麻豆社

Their fans were followed by the secret police, the locals were more interested in their jeans than their football, and no-one gave them a chance when Newport County went behind the Iron Curtain 40 years ago. But the lowly Third Division side were made of stern stuff - and Peter Jackson talks to veterans of that trip to tell the story of one of the most remarkable episodes in Welsh football history. How did a team on its knees a few years earlier find itself in the quarter finals of a major European competition and come within a whisker of a semi-final clash with mighty Benfica. Jackson was on that trip himself and tells how Newport went to Northern Ireland at the height of The Troubles, survived a frightening flight to a footballing outpost in Northern Norway and then an arduous journey across the West German border at the height of the Cold War, all to represent Wales in Europe.