
Originally Posted by
upthemaggies
I only looked at the text previews, but contemporary 1991 reports note there are all sorts of explanations for the origin but they appear to settle for Shrewsbury away as the first time it was sung. If nobody had told me about Shrewsbury then I would have said 100% it first got a hearing at ML late into the 1989/90 season on a Saturday afternoon in one of the lesser fixtures, and would have narrowed it down to either Crewe or Cardiff, which Shrewsbury was in-between. So date wise there's no question it began mid-April 1990.
Short of hearing an archive recording of Warnock saying those words before 17th April 1990 however, I'd be inclined to dismiss that as somebody trying to rationalise the absurd, and even if he did ever say it, it's probably a coincidence rather than the genuine inspiration. We were focussed on the promotion push and it would have been an odd time for Warnock to be reflecting on when he first came into the club, if the suggestion is that he said it shortly beforehand in an interview with Colin Slater and that prompted somebody to come up with a song for the next game.