In case you missed the first instalment last week, I should explain. All last season in my View From The North Stand column in the Pompey programme, I recalled the 'second division seasons' I had seen PFC complete since first watching a game in the early 1980s.

The pieces were a mixture of my memories and your own highlights and stories. Not everyone sees the programme so I have decided to rerun them all on this site over the summer.

We've done 83-84, 84-85 and 85-86 - so this one covers our Gremlins' promotion season and our first two seasons back in Div 2 after our all-too-hasty relegation from Div 1. A veritable mixture of feast and famine as we go from Alan Ball to John Gregory.

With thanks to all those who contributed, all that I'm left to do is say read on and enjoy the trip down Memory Lane.

1986-87

This chosen 'second division season' is a promotion campaign, namely 1986-87 - when Alan Ball's Gremlins put two near misses behind them to get the Blues back to the top division. As promotion campaigns go, it wasn't full of champagne football - but it was, and is, still cherished by those who were there.

So which game gave us the highlight? Steve Dixon makes a justifiable claim for one which didn't feature Pompey. "Shrewsbury v Oldham wins hands down,” says Steve.

He's referring to the Latics defeat at Gay Meadow on May 5, '87, that confirmed Pompey were up. Bob Beech was there. And when he told me he was there, I asked what he did afterwards. “Came home,” he replied. “There were four of us who had business in the midlands that day so we went to the game just in case. We didn’t have a drink afterwards... Shrewsbury was probably closed by then, anyway...”

A day earlier we'd had a big Blues letdown at Selhurst. Allan Swan wrote: “Pompey had half an end and my dad said to the Old Bill 'This won’t fit all the Pompey fans in.' The copper seemed oblivious to how many were coming – and 10,000 arrived! They had to move Palace fans to fit us all in. We were drawing 0-0, destined to get promotion, but lost 1-0 in the dying minutes and Vince Hilaire got sent off.”

Four days after promotion was confirmed, the world and his dog tried to get into Fratton for the final game, v Sheffield United, and most succeeded. Spencer Green recalled: “The lower south was absolutely mobbed, I was at the back of the dugout and Mick Tait offered me a seat on the bench next to him... 14-year-old me couldn't believe it!”

Johnny Moore remembered the 86-87 home clash v Derby: “Mick Quinn's hat-trick wiped out the later Pompey manager John Gregory's first-half opener. Curiously for the top two in the division at the time - who would finish there at the end of the season - the gate was just above 9,000.”

It was a mid-season trip north that Simon Kidd recalls: “I was lucky to be invited to play for Pompey Supporters' Club away to our counterparts at Oldham. It was November and with the wind blowing off Saddleworth Moor, it was absolutely freezing as we trotted out on to the Boundary Park plastic pitch,” said Simon.

“Pompey supporters won 3-2, and I recall brushing past one Joe Royle as we made our way up the tunnel as he went down to the pitch. Most galling was that, after getting changed, we had to exit the ground then pay cash at the turnstiles to come back in and watch Pompey play out a dull 0-0 draw!”

A month later Pompey were at Millwall and getting tickets was not easy – but @OldPompeypics managed it. “Two of us took a day off work two weeks before the game to do a dry run and hopefully come back with five tickets. When we got to Millwall's ticket office they sold them to us without any questions.

"On the day we bought rail tickets to East Croydon, then bought separate tickets from there to New Cross Gate, a good idea as police were bundling a few 657 faces back on a train at NCG. In the ground we ran into some guys we knew, including Basher Benfield. The game was scrappy with Kevin Dillon nicking a last-minute point... we had to keep quiet!"

On Bluesky, Peadubya66 recalled a 1-0 win at Ipswich with Mick Tait heading the winner and Liam Daish making his debut: “We wore all red... imagine the outrage today!”

1988-89

I chose seasons for each programme that included games against that day's oppostion, in this case Blackburn, but if you asked me for any detail on our 2-1 reverse at home to Rovers in April 1989, I'd look blank.

After relegation from the top flight, 88-89 began with high hopes. Jim Gregory had taken over from John Deacon, Fratton Park had been tarted up and some big names had been added to the squad, such as Mark Chamberlain and Warren Neill.

The opening day brought a 2-1 win at Shrewsbury - which was Paul Thomas' first PFC match: "I was behind the goal opposite the Pompey end. We went 1-0 up with a goal right in front of me, I went mental before realising I was surrounded by 2,000 Shrewsbury fans. The majority of Pompey fans on coaches failed to appear until half time."

I can confirm Paul's last point – I was on one of those coaches. We could see the stadium at 3pm – sadly the stadium we could see was Villa Park, from the M6, and we still had a long way to go.

Also at Gay Meadow was Simon Kidd, who said: "My younger brother and I decided to pay our first visit to the home of Shrewsbury. It was a wise choice as Pompey triumphed, but my abiding memory is the glowing tribute from manager Alan Ball when he compared one of our goalscorers, Mark Kelly, to George Best – no pressure then! We were also intrigued to see if the boatman in the river behind our open terrace would be needed to return any balls kicked out of the ground, but I don’t recall that happening."

Sadly, the season's super start gave way to a miserable middle and excruciating end.

Kelvin Shaw recalled: "We got knocked out of the League Cup and FA Cup at the first time of asking. Bally was sacked in January to be replaced by John Gregory, who was not popular with the players, from the stories I’ve read. We finished up losing the last six league fixtures to finish 20th. Quinny was the standout with 21 goals in 44 appearances and Warren Aspinall scored 12 in 40."

As @OldPompeyPics pointed out, though, it could have ended better. "With 13 games to go in March, Pompey were 13th, one point behind Ctystal Palace and seven points off the play-off positions. Palace finished third and won the play-offs and Pompey finished 20th."

Grant H on Bluesky said: "We had a great squad that year but they never quite gelled (until Jim Smith came along in 1991) - Kuhl, Chamberlain, Neill, Maguire. I remember Alan Ball's sacking after Leicester away with the awful John Gregory replacing him. Then came the hot, sunny Palace away game; Andy Awford's debut at 16 on what became remembered as the day of the Hillsborough disaster."

James Knibbs attended his first Pompey game that season: "Home to Bradford but apart from losing 2-1 I have no memory of anything about it."

Meanwhile Ross Henley was ahead of the rest of us: "Living in Somerset i was invited by a friend to go and watch Yeovil Town as he was raving about this new striker they had who was banging in goals for fun. He scored every time I went to watch. He scored 18 goals in 23 matches and I said to my friend 'Pompey could do with a goalscorer like that'. The player's name... was Guy Whittingham.”

1989-90

I tried throughout the season-long series of pieces on Pompey's past 21 'second division' campaigns to pick ones out relevant to that day's opposition, and I was certainly able to do that with Leeds United in town in March.

We've had many great Fratton battles with them down the years in the second tier and I could easily have gone for 1984-85, when we beat them 3-1 in a floodlit classic that took place 40 years ago this Wednesday.

But it's 1989-90 in our thoughts today and another brilliant night under the lights that comes to mind, although it's one Leeds would rather forget.

On October 17, 1989, Leeds were flying high and with a minute or two left were 3-1 up at Fratton. But they'd reckoned without Pompey's new goal ace, the recently arrived Guy Whittingham (whatever happened to him?).

First he curled in a beauty to make it 3-2 – then, almost direct from the restart, he chased an under-hit backpass, challenged keeper Mervyn Day for it (with a tackle that sadly today would have seen a free-kick to Day), then got up to sidefoot the loose ball into the net to secure an unlikely 3-3 draw.

Leeds went on to win the Division Two title but that point helped Pompey finish 12th in a campaign which started with John Gregory as manager and ended with the popular Frank Burrows back for his second spell in the job.

As for your memories and highlights of 89-90, that 3-3 draw with Leeds was recalled by many readers, including – for different reasons to most – GD Hawkes. "My dad and I left early," said a ruefyul GD. "We heard the cheers as we were walking out as Pompey drew 3-3. I’ve never left a game early since."

Wayne Harris remembered another 3-3 draw from the same season – no less a game than the Blues' final outing of the 1980s, in fact: "It was away on the plastic pitch of Boundary Park, Oldham. On this occasion Guy Whittingham went one better thane he had v Leeds and scored a hat-trick.”

It was days after that whn Gregory lost his job less than a year after taking over and Burrows was back.

Macer Corcoran recalled: "Frank came back in January and straight away we beat Stoke away and Bradford at home with Micky Hazard running the show, pulling us out of the bottom three."

It was an earlier-in-the-season horror show that Paul Thomas remembered, and I recall it too – a day when Alan Knight let in five but stopped it from being 12. Paul said: "I remember being at the Molineux in September 1989, sat in the John Ireland Stand in my Pompey shirt with my Wolves-supporting family. There was plenty of friendly banter flying around as we got tanked 5-0. It was my 14th birthday!"

And it was the March 1990 return clash with Leeds that Chris Reed recalled. He said: "I went to Leeds away on Dave Gunter's Junior Blues coach. We lost 2-0 and the coach broke down on way home. As I’ve grown older and got kids of my own, I still think about how that coach driver coped with 60 crazy kids til 1am.”

Kelvin Shaw spoke of an upbeat end to that season under Super Frankie: "We were unbeaten in the last nine league games, six wins and three draws."

For the record, our Guy scored 24 goals in 46 appearances in 89-90 – his first campaign in the side – while Martin Kuhl scored 10, including a lovely free-kick against Man Utd in a Fratton League Cup tie.

Photo: Action Images

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