The day Ryan Giggs hit a brace against Port Vale

Hold on, you may be thinking… Ryan Giggs hasn’t scored a goal in either league or cup against Port Vale! Well, I must confess this feature is a bit of a cheat, but hopefully it’s still a fascinating read.

In the course of researching more Port Vale memorabilia, I was looking through the Port Vale v Stoke City programme from 1990 (pictured below right). This was the first league encounter against Stoke City to be played at Vale Park and I was doing some research prior to featuring it in a future OVF article

Anyhow, hidden towards the back of the programme were the Port Vale reserve and youth reports. Port Vale’s youth had just played Manchester United and despite United being reduced to ten men, a young fellow called “Ryan Wilson” (Giggs’ surname before he opted to take up his mother’s last name) had hit two goals.

A scan of the youth team report is included below. I wonder if any of the 1,614 fans present were aware of just how famous that young man in the red of Man Utd would one day become?