‘Welcome to hell,’ is how Academy graduate Jimmy Hibburt describes his visit to Samsun, Turkey with Crystal Palace in 1998.
He paints a vivid picture of fans ‘spitting’ with ‘knives’ in a ‘real hostile’ atmosphere. Hibburt - who was only 18 in the summer of ‘98 - ended his cameo in Turkey by clambering into a police escort with Terry Venables.
But Dean Austin - 28 by comparison and a battle-scarred enforcer - remembers a different experience.
“That’s what it’s all about,” he says nonchalantly. “I quite like atmospheres like that.”
Of course, Hibburt and Austin’s differing experiences come from the Intertoto Cup, Palace’s first venture into European-wide football and their only competitive matches in July to date.