The-Game-Revisted-Selection
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CHAPTER 5 Playing At Home Maybe the ghosts of home supporters are cheering you on? Most football fans have a central message. No matter how shambolic you might think our ground is, we really LOVE this place. Most football grounds were not set up to be especially beautiful palaces, but they were always a safe space for locals. A spiritual place. A place of pilgrimage. An altar, of sorts. We won’t go on here about football as a substitute for religion, but a stadium is a kind of sacred gathering ground, a destination, an Oz at the end of the rainbow. Just as Glastonbury has come to signify much more than an ancient religious centre, a football ground is active and ‘Big Open Discussion’ - Barnsley, 2014 earthquakes of the human spirit regularly happen there. (SRC) JW: ‘Earthquakes of the human spirit’ is a wonderful SRC: The idea of home for me, is of an immovable object: phrase. The home football ground is not just about bricks it’s a material thing of course, but it is also an identity and and concrete, that’s clear. It is much more about what a sense of place. Home is where most of us want to be at the stadium means to local people: a beautifully painted Xmas – with our families – and home in a football sense is wall, or some familiar and friendly girders can carry all just an extension of this. A site where your forefathers and kinds of messages and comfort, missed by most of us. ‘Blood Red Road End’ - Barnsley, 1993 mothers also trod. It has a history. It’s yours to decorate. But it is also about how aspects of that meaning can make (SRC) it an oppressive and threatening place for visitors, the JW: Home has a very special meaning in football, of enemy. Being an away fan is enjoyable – the trip and all course: we speak a lot about ‘playing at home’ and being that invasive singing and chanting – but it’s also a kind of existing homes and what urgently needed to change. about poor facilities, terrible toilets or even difficulties in ‘drawn at home’ and ‘home advantage.’ It certainly seems intrusion. Sometimes, you can feel like an unwelcome and Some of those favourite nooks and crannies, which seeing the match in some grounds. We may have wanted to make a major difference to results. The statistics say a very unappreciated guest in the away end. And each defined our homes – which made them ours – would now to wash our hands of some of the old eyesores, but we that, on average, home teams win more than half their football club has its own message for visitors, encoded in have to go. Could we hold on to the soul of our football were still pretty clear-eyed about keeping all existing games whilst away teams only win one quarter. That’s its stadium. There is a kind of siege mentality thing which grounds? Football League clubs and defending their homes. Non- quite a split. Referees can be swayed by a home crowd. goes on around ‘our’ home patch. Only when something fans must have wondered why. And clubs can have problems switching homes – check huge that affects us all occurs – like a Hillsborough, for JW: We could all see, I think, that Lord Justice Taylor’s out the recent West Ham situation. How is it that a stadium example – can football fans easily pull together and share pronouncements in 1990 after Hillsborough were going SRC: What distinguishes this country is that there and its fans can mean so much? a truly collective identity and the associated pain. to produce a new football stadium experience; a much are SO MANY clubs and identities cheek by jowl with bigger shift than the impact of player transfers, or even the next. We value them all as part of the national SRC: It doesn’t add up. Even if you play a match at home SRC: Hillsborough was obviously a key moment, a time the new TV deals. They were going to change our very football story. Germans and Scandinavians and others with no fans (behind closed doors) it’s still an advantage. when we had to reflect on what we valued about our homes. Some of us might have complained in the past look on in amazement (and envy) at this. A dozen 26 27 ‘Green And Pleasant Football Land’, 2019 By Stuart Roy Clarke & Stuart Beveridge © 28 29 CHAPTER 6 Fans Needed ‘Maine Road Was Where It Was At’ - Manchester City, 2011 (SRC) Norwegians arrive at Grimsby Town’s Blundell Park from something of the old ground, their old home, with them. across the North Sea (not in Viking boats, I might add) and The Maine Road stone is a memorial to the former place they are soon taking group selfies against the plain old and its people. It’s repositioned today outside one of the terraced houses neighbouring the ground. posh entrances at the Etihad and is possibly the single- Visitors are fascinated by all this historic detail we have most photographed bit of the new ground. around our football places. Not everything is perfectly I must say I am cheered by the fact that the British arranged in the national football grid, of course, it’s all were shown at this moment to care very deeply about its a bit higgledy-piggledy. It’s like a mad jigsaw – where is football culture. the plan? There may not have been one; football just sort of happened in this way, it took root around the nation. JW: Collectively we cried at Hillsborough and the events The locals in Cleethorpes feel honoured, of course, that of 1989 and collectively we responded to what Lord visiting Norwegians want to photograph their old houses Justice Taylor said in his report and with some spirit of – they even sweep the front step. togetherness we rolled out the red carpet for the game’s I am sure stadiums – our homes – that were sited in return, possibly to a new golden period. We prioritised it densely peopled areas, rather than plonked like a business and got the thing rebuilt not quite overnight but over a unit in an industrial estate, speak to us much more as fans. few years and moreover – with some care and with some West Ham fans queue at Upton Park, as tickets for their FA Cup match When Manchester City moved across the city to the Etihad love. against Fulham go on sale. February 1958 in 2003 the club instinctively knew that they had to take (Mirrorpix) 30 31 CHAPTER 10 Final Score (Well Almost) broadcasters, an opportunity to dissect the match so far – and cram in the requisite adverts. One way the game has certainly changed at the top level is the computer-aided half-time expert analysis, but also the messing about with kick-off times. It was so much simpler when everyone kicked off at the same time, on the same day. In the days when all matches kicked off at 3pm on Saturdays and finished around ten-to-five, sports newspaper men lived on their nerves. Most football grounds didn’t even have a clock back then, so it was almost complete guesswork for fans (and editors) when games would end. ‘Holding Back Time’ - Clydebank, 1995 (SRC) JW: We are over half-way through our conversations. The Valiant Football League Ladders,1965-66 It feels right that we have a chapter at this point, about the ritual of time itself, and its interruption. Times have changed, we say, as if we are heading towards something JW: That is quite a talent. At half-time, before mobile the important national developments the scoreboard else. Something better? Something later? After half-time? phones intervened and when every match kicked off at attendants could get back to watching their own match, A reckoning time? three o’clock, there would also be round-ups of all the and with a grandstand view. I think this connecting up of scores around the grounds. The men inside their strange all these local skirmishes to the national football battle SRC: What is it about half-time at a football match? The old ABCDEF huts had one eye on the pitch and their ear to was part of the enjoyment of everyone playing at the commentators often say about managers that they can BBC radio. How quickly can we get the half-times out? Or same time. Afterwards, the Evening Pink or Football Green ‘hardly wait’ to get their players in the dressing-room, as if else you watched stewards walk slowly around the pitch newspapers were printed all around the country with something magical can happen there. More importantly, ‘Scoreboard’s Winter Cheer’ - Shrewsbury Town, 1991 carrying the score numbers to pin next to the half-time match reports, results on the front page and late scores it’s as if half-time can actually stop time in its tracks. A (SRC) letters listed only in the match programme. ‘Is he carrying in the Stop Press. All this within 30 minutes of matches chance to reset the clock, put things right. a five? Who can be five down at half-time?’ ‘Which match ending. How did they do it? SRC: At Clydebank there was something really novel: a is D?’ You could hear the crowd gasp as an outlier score JW: For the players and coaches it is a chance to guy whose role was no less than to ‘hold back time’ with went up: ‘Shrewsbury beating Watford 4-1! At half-time!’ JW: My dad used to send me out to get the pink Football recalibrate.