Two goals from Tony Naylor helped Vale to stay in the thick of the race for a place in the Premier League with just three games to go, writes Phil Sherwin

V ALE went into the game against struggling Oldham Athletic in fifth place in what is nowadays called the Championship with high hopes of reaching the play-offs.

It was the Vale who drew first blood by taking the lead in the 32nd minute. Leading scorer Tony Naylor picked the ball up 25 yards from goal and jinked his way past a couple of defenders before lashing a superb shot into the top corner of the net.

Oldham equalised out of the blue just before half time, when Shaun Garnett headed home from a corner.

In the second half Vale dominated proceedings and regained the lead in the 77th minute. A good through ball by Dean Glover saw Lee Mills take it round the goalkeeper and slide it into the net from a tight angle to score his fifth goal in four games.

Lee Duxbury made it 2-2 with a drive from 15 yards in the 83rd minute, but then the ground erupted when Tony Naylor scored the winner with three minutes remaining. Ian Bogie threaded the ball through to him, and as the fans bayed for a shot, he knocked it from one foot to the other before crashing it home.

Unfortunately afterwards Vale only picked up one point from the last three games and finished eighth, four points short of the play-offs, but it was still the club's best season for 63 years. Oldham, managed by Neil Warnock, continued to struggle and were relegated.

The Supporter

This week's Memory Match had been chosen by Mark Walton, a Vale fan for more than 30 years who is originally from Norton.

He says: "For all of Port Vale's Wembley visits, cup heroics, promotion deciders and relegation nail-biters, my favourite memory is an end-of-season match against a team fighting relegation. That was the day the Vale were heading to the Premier League.

As the 1996-97 season entered its final straight, we were making an unlikely bid for the First Division play-offs and after six wins in the previous nine games, another three from the remaining four would surely see us there.

I travelled down from Cumbria, a journey that had become very familiar since I moved there three years earlier, and took my regular seat in the Railway Stand.

There was a sense of expectation on that sunny day and Vale die-hards weren't the only ones to detect it – ITV had sent their cameras to cover the game with an incredulous Gabriel Clarke voicing what many felt – soon-to-be-promoted Barnsley in the top flight was one thing, but Port Vale?

Steve Guppy had gone to Leicester, but otherwise it was the classic line-up (our greatest?) that had taken Vale so far that season, with McCarthy on the right wing, Porter and Bogie in centre midfield, and Mills and Naylor up front.

And it was the latter who brought the first half to life just after the half hour, producing a magical something out of nothing as he so often did in his Vale career, by curling a left-footer into the top corner.

Garnett equalised for Oldham on half-time and Vale, for whom Rudge threw on Talbot and Corden, battered away in the second period until Mills, enjoying his late-season purple patch, hit a shot from a tight angle on the by-line so hard that it went in off the keeper's body.

No truly great game is complete without tension and agony, and the visitors duly levelled again with less than 10 minutes to go. A draw wasn't enough.

Then Bogie slipped the ball to Naylor in the area. He jinked one way, came back outside, and finally, when it seemed the chance had gone, he fired it high into the net.

A packed Bycars (remember that?) exploded; the Railway Stand reverberated to 'We are going up!'.

It wasn't to be, of course – Stoke, cruelly, and Wolves had other ideas, but a point in the final game at Palace sealed our best finish since 1934.

And the little maestro Naylor, now a permanent fixture in my all-time Vale XI, left me with a golden memory of a spring day when the Vale were going to the Promised Land."

The Players

Tony Naylor, the leading scorer with 20 goals that season, says: "It was a great time but also a frustrating one.

"It certainly made a change from looking at the other end of the table, which we were used to doing. It was so near and yet so far as far as the play-offs were concerned, and I'm sure if we'd have had a bit more money behind us we could have made it the following season, but the team began to be broken up.

"Looking back though, it was really enjoyable and I'll never forget it, as it was the highest level I achieved as a player. Port Vale trying to get into the Premier League? Sounds bizarre, but it could have happened."

Neil Aspin was in the Vale defence that afternoon. He says: "The play-off possibility came as a bit of a surprise really because we had struggled up until Christmas. "Then we won four in a row to pull clear and started to win crucial games thanks to having regular goalscorers in Naylor and Mills. We had a very experienced team and that helped, and I much preferred that sort of pressure to the one you get when fighting relegation.

"The way things were at the club, we had to sell our best players to balance the books. I thought at the time that it was the best opportunity we would ever have of reaching the play-offs and that we might never get another chance.

"Unfortunately history has proved that to be the case, but it was a great time and I will always have fond memories of the club."

Neil originally joined the Vale in 1989 from Leeds United for a fee of £140,000 and went on to make 410 senior appearances, scoring three goals, before leaving on a free transfer in 1999. He then played for Darlington and Hartlepool before becoming player-manager at Harrogate Town. He is presently the manager of FC Halifax Town.