Magpies prepare for their English journey

This article was written in July 2017 for the Maidenhead Voice, a free magazine distributed to 12,000 households in the Maidenhead area.

"Nearly everything possible has been done to spoil this game: the heavy financial interests;... the absurd publicity given to every feature of it by the Press; ... but the fact remains that it is not yet spoilt, and it has gone out and conquered the world."

Writing about football in his 1934 book an English Journey, JB Priestley's words hold as true as ever today, with the tumultuous anticipation felt by all at Maidenhead United at the publication of their 2017/18 fixture list, testament to the innate joy that game provides despite its many ills.
Like Priestley all those years ago, the Magpies will be setting out on their own English journey this season, a first ever nationwide tour following promotion to the National League after winning the Southern division. This will start at Maidstone on August 5th and end at Dagenham in April. In between there will be stops to visit the English Riviera in Torquay, northern industrial heartlands such as Gateshead and Barrow, the nouveau riche of Eastleigh and Fylde, clubs familiar from many a screwed up football pools coupon in the form of Tranmere, Leyton Orient and Hartlepool, the Silkmen of Macclesfield and the Bankers of Halifax, as well as the more familiar home counties suburbs of Woking, Boreham Wood, Sutton and Bromley. There's even a trip over the Welsh border to Wrexham via Chester.
Of course United will be reciprocating the hospitality that awaits them across the land, by welcoming these clubs to York Road, many of them coming to the world's oldest continuously used football ground by the same club, for the first time. This starts with Wrexham, Hartlepool and Orient in August, the latter being the first former top flight club to visit Maidenhead for a league match, whilst the BT Sport cameras will be back to broadcast the Hartlepool game live.
Season tickets to watch all twenty three league matches at York Road are available at bargain prices, £150 for adults, £110 for Senior Citizens, £80 for Under 20s whilst Under 16s can still go free by becoming a Junior Magpie. The ground itself is being improved ready for the bigger crowds which the more august opposition will attract, with the installation of more facilities for hospitality, catering and toilets.
Naturally Alan Devonshire is keen to give his title winning heroes a chance to prove themselves in the higher division but made some judicious moves in the transfer market to augment his squad for the big challenge ahead. Free scoring forward Chinedu McKenzie has arrived from lowly Romford, and midfielder Harold Odametey has been signed from last season’s promotion rivals Hampton, whilst Football League experience has been acquired in the form of central defender Jake Goodman, and striker Jake Hyde.

Silverware is on offer at the start of the season with the 2017 Berks and Bucks Cup Final against Hungerford finally scheduled for July 25th at Slough Town before the historic first National League campaign starts on August 5th at Maidstone.

JB Priestley

As has been noted before in this column, football lacks something of a literary tradition, particularly when compared with cricket. This dearth grows the further back you look with the shining exception of the work of JB Priestley who came to prominence as an author during the inter war years.
Perhaps most famous for his play “An Inspector Calls”, Priestley was born in Bradford and first tasted success with the publication of his 1929 novel “The Good Companions” which contains within its opening pages a description of a football match in the fictional town of Bruddersford.
The passage that follows bears no relevance at all to the rest of the novel but almost eighty years later still represents a perfect exposition of the attraction of football and a ready made speech for any of us who feel the need to justify our love of the beautiful game to sneering acquaintances.
"To say that these men paid their shillings to watch twenty-two hirelings kick a ball is merely to say that a violin is wood and catgut, that Hamlet is so much paper and ink. For a shilling the Bruddersford United AFC offered you Conflict and Art; it turned you into a critic, happy in your judgement of fine points, ready in a second to estimate the worth of a well-judged pass, a run down the touch line, a lightning shot, a clearance kick by back or goalkeeper; it turned you into a partisan, holding your breath when the ball came sailing into your own goalmouth, ecstatic when your forwards raced away towards the opposite goal, elated, downcast, bitter, triumphant by turn at the fortunes of your side, watching a ball shape Iliads and Odysseys for you; and what is more, it turned you into a member of a new community, all brothers together for an hour and a half, for not only had you escaped from the clanking machinery of this lesser life, from work, wages, rent, doles, sick pay, insurance cards, nagging wives, ailing children, bad bosses, idle workmen, but you had escaped with most of your neighbours, with half the town, and there you were cheering together, thumping one another on the shoulders, swopping judgements like lords of the earth, having pushed your way through a turnstile into another and altogether more splendid kind of life, hurtling with Conflict and yet passionate and beautiful in its Art. Moreover it offered you more than a shilling's worth of material for talk during the rest of the week. A man who had missed the last home match of "t'United" had to enter social life on a tiptoe in Bruddersford."
Five years later, Priestley wrote a travelogue called "An English Journey". Cited as an inspiration for Orwell's "Road To Wigan Pier", on arriving in Nottingham, Priestley attended the local derby between Forest and County.
Writing in a similar vein to the Good Companions, Priestley paints a beautiful picture:
"Men who looked at one another with eyes shining with happiness when County scored a goal. There were other men who bit their lips because the Forest seemed in danger"
Yet appropriately enough in the context of the last money mad seven days, looking back at Priestley's writing shows just how little has changed:
"Nearly everything possible has been done to spoil this game: the heavy financial interests;... the absurd publicity given to every feature of it by the Press; ... but the fact remains that it is not yet spoilt, and it has gone out and conquered the world."