I’ve always wanted to be part of that thrilling moment where everybody rushes onto a sports field in joyous hysteria. Whether it’s because your favourite player kicked the winning goal after the siren, your team won a championship, or just because you felt like doing a nudie run.

It’s not something that really happens in Australia, as most sporting events are relatively tame by comparison to the football games you see in Europe and South America. But lo-and-behold the opportunity presented itself in the most unlikely of circumstances.

Me and my friend Moshe were travelling through England and had a few nights in Manchester. We knew that Leeds United were playing on the Saturday, and that if they won they would get promoted to a higher league. It was a golden opportunity and we certainly weren’t about to miss it.

We took the short train to Leeds in the morning and hoped that we could scalp tickets somehow. What we should have anticipated (but didn’t, obviously), is that not a single person in the entire city was willing to give up their ticket for this match. So we did what anybody would do – found a pavilion jam-packed full of Leeds supporters drinking and singing songs and joined them. And what a game it was.

Here’s the article that explains what happened during the match:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/may/08/leeds-united-bristol-rovers-league-one

Despite not having tickets to the game, once the final whistle went everybody went absolutely bananas. We all bolted out of the pavilion and started running at the stadium full-tilt. The few security guards who were there didn’t even both trying to stop anybody, which was a good thing, because nobody in the crowd was slowing down. People poured into the stadium from outside and we all ran straight onto the pitch. We were right next to the players on the field jumping around and singing with all the fans. It doesn’t get much better than that.