Posted by 
John Roper, found as @budgierustler34 online, writes about a Preston North End terrace legend for The Nose Bag fanzine…
The date is 31 August 1946 and the venue is Deepdale, home of Preston North End.
It is the first league game of the first full season after WW2 and making his debut for North End that day was a 24-year-old local lad called Tommy Finney. On that day a love affair was born with an eleven-year-old fan standing at the front of the Kop on the two iron railings that masqueraded as fences in those days.
His name – Harold Billington – known to all his friends at Deepdale as Harry. I first met “Bomber Billington” some fifty years later in the mid 90s as I travelled up and down the land watching the boys. It was a great time to be a North End fan because we rose from the bottom division in 1996 to the brink of the Premiership in just five years. What a time to be watching North End.
Read more: How Preston North End’s record-setting night with Fulham sits in their spot-kick history book
With these journeys up and down the land I found myself bumping into Harry more and more and we started talking football. Harry had, and still has, a very sharp memory and he could pinpoint a game or an incident just as well as someone fifty years his junior.
We talked football quite a bit but it always came round to the same thing with Bomber – “these buggars aren`t fit enough to lace Finney’s boots” he would roar out in some unsuspecting boozer a couple of hundred miles from home. He has an infectious laugh, does Harry, but he can sometimes whisper over a thousand fields when he gets a few down.
Harry was the ultimate fan of the Finney generation and nothing since has ever come close to the great man in Harry’s eyes. He worshipped the ground Finney walked on and could almost name his thirty England goals off the top of his head.
During the 1950s Harry did his National Service and was based at RAF Scampton; home of the Dambusters, of course. Harry wears his National Service medals with pride on Remembrance Sunday but always bemoans the fact that he lost two years of watching Finney while he was doing his bit for Queen and country.
One of his RAF friends once told me he had been decorated twice during his time in the RAF – once by a NAAFI girl’s husband with a potato peeler and once by a tattoo artist in Colchester. I laughed so much I nearly p***ed my sides.
Just after the play-off final in 2001 I started to travel away with St Greg’s Travel Club and for ten or eleven years I would be on the coach with my mates and when I embarked at Leyland you would, without fail, hear the Billington roar of – “Bloody hell the p*** pots are here from Leyland” – charming.
We became good friends over that period of time travelling with St Greg’s and every time we talked football he would come up with a different story. I remember in particular one on a Friday evening game at Norwich when me and Harry got blind drunk. Christ knows how we got onto Carrow Road as Harry had ripped his knees in his jeans and my eyes were akin to those of Nookie Bear as we gently made our way through the away turnstiles at Delia’s gaff.
The North End copper at the time was Guy Nellany who just looked at us, rolled his eyes and said “behave you two”. Harry was 66 and I was 41 – how embarrassing!
Since St Greg’s coach stopped, Harry has travelled with me and my friend Steve and, regular as clockwork, he would be waiting outside his front door as the car came round the corner to pick him up.
Harry Billington is 90 next August and I cannot remember the last game, home or away, that he missed. It might have been a Friday night game at Cardiff around 2004 but don’t quote me on it. Harry’s legs are not the best these days and he uses either his trike or his mobility scooter when he travels away but as he heads for his tenth decade he will not give up watching the team he loves.
He calls them not fit to burn, sometimes, says they are not fit to wear the same badge Finney wore but you can bet your life that the next away game for Preston will include Harry ‘Bomber’ Billington in the Preston support.
The word legend is often overused, particularly in football, but in the case of Bomber never was it more appropriate. Harry is in his 78th season watching North End – last year he did all 48 competitive games – and who would bet against him doing the same this season. If there was such a thing as a knighthood for watching football then Harry would be Sir Harold of Moor Nook. Arise Sir Harry – a legend of Deepdale.
The Nose Bag: This article featured in the most recent edition of The Nose Bag, which was released in November 2024. You can take a subscription or buy issues from the archive here.
Subscribe: Keep in touch directly with the latest headlines from Blog Preston, join our WhatsApp channel and subscribe for our twice-a-week email newsletter. Both free and direct to your phone and inbox.
Read more: See the latest Preston news and headlines
