So they jumped on a plane to Mexico and watched all five of England’s games in one of the most memorable World Cups ever.

The foursome, who are the subject of new documentary Lost Down Mexico Way, arrived in the country not even knowing Spanish was the national language.

Gary, now 63, and living in Atlanta, told the programme he orchestrated the plan, but that the others were more than happy to go along with it.

Nicknamed Adder in those days, he recalls: “The Black Country was pretty grim back then. I was excited. One big, massive adventure for the taking. Mexico World Cup. Get in.

 

“We had never done anything like it before. I had about £500 saved up before I lost my job.”

Meanwhile, Stuart, who had not long lost his father, had another motivation — he had three Crown Court appearances at the time.

Gary says: “He’d just done three years out of a six-year stretch.

“He got done for robbing the local Post Office and then he got done for accidentally running down three Southampton fans down in the south coast watching the football.”

As the gang waited at Stourbridge train station with just one bag each and a few hundred pounds in their pockets, Gary explains that Garry, known as Rabbithead and who died in 2024 from pancreatitis, was late.

It was because he was sneaking out without telling his girlfriend Janet, who was also the mother of his three-year-old daughter Nicole.

Gary remembers: “He’d thrown his bag out the window, gone downstairs, told the missus he was nipping out for a pint of milk.

“Hope she wasn’t waiting for the milk for too long because he was gone for 12 years.”

He recalls that he was excited as the train pulled away from the platform, but Stuart appeared pensive.

Gary says: “He was looking back and back and back at the town and getting more emotional.

“I didn’t know it at the time that he was saying goodbye to England.”

Dad-of-four Stuart, now 63, who lives in Houston, Texas, and works in the car industry, says he was thinking, “Am I going to make this work? This is my salvation.

“We were watching Duran Duran videos filmed in Rio and Bowie filming in Australia and I knew I just wanted to travel.

“When the chance came, I just thought, ‘Why not?’, even though we knew nothing about Mexico as there wasn’t the internet.”

The four flew from Birmingham to Gatwick then 5,000 miles to San Antonio, in Texas, where they caught buses to Monterrey in Mexico.

Stuart says: “It was crazy, we had no clue.” And Gary adds their accommodation was “kind of dodgy”.

 

England’s first game of the tournament was a disappointing 1-0 defeat to Portugal at the Tecnologico Stadium in Monterrey.

After watching the match, the group headed north and crossed the border to South Padre Island, in Texas, for some sun. It was a turning point for Stuart.

He says: “I thought to myself I could stay here, I could get a job here and leave old Blighty.” But it was not just a time for reflection, as the group also partied hard.

Remembering an occasion in a bar, Stuart says: “We’re all in our early 20s, we’re all fit, we’re all dressed in tracksuits and England tops.

“People come and start talking to us. ‘Hey, are you the England soccer team?’. And one of the lads said, ‘Yeah, we’re the England football team’.

“So all these girls are coming up to us asking for autographs and someone comes up to me and, ‘Oh, who are you, sir? What’s your name?’.

“I said, ‘I’m Peter Shilton and he is Gary Lineker’.”

Gary adds: “All of a sudden they said, ‘Could the England team come on stage and take a bow.

“We were all looking and thinking, ‘They’re on about us here’.”

The men said they embraced their “fame”, climbing on stage to bow and signing autographs on napkins.

Gary adds: “It was the whole nine yards, it was brilliant.”

They also used their status as the “England squad” for more nefarious means.

Gary says: “This one cougar girl, a beautiful, beautiful stunner chats to Stuart and he says, ‘Yeah, I’m the goalkeeper. I’m Peter Shilton, watch out for me on TV’.

“So he gets off with her that night and we next see her in the morning.”

As well as romancing and partying, the lads got to see plenty of football.

England’s second match of the group stages was back in the same stadium in Monterrey. Again it was a disappointing result, 0-0 against Morocco.

 

This left them with a must-win match against Poland at the nearby Estadio Universitario in San Nicolas de los Garza.

Up stepped star striker Lineker to score a vital hat-trick — and England’s 3-0 win was enough to see them through to the last-16 knockout stages.

Another 3-0 victory, this time over Paraguay at the Azteca stadium in Mexico City, set up the now-infamous clash against Diego Maradona’s Argentina in the quarter-final.

Again in the Azteca, which also saw the opening game of the current World Cup, the lads were there to witness England’s controversial 2-1 defeat — and that Hand of God goal from Maradona.

Gary said: “Even in the stadium it was clear [it was a handball], every person in the stadium could see what Maradona had done — apart from the referee.”

The tense match took place just four years after the UK had defeated Argentina in the Falklands War and the stadium was packed with Argentinian fans.

Afterwards, Garry was chased by rival supporters. He stumbled off a bridge and ended up in hospital for a few weeks with a fractured skull and broken arms and legs.

Meanwhile, David was stabbed in the leg with a flag pole.

 

While the match marked the end of England’s run in tournament, it did not mean that the four friends were coming home to the Black Country. David ended up staying in Monterrey, eventually running a school as a head teacher.

The other three settled in the US after moving to South Padre to find work.

Gary, who now lives in Atlanta and has two children, says: “You could get a job anywhere. I had three jobs in the first three or four weeks.”

Now retired, he went on to build a sewage and drain equipment business that had an annual turnover of £20million.

Garry also lived in Atlanta as a painter. Before his death, he contacted his daughter Nicole, who was in Huddersfield, on Facebook.

They had formed a positive relationship, but veterinary receptionist Nicole, 42, told reporters that her mum Janet had still not forgiven her ex for hopping on a flight to Mexico without telling her.

She added: “My mother is still fuming about it now.”

Meanwhile, Garry’s sister Fiona was no less honest, saying: “Garry used to say, ‘I can’t look after a goldfish, let alone a child’.”

With the World Cup currently back in Mexico, as well as Canada and the US, Gary reunited with Stuart last week to watch England’s opening game, a 4-2 win over Croatia at the Dallas Stadium in Texas

Ever-cheeky England fan Gary and his son even managed to gatecrash a Croatian VIP box, where they necked free booze and food before settling in to their £2,200 seats.

Gary and Stuart also reunited with Steve “Texas” Dawson, from Dallas, who they met on their first trip to Texas in 1986.

Gary says: “It was amazing to see the lads because it had certainly been a while.

“The place was absolutely packed around the stadium. All the bars were rammed but once you got inside it was just incredible.

“It is the best stadium I have ever watched England in and they’ve certainly come a long way since Mexico ’86.

“Back then they were all raw and rough, now they are absolutely state-of-the-art futuristic things with air-conditioning.

“Once we got inside it was much easier to get a drink. There was a bar every 20ft and a restaurant every 50ft.”

He says it was “special” going to the game with his old mates. Head teacher David, who still lives in Monterrey and has four children with his wife, could not join them.

Gary adds: “Myself, Stuart and Steve had never all been to an England game together.

“Afterwards we went back to the hotel and stayed up until 2am having a few beers and chatting and reminiscing.

“The game was absolutely fantastic, I think we’re really rolling now and we’ll go deep into the tournament.

“The fans were great and the atmosphere was something else around the stadium.