Saturday 3pm: 50 Eternal Delights of Modern Football Read online

  To the girl who listens at the window.

  CONTENTS

  Preface: Or, finding some things to love

  1.Seeing a ground from the train

  2.Watching an away end erupt

  3.Getting the fixture list

  4.Club shops

  5.Saturday, 3pm

  6.Spotting a fellow supporter elsewhere

  7.Listening to the results in a car

  8.Ball hitting bar

  9.Pre-match routines

  10.The first day of the season

  11.Slide tackles in mud

  12.Watching youth games in the park

  13.Carrying on regardless

  14.Belonging

  15.Fat players

  16.Jeering passes that go out of play

  17.Catering vans

  18.Going with Dad

  19.Jimmy Armfield’s voice

  20.Headers

  21.Floodlights

  22.Talking to an old man about football

  23.Visiting a ground for the first time

  24.Physiotherapist ‘races’

  25.Local lads ‘coming through’

  26.Sunday score pages

  27.Shirts on a line

  28.Defensive walls and drop-balls

  29.Club eccentrics

  30.Losing

  31.Watching in bad weather

  32.My daughter listening at the window

  33.Singing

  34.Brackets in scorelines

  35.Standing on a terrace

  36.When the ball goes in the crowd

  37.Knowing where you were

  38.Footballese

  39.Time-wasting

  40.Being at a junction station on matchday

  41.Collectors

  42.Football towns

  43.Striking up a football conversation on a social occasion

  44.Solid fixtures

  45.Club nicknames

  46.The ‘hectic Christmas schedule’

  47.Outfield players in goal

  48.Seeing a team bus

  49.Watching people get player autographs

  50.The last day of the season

  Acknowledgements

  PREFACE

  OR, FINDING SOME THINGS TO LOVE

  It would be easy to write a book listing everything that I dislike about modern football. Lunchtime kick-offs, non-black boots, those massive headphones that players wear, sickening wages and absurd ticket prices. I could go on. Goal-line technology, the number of people who sit on dug-out benches, Robbie Savage, after-goal music, ‘false number 9s’, and other attempts to sully the chaos and magic of the game with science and theory.

  In January 2015, the FA, television and marketing colluded to smear filthy icing on this vulgar cake: they made the FA Cup Third Round last for five days. The FA Cup Third Round. Football’s Christmas. The BBC incessantly referred to the ‘magic of the FA Cup’; if they said it enough, we might just believe it. As I tried to comprehend a Third Round tie being on television in the slot usually reserved for DIY SOS, my mind descended into a dark place: did I even like football any more? What, beyond the fact that I am locked in an abusive, one-sided relationship with my team, kept me going along to matches, and still caring?

  As with so many great thinkers, the answer came to me in a north-eastern branch of Wetherspoons. At one end of the pub was a games machine with two discarded crutches leaning against it. Perhaps a miracle had occurred during a game of Deal or No Deal. At the other, hundreds of old hardback books lined shelves. It was supposed to give the feeling of a private library in an Edwardian professor’s villa. If you ignored the couple in the corner necking Apple Sourz, it wasn’t far off. There were novels, reference works and text books weighty enough to concuss the sturdiest of County Durham schoolchildren. And there was Delight, by J. B. Priestley. It fitted beautifully into my wife’s handbag.

  I have read a number of Priestley’s novels, and his ‘through a turnstile, into . . . a more splendid kind of life’, from The Good Companions, is my favourite piece of football writing. Possibly any writing, come to think of it. Delight, though, is a non-fiction endeavour in which a self-confessed ‘Grumbler’ imparts all that is good in the world. Priestley was writing his way out of despondency with grim and grey post-war Britain. In short essays, we share his delight with ‘Shopping in small places’, ‘Frightening civil servants’, the ‘Sound of a football’ and 111 other topics.

  On the train home to Scotland, my FA Cup sickness still hovering, I began a list, the result of which is this short book. My football ‘delights’ try hard not to wallow in nostalgia, for that can only lead to regret at what is lost. Nor do they descend into laments for lost terraces, or ‘against modern football’ posturings. They are about good things that are. In a useful side effect, these passages go some way to explaining our nature, and I hope they are helpful in demonstrating why we are as we are, and justifying season ticket renewals.

  Most of all, this book is here to remind you – when faced with five days of the Third Round or Football League ‘rebranding’– why we care.

  1

  SEEING A GROUND FROM THE TRAIN

  There is nothing in the carriage which suggests football. It’s perhaps a Tuesday morning or a Thursday afternoon. There will be two or three people talking into their phones about missed meetings, or giving Paul from Sales the ‘heads up’ on something, or booking manicures. Others idle through free newspapers, checking the television listings ahead of another night in. Some jab at their laptop keyboard or a tablet screen. But not me: I have the vague feeling that a flicker of Edgeley Park can be caught, so I am looking out of the window.

  The ordinariness of a midweek carriage helps make the spotting of a football ground from a train an act of escapism. In this setting Selhurst Park or London Road or Gayfield – it hardly matters – are giving me a flirty glance and painting bright a vanilla hour.

  I am probably the only one staring from the window, me and my lecherous eye, and the ground is grateful for that. It nods back and takes me momentarily elsewhere: my nostrils can smell fried onions, my ears hear men caterwauling about lottery tickets and programmes.

  The most seductive have floodlights, iron pillars like four beckoning fingers. Catch them illuminated from some lonely night train in Coach H and the heart flutters. It is also hollowed by the feeling that life, football, is happening without me.

  Sometimes the railway runs so close that I can almost touch the turnstiles. I can see details that Saturday souls, now cooped up in their offices or doing the school run, are missing.

  This is a private show; only I know that the nets have been removed, that a lone groundsman is shaking his head in the six-yard box, that the physiotherapist’s car is in the chairman’s parking space.

  And then the moment is gone. The train is pulling into the station and it is Tuesday morning again. For the last few minutes, though, I have been somewhere else.

  2

  WATCHING AN AWAY END ERUPT

  It has to be a large following for the full effect. Away ends in which 143 supporters sit freckled across plastic seats don’t work. When their teams score, they resemble the survivors of a shipwreck waving for help. There must be at least a couple of thousand fans for this delight. Best of all if the away end is tight to the pitch and a sell-out.

  It is best, too, if the supporters have travelled far. Their day out will have taken planning, and either tight budgeting or a carpe diem moment with credit card to hand. They will have set out early, meaning time to drink and be merry or work themselves into a state of mind where nothing in the world matters so much as a football match.
All of this adds to the explosion when their team scores, the goal in itself a justification for time and money.

  Who are these away fans? Lads and lasses on the minibus, probably in their twenties or younger, with first jobs and no jobs; the man in the Audi taking a day off from management consultancy, his retired schoolteacher dad in the passenger seat. All the rest, too: old schoolmates and their cousins, exiles who left to find work, teenagers finding something to define themselves by, whole families, and pensioners with five layers on. So many different people, of course united by their team, as we know, but also sharing the raised stakes of travel and away days. It all adds to what happens when the ball goes in.

  If you are watching an away end erupt then it is likely that you are in the home seats. You are probably, then, supporting your own team, and your heart is stubbed by the goal. Yet still you can find something impressive about that tremor in the far corner.

  For the watcher, it happens gradually. The shot deflects in or the header bangs a post and trips over the line (the goal itself has to come from open play and matter to the scoreline, and the celebratory reaction is noisier and barmier in direct proportion to its speed, surprise and significance.) There is a one-second delay, and you see that corner leap before you hear it howl. The noise it makes is wild, not scriptable. There is the vague shape of a, ‘Yyyyyyyyeah . . .’ which collapses into a sustained throaty holler. It lasts until the ball is back on the centre-spot and the PA announcer is ruefully announcing the scorer with the opposite of fanfare. At this point it gives way to a chant; the celebration is the orchestra tuning up, the song their first happy piece.

  What makes it so good to watch is the anarchy of movement. Berserk limbs convulse. It is drunken nightclub dancing but on tightly-tiered rows. Hands are not raised for musical notes, but fists are held to the sky in salute of whichever God gave us goals away from home.

  If you are watching and enjoying this spectacle, then you have probably been among it, and you will know exactly what is happening. Strangers are hugging, men are leaping from one row to the next, one or two are tumbling down the steps between seating blocks, and a fair few are at the front, engulfing players and being manhandled or taken away by men in bright coats. When it is done, and play is let loose again, shin gashes are checked and spectacles looked for.

  Those among this happy bedlam are remembering why they’ve spent £150 they can’t afford. All over again, they are reminded why they bother.

  3

  GETTING THE FIXTURE LIST

  The thirty days of June and the thirty-one of July. In an odd year they drag, time is gloopy. Summer is about staging posts: players are freed and loanees go home; news of the pitch being reseeded or season ticket numbers being up; early transfer rumours; pre-season friendlies announced. Then, just before new signings, the return to training and remembering how beige pre-season friendlies are, arrives Fixtures Day. To some of us, it is as significant as a hundred sainted bank holidays or anniversaries.

  In dark summers, the new fixture list is a lasso cast towards golden August, snaring it closer. Our partners for that summertime dance matter to an extent they wouldn’t at any other time of the season: ‘Who’ve you got first?’

  We are able to plot far beyond that day, too. The fixture list is a map, allowing us to see where we will be in five or eight months, and perhaps even what mood we will be in at a specific time of day in February. As we peruse this menu of the nine months ahead, we will pick out certain defeats and tally up points totals. It may even be possible to identify the exact April fixture at which promotion will be squandered. There will be matches to look out for – birthday and Christmas fixtures, derby ties, fancied away trips – and the panic-inducing realisation that a cousin’s wedding clashes with a home game. The list is full of innocence in its blank state now, and there is anticipation in imagining it later, daubed in plot and detail.

  Though probably first seen on a phone or computer screen, the fixtures only really come true when read on paper. Home games are bold, as if they matter more, away ones emaciated. Opposition names are evocative, reading them in one go twice over is rhythmic, like listening to a poem about disappeared rural railway stations. There are surprise names that can strike up warm sentimentality, a long-forgotten old flame of a team returned to your division via unlikely promotion. These fixtures are delectable when first released, and then all over again as they appear in different forms: the grid with teams on the x and y axes, and dates in tiny boxes; the official card picked up in the club shop; the statistics pages of the programme.

  Everything is brand new, all is forgiven, and names on a list represent what is possible. The release of the fixtures is a reassurance that, yes, football is coming back, and life will begin again.

  4

  CLUB SHOPS

  Not megastores or city centre shops. These are usually – but not always – attached to the grounds of smaller clubs.

  There can linger a feeling that club shops were an afterthought: often they are in an unloved corner of a stadium, or even a Portakabin. It means visiting takes commitment and sometimes a detour. The supporter has to work hard for a cheap mug sporting the club crest (which people at work always mention) or a garish team-shirt-shaped cushion. The best club shops have an air of bedlam. Two or three staff fail to serve the needs of 30 or 40 souls who have filtered in after a match, more if the team has won. Victory creates a desire among people to advertise their attachment to a club, or make a winning day last longer with the purchase of a DVD to watch at home later. Some are just there to keep warm.

  The staff – very often women called Janet – have a special air for some of us still mesmerised by football: after all, they are on the same payroll as the players, they must know things . . . transfer tittle-tattle, who punched who in training.

  There are shirts of all sizes hanging on the walls. Home shirts create steady interest and strong sales, a club’s standard issue livery. Away versions possess an exotic, outsider chic and attract intrigue and a cult following, while goalkeeper shirts are rarely coveted curios. If you’re lucky, you can find a bargain bin with last season’s socks and shorts for three or four quid. Away from there, the aforementioned mugs loiter alongside other household wares branded with club badges and ‘Est. 18-something-or-other’. There will be an odd collection of books, usually by local authors or ex-players, and perhaps even programmes. The dream, of course, is a separate programme hut.

  A lot of the customers in a club shop are children. They know, if they support the same team as their father, that his financial logic goes out of the window when something says ‘Nottingham Forest Football Club’ or ‘Preston North End’ on the side of it. A yellow t-shirt that would be £3 in Primark is well worth £11.99 if, across the chest, are emblazoned the words ‘Leeds United’. Dad suddenly has an interest in bedding, too, where a duvet design announces Barnsley’s 1912 FA Cup victory.

  There are moving scenes to be observed in club shops. Little girls beaming as they queue with their first club shirt on a hanger in their hands. Men finding an obscure away pre-season friendly programme they have been after for years, and then celebrating in their own reservedly chuffed way. New grandads spending a fortnight’s pension on bibs, babysuits and anything small enough to fit a new grandchild and inform him or her who they support.

  Club shops seem to live outside the rules of capitalist economy. For whole weeks at a time they exist with only a few customers troubling their branded doormats. They dwell away from the high street and rarely advertise outside the programme. These are old curiosity shops, eccentric and otherworldly. Let us salute the club-crested pencil case!

  5

  SATURDAY, 3PM

  As I write, it is three o’clock on a Saturday and I am on edge. I should be somewhere else. A desk is the wrong place to be, a computer screen the wrong thing to be looking at. Saturday at three o’clock is the mooring in a football fan’s week, his or her North Star.

  The radio is on, bringing m
e goals every few minutes, tiny chinks of glee in Norwich and Carlisle. It takes me all over the country, playing sounds from elsewhere like a Beatles record snuck into 1960s Leningrad. It numbs some of the pain.

  When I’m not at a match I have the solace of picturing what’s going on. I can close my eyes and enter a shadow world of programme sellers packing up their unsold stock, burger men turning down the heat and keeping things warm until 5pm, late fans jogging for the turnstiles and worrying about their wheezes, and the crowd’s collective rallying cry just before the whistle. I still wish I was in a football ground, though.

  For all the distortions, the Sunday lunchtime and Thursday night kick-offs, this is football time. Instinct can’t be removed by meddling television companies, and that is a quiet victory. At three o’clock on Saturdays, we know who we are, where we belong, and where we should be even when we aren’t. Not everyone has that. We’re actually very lucky. For us there is a fixed break from the complications and obstacles of being human: family life, test results, redundancy threats, damp walls, that last week in a month with £23 to live on, news bulletins bulging with sadness and guns.

  We have an escape, whether actual or imagined, being at the match or being transfixed by Jeff Stelling, scheduled once a week between August and May. Being a football fan entitles us to a temporary, recurring retreat, a short holiday from real existence. Our lives can be in chaos and nothing seem fixed. Nothing except how we feel on a Saturday at 3pm, when we are elevated into blissful and infuriating distraction. What a privilege that is.

  6

  SPOTTING A FELLOW SUPPORTER ELSEWHERE

  It doesn’t have the same effect if the team is Manchester United or Arsenal. There is little surprise in noticing a Liverpool shirt in Singapore, though if the wearer is a local then that is a whole other charm in itself – football, the jaded world’s unifier. No, it has to be Oxford United, Tranmere Rovers or some such.

  There you are, a Colchester United supporter visiting relatives in Fort William, when you spot a ‘Don’t Follow Me, Follow the U’s’ sticker in the back window of a Ford Focus. There you are, a backpacking Plymouth Argyle devotee in Thailand. On the beach, a man sports a club-crest tattoo. You greet this fellow Pilgrim you have never before met as if he were your best friend, the footballing version of saying ‘hiya’ to a celebrity in the street. There you are, a Notts County fan on a long weekend in New York when you spot a black-and-white-striped shirt-wearer queueing in front of you to go up the Empire State Building. Sometimes you might decide to approach these long-lost family members, because talking about potential summer signings several thousand miles from home is a wonderful thing (a warning, though: make your introduction only when such visual clues are in place and do not judge on accent alone – there is real disappointment in meeting someone from your pocket of the world who has never bothered with the team, the team you feel defines that pocket).