FOR those amongst you contemplating following the Clarets away from home this season, allow me to offer you a few words of advice. A typical day may run as follows, writes Stephen Cummings.

You will somehow defy the existing laws of physics by getting up at 5.30am. This will prove particularly difficult if you have partaken of the amber nectar the night before. Unable to face breakfast you will lurch heroically to the coach pick-up point. This may be doubly unpleasant as several of your internal organs will be performing impossible somersaults.

On arrival at said pick-up point you will be greeted by one of two types of people. The first group will be irritatingly bouncy, fresh-faced types full of joie de vivre and high hopes. The second will be like yourself and will be doing passable impersonations of the cast of cult zombie movie "Night of the Living Dead."

Shortly after boarding the coach your mental haze will begin to clear.

This is undoubtedly a bad thing. Because it is exactly at this point that you realise you have a 17 hour round trip ahead of you. You are chronically hungover. And you have the dismal misfortune to be sat next to the chattiest, liveliest person on the coach.

It takes mere minutes for things to get worse. To your horror you will notice that the coach has a video player. To your further horror the screen flickers into life, revealing that for the next two hours you will be subjected to "Michael Barrymore Live!" After several naff videos, an interminable string of traffic jams and the mortgaging of your property to fund the purchase of coffee and donuts at Corley Services, you will eventually arrive at your destination.

Once inside the ground you will hand over £5 to a surly 17-year-old in exchange for a re-heated pie and a cup of black water which is too hot to hold. Between three and five pm you will experience hope, worry and despair - in that order. It almost comes as a relief when the opposition score. At least it puts you out of your misery.

This is followed by the coach journey home. You will have your spirits depressed yet further by the videos "Police Academy Seven" and "Free Willy Two." And the perfect end to the perfect day? You arrive home just after last orders. You have been warned.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.