the exhausted.

Sunday dawned. It was dry but overcast. Some of us went to inspect the stadium. Some wandered round the town. All waited anxiously for the match. It was, I am afraid, an anti-climax. Despite a team which included Staples, O’Leary, Carling, Luger, Wood, Cabannes, Harries and Llewellyn the match was lost 23 – 10.
It was in the qualifying stages of the competition and meant that Harlequins were second in their group. They lost to Leicester in the quarter-finals at Welford Road. The Cup was won by Brive who defeated Leicester at Cardiff by 28 – 9.

Quins supporters went to the bar in the Avenue de Paris, on the left hand side as you walk away from the river, which is the headquarters of the Amicales des CA Brive. There we were treated with great friendliness and the Mayor arrived and was presented with a Harlequin tie. Photographs were taken. Four years later, when we returned to defeat Brive by 20 – 13 and progress to that marvellous day at the Madjewski Stadium when we won the European Shield, those photographs were produced, participants identified and another hospitable occasion resulted.

And at 7.00 p.m. on Sunday evening we boarded the coach again for the long journey home. It was not a trip I care to recall. All the motorway cafes closed early and there was no food until we reached the ferry. A very weary, travel worn party reached The Stoop at about 10.30 a.m. on Monday morning.

Nowadays I travel by less arduous methods to the rugby pitches of France and Spain. But at least that first trip did not deter. It merely gave me the taste for more.

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