I remember it really well. The first I heard of the match being called off was on the Friday. We'd just finished doing what we needed to do to prepare to play Middlesbrough on the Saturday. One of the players had gone home and he phoned me up and said he'd seen on Sky Sports that Middlesbrough weren't going to turn up because they had 'flu. He said "Have you seen this? They're not coming." It was just unbelievable. I'd never heard of anything like that happening in football. I phoned the Premier League. They didn't believe me. They said they'll have to come, they'll bring the youth team. That was the first the Premier League had heard of it, too.
They'd been beaten 5-0 by Liverpool the week before and they did have some injuries, but not that many and they just didn't want to play the game with a weakened team. The strange thing was they didn't contact us earlier in the week and say we've got some doubts about this. In fact, I never spoke to Bryan Robson at all. Looking back I would have expected him to give me a call at some point.
As a manager you do sometimes get times where you've got a lot of illness about, but you play the reserves or the youth team. Now you hear of players who have had swine flu and they're back in two days. They're fit young athletes. Middlesbrough's excuse just wasn't right, it was feeble to be honest.
When I heard they had been docked three points I said those points should have been given to Blackburn. After that I got letters from Middlesbrough fans, who thought I was the villain of the piece. I called one of them back and explained it to him. He was quite surprised to get me on the phone. But he agreed with me in the end.
The funny thing is when the game was replayed and we drew 0-0 that result probably kept us in the Premier League. Jack Walker came into the dressing room. I remember he had tears in his eyes and he said "That was a one-off, it won't happen again." It also sent them down at the end of the season, losing those three points. I don't know who was advising Bryan Robson at that time, but someone should have talked it out with him. At least the Premier League did the right thing. It certainly won't ever happen again.
Then what happened
Middlesbrough were relegated on the final day of the season. Parkes left Blackburn in November 2004 after 34 years at the club and spent five years as assistant manager, caretaker-manager and manager at Blackpool.