Back On The Road To Wembley

With Maidenhead's premature cup exit, coupled with my wife's resolve to beat the global financial crisis and carry on shopping, giving me a free Saturday, I elected to get back on the road to Wembley. The easiest game to get to from my West London home was at Ashford so I jumped on the tube and headed west on the Piccadilly line to the dystopian city of the future that is Heathrow Airport. Having been buzzed all the way by planes approaching the runway, I was pleasantly surprised that Ashford's ground, despite sitting adjacent to the airport, is off the main flight path, indeed from my seat in the stand which meant I had my back to terminal 4, it was only the huge oil tanks behind the goal which gave the location away. Ashford's Short Lane ground actually sits in the village of Stanwell, which brought happy memories of a famous cricketing victory on the pitch next door when I led Pinkneys Green to a win against the odds (note to any England selectors reading I am ready to assist in recovering the Ashes next summer). Ashford main claim to fame is that they have to put their county after their name to differentiate themselves from their elder Kent doppelganger, maybe they could change their name to Stanwell and save a lot of hassle. However on current form they could well eclipse their namesake as like the Magpies they have had a surprisingly good start to the season and on the basis of their performance in this game could well mount a serious challenge to play Blue Square South football next season.

Arriving at the ground, I found the typical functional Isthmian League set up, just like the semi detached houses which predominate the outer London suburbs it had everything but you felt they could do better.

Their opponents were Chippenham Town, who following a thrilling replay win over Truro City had managed to fill a coach with supporters for the trip up the M4. Wearing the blue and white club colours, flying the red and yellow Scottish standard, and possessing a troupe of drummers they looked like extras from Braveheart until given away by their broad west country accents.

Not to be outdone, the orange, white and black colours of the home team were well represented behind the other goal and the game started in a suitably passionate FA Cup atmosphere for a crowd of only 277, with songs resounding from either end, the virtues of the West country being contrasted with the "tits, fanny and Ashford" which apparently make Middlesex wonderful.

The tie provided an opportunity to continue the Isthmian v Southern debate which continues to rage amongst the Blue Square South fraternity. This episode saw a victory for the Isthmian, the decisive blow arriving as early as the seventeenth minute when a trailblazing run by Ricky Wellard led to the ball arriving at the feat of striker Scott Harris (oddly wearing the 19 shirt) who made no mistake with his finish. Despite this being the only goal of the game it was an entertaining contest, with Ashford only having themselves to blame for the small margin of victory. They played much the better football thanks in the main to slick midfielders Wellard and the mercurial Paul Johnson, indeed but for Chippenham keeper Chris Snoddy, Ashford would have had the game sewn up by the hour mark.

In contrast Chippenham stuck to the guileless Southern League template (Chippenham were ironically sponsored by "Art", presumably in honour of Le Corbusier's school of brutalism), working hard and threatening from set pieces without ever looking like they could do more than scrape an undeserved replay. The Bluebirds approach was exemplified by centre back Cortez Belle who spent the game either cynically fouling the Ashford attackers or moaning to the ref, and but for the busy efficiency and stabling influence of his captain, left back Kev Halliday, could well have finished the game early. As the game wore on an indeterminate intervention by an Ashford steward behind the goal where the away fans were stood, sparked a war cry of "Chippenham aggro" which translated into a last ditch Chippenham attempt to level the score. Ashford fans responded to this "I love the 70s" revival with a round of "Zigger Zagger" with their heroes showing they could mix it by firmly digging in, in defence of their lead. Chippenham gave it the kitchen sink treatment in the last quarter of the game, but despite a lengthy period of stoppage time with referee and linesman disputing the precise number of minutes left, Ashford held on to make it through to the final qualifying round for only the second time in their history.

Half Man Half Biscuit

Four lads who shook the Wirral, Half Man Half Biscuit have been quietly peddling their wry observations of British life for over twenty years now.
Hailing from the less fashionable side of the Mersey, their sound remains defiantly indie in the original mid 80s sense of the word, and as you would expect from a band led by a lyricist of humble origins born in the 50s, the songs touch on the subject of football more often than not.
This was apparent from their first album Back In The DHSS which closed with "All I Want For Christmas Is A Dukla Prague Away Kit", the title being something of a red herring as Dukla were the favoured team of the Soviet backed Czech regime so never had to change their kit. It is a tale of childhood jealousy which I'm sure we can all relate to:

"So he'd send his doting mother up the stairs with the stepladders
To get the Subbuteo out of the loft
He had all the accessories required for that big match atmosphere
The crowd and the dugout and the floodlights too
You'd always get palmed off with a headless centre forward
And a goalkeeper with no arms and a face like his
And he'd managed to get hold of a Dukla Prague away kit
'Cos his uncle owned a sports shop and he'd kept it to one side
And after only five minutes you'd be down to ten men
'Cos he'd sent off your right back for taking the base from under his left winger
And come to half time you were losing four-nil
Each and every goal a hotly disputed penalty
So you'd smash up the floodlights and the match was abandoned
And the dog would bark and you'd be banned from his house
And your travelling army of synthetic supporters
Would be taken away from you and thrown in the bin"

The follow up long player "Back Again in the DHSS" returns to Eastern Europe with "I Was A Teenage Armchair Honved Fan" whilst "Dickie Davies Eyes" contained the line that the spawned the title for Gillingham fanzine "Brian Moore's head (looks uncannily like the London Planetarium)".
Football pundits are fertile ground for ground for the band, "Gubba Look-a-Likes" conjures up a disturbing image whilst you may hear the following on York Road FM today:

"Lord I've tried the best I can
I've asked everybody in Kazakhstan
but I still don't understand
Bob Wilson, anchorman"

The band are firm fans of Tranmere Rovers and are known to schedule gigs to avoid missing games. On "Friday Night and the Gates are Low" they mourn the arrival of the new breed of football fan:

"When I had my loft
Converted back into a loft
The neighbours came around and scoffed
And called me retro
But they are the type
Who never used to go to the match
Until the family thing got big
In the late eighties"

Appropriately in this supposed era of respect on there is sympathy for the match officials, for example on "Paintball's Coming Home" the band opine "If I were a linesman I would execute defenders who applauded my offsides" whilst who can argue with "The Referee's Alphabet" which ends "Well the Z could be for Zidane, Zico, Zola, Zubizaretta, Zoff, Even Zondervan, but is in fact for the zest with which we approach our work, without this zest for the game we wouldnt become refs, and without refs, well zero"

Floodlit Dreams

According to Ian Ridley, renowned football writer and author of Floodlit Dreams, a football supporter goes through three stages.
Firstly he wants to play for his club, secondly he wants to manage his club, and finally he wants to run his club. It is the third option that Ridley explores in this book, a personal memoir of his time as Chairman of his team since boyhood, Weymouth.
A story which is familiar at least in part to Maidenhead fans as it covers our original doomed foray in the Blue Square South, it is a rare expose of how clubs at our level are run.
True to the dreams alluded to in the title, Ridley bravely describes his journey with Weymouth as a romantic crusade which ends up with him having spent thousands of pounds and with the club in a worse financial situation than the dire one they were in at the start of the story. He cranks up the sentiment with frequent reference to the arts such as the film “Field of Dreams” and the U2 song “One”, but his sharp writing prevents the book from becoming nauseatinly saccharin.
Ridley is a football journalist by trade, much respected for his thoughtful columns in the likes of the Observer and the Mail om Sunday, not to mention his distinctive biographies of Tony Adams and Steve Claridge.
The tale begins in the spring of 2003 with Ridley sat in the Weymouth car park waiting for the verdict of the board on his takeover proposal. With the Terras a quarter of a million pounds in debt they surprisingly rebuff him at first but eventually give in to his persistence in time to see the team struggle to avoid relegation from the Premier Division of the Southern League.
Grasping the nettle Ridley sacks incumbent manager Geoff Butler despite an attempt by his predecessor in the chair to stymie his progressive plans by awarding Butler a new contact. Thus Ridley his left with a blank canvas on which to paint his dream for the club. The move from his Home Counties home back to Dorset is given added poignancy by the sad sub plot of the ailing health of his father who dies before he can see his son transform the club.
This transformation comes astonishingly quickly, Ridley assembling a team on and off the pitch which catapults the club from the fringes of relegation to potential champions within twelve months.
The man who delivers this in the dressing room is new manager Steve Claridge but his appointment perhaps sowed the seeds of Ridley’s swift demise.
Faced with a choice of two ex players in Claridge and Shaun Teale he opts for the Hollywood option of Claridge. That the irrepressible nature of the striker leads to the club being invigorated and virtually reborn cannot be denied, but the money that was required to attract him from the professional game only serves to increase the need for outside investment. This is readily available thanks to the raised profile of the club but unfortunately Martyn Harrison wins the race to be the man to take the Terras to the next level.
One cannot help but wonder if Ridley had opted for the more conservative choice of Teale, already schooled in the mores of non league management, then the club would have progressed at a more manageable rate.
Yet in trying to “Live the Dream” with Claridge Ridley nearly pulls off an unbelievable championship win which would have given promotion to the Conference.
Instead its entrepreneur Harrison who with funds unavailable to the salaried Ridley ultimately takes the Terras up, at the price of mortgaging the future earnings from a ground move that never materialised.
Packed with fascinating financial details of a non league club at our level, ultimately the books serves as a reminder of the thin line between success and bankruptcy that we all know so well.

SHOOT!

The summer of 2008 marked the passing of Shoot! Magazine, a title that was a weekly must buy for the pocket money of any football obsessed youth of the 1970s.
This was an ironic end as when it first appeared on the newsstands in 1969 it as the fresh faced rival to Goal, the weekly project of the long established Charles Buchan Football Monthly. By the late 70s, Goal had disappeared and Shoot! stood alone in the marketplace.
It was at this time that I started to get the magazine and it was a vital passport to the world of soccer at a time when you were lucky to see the highlights of more than four games at the weekend, and newspapers were printed in black and white.
Colour was Shoot's big advantage, whether in the form of the standard pen picture pose or in the action picture. The photography stands up to this day as you will doubtless agree if you dig out your old Christmas annuals from the attic.
The journalism on the other hand was strictly from the typewriter of Colin Cliché, with players always sick as a parrot or over the moon. This was most apparent in the ghosted exclusive columns of the stars of the day such as Kevin Keegan and Bryan Robson.
However that is a minor gripe as there were plenty of features to entertain, inform and educate the young fan, with the "You are the ref!" cartoon quiz of Paul Trevillion being the best example.
Each issue contained a couple of team pictures, and with players less mobile then, over a season you could build up your own library of mug shots for the entire football league. That was really the limit to the scope of the magazine, apart of course from coverage of the international fortunes of the home nations, and the odd feature from Scotland.
"Focus On" provided a weekly window into the mind of a top player with a comprehensive series of questions. Notts County player David McVay stereotyped the responses as "Steak Diana Ross" in the title of his 70s diaries but this at least provided players with scope for humour. For example: "Most Difficult Opponent" would often be "The Missus" whilst "Who would you most like to meet" might be "the person who dented my car". Still from memory there were an awful lot of players eating pizza and listening to George Benson in 1979!
One other essential feature for the statto that lurks in all of us was the Line Ups/Results pages which provided comprehensive details for the professional game in Britain. Looking back now with everything you need at a click of a mouse it is hard to remember how difficult it was to find this information outside of the Rothmans' Annual.
It was this feature though that proved to be Shoot's weak spot, as regular print strikes meant it was often several weeks out of date. When Match came along in 1980 with stats only a week behind, Shoot suddenly found itself playing catch up. At least it still had the league ladders to win your custom at the start of each season!
Throughout the 1980s competition slowly grew with more grown up publications such as 90 minutes and Four-Four-Two appearing, not to mention the fanzines, a phenomenon which Shoot responded to by including a tongue in cheek feature "Ray of the Rangers". It was ironic then that the magazine merged with Roy of The Rovers in the mid 90s, but even a change to a monthly issue could not stem the slide in circulation which ultimately led to its demise in the summer with sales at 33,000 well down for its 250,000 70s heyday.

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."

Green Street

The post 1990 football publishing boom has led to an industry boasting branches into every perspective on the game and its subcultures.
One of the most profitable of these avenues is the hooligan memoir. Although with the subsequent decline in terrace violence you could be forgiven for thinking this is a passing phenomenon, the groaning shelf devoted to the genre in your local bookshop tells its own tale.
Beginning with virtual home made affairs from the likes of Jay Allan and Colin Ward, the major publishers soon jumped on the bandwagon and soon it seemed all the major clubs had at least one account devoted to tales from the terraces in the 70s and 80s. One of the most prolific authors is Dougie Brimson. Professing himself to be anti violence, Brimson has written thirteen books on the subject, earning himself the dubious title of "Yob Laureate".
Beyond the written word, Brimson was responsible for the screenplay for the film Green Street, a fictional tale of clashes between West Ham and Millwall fans.
The film title refers to the gang of West Ham fans who are the film's main focus, the Green Street Elite, which although reflective of a real East End location has no basis in fact.
This last sentiment can be applied to much of the film, a vehicle for Elijah Wood, fresh from defeating the forces of darkness in the Shire, to try and establish himself as a serious actor with normal feet.
The set up sees Wood expelled from his journalism course at Harvard, after being found with drugs planted by his roommate. Unwilling to face his father, he flees to England to stay with his sister and her West Ham supporting husband.
Anxious to live life on the edge, Wood readily accompanies his sister's brother in law to Upton Park to watch the Hammers play Birmingham (although the footage used in the film is of Gillingham), and soon becomes initiated in the world of the GSE.
There then follows a pretty predictable turn of events as we see the GSE cause havoc up and down the country, led by Pete who is keen to live up to the legendary reputation of his predecessor "The Major".
The main theme develops of Wood, the American outsider, edging aside Bovver from Pete's affections to the extent that Bovver crosses the water to offer Millwall fans the opportunity to avenge the death of their leader Tommy's son. Helped by an FA Cup tie between the two clubs the film reaches it's inevitably bloody climax as all involved descend into an orgy of violence with a heavy handed twist or two along the way.
Despite the evidence of a big budget (in Wood's fee if nothing else), to the British eye there are too many obvious errors to give the film the authenticity it would need to bolster a paper thin script.
For example although based in East London, many of the main locations such as the local pub are in West London. Presumably this would not matter to the foreign viewer; neither would they worry about the most obvious bloomer when Bovver goes to meet the Millwall fans. This is signified by him driving past a sign saying "Welcome to Millwall" despite this actual location being north of the river, well away from the Den.
Ultimately the film's final fight scene sums it up. With the director opting for balletic Peckinpahesque slow motion violence to a tear jerking orchestral soundtrack it becomes clear that what we are being presented with is more akin to pornography than social realism.

Cricketing Footballers

The return to our screens of the game show Superstars, in which sportsmen and women from differing backgrounds compete in a range of disciplines, brings to mind a different age when it was possible to play more than one sport at the highest level.Cricket and football provided the ideal opportunity to do this with until relatively recently there being little overlap between the seasons.

Supporters may recall that the likes of Dave Harrison, Steve Croxford and Andy Morley had a twelve month presence in the local sports pages thanks to their performances for local cricket teams, but did you know that up and until the 80s it was not uncommon for players to pursue a career playing professional football and cricket. There is even a select group of individuals who played for England at both sports.

Appropriately enough the double internationals number twelve. They are headed by the Edwardian superstar CB Fry (pictured right). Fry excelled in the summer game scoring over 30,000 runs for Sussex, and captained the England team. His record of eight consecutive centuries still stands. His football career was somewhat shorter but nevertheless in 1902 he led Southampton to the FA Cup Final and was selected for the England team. He also found time to equal the world long jump record, and following retirement sought a solution for world peace by trying to teach the Nazis how to play cricket! It’s hardly surprising that the Albanians asked him to become their King.

Fry was slightly outdone by one of his peers Tip Foster (Corinthians and Worcestershire) who is the only man to captain England at both football and cricket.

The other double internationals, a club to which I guess membership is now closed, were Andy Ducat (Surrey and Arsenal), John Arnold (Hampshire and Southampton), Leslie Gay (Somerset and Corinithians), Billy Gunn (Nottinghamshire and Notts County), Wally Hardinge (Kent and Sheffield United), Alfred Lyttleton (Middlesex and Old Etonians), Harry Makepeace (Lancashire and Everton), Jack Sharp (Lancashire and Everton), Willie Watson (Yorkshire and Sunderland, and Arthur Milton (Gloucestershire and Arsenal).

Milton was the last double international, and was a teammate of Denis Compton at Highbury. Compton, a member of the 1950 FA Cup winning side and the Kevin Pietersen of his day, was only denied double international status by World War Two which deemed his England football caps unofficial.

Following Milton, cricketing footballers tended to fall into the category of solid professionals rather than international stars. Notable names of the 60s and 70s included Jimmy Cumbes (Lancashire and Tranmere Rovers), Phil Neale (Worcestershire and Lincoln City), Chris Balderstone (Leicestershire and Carlisle United) and Ted Hemsley (Worcestershire and Sheffield United).

The odd superstar did mix his sports though, Geoff Hurst played the odd game for Essex, whilst Ian Botham gave rise to the perennial 80s quiz question “Name three England captains who have played for Scunthorpe” when he played a handful of games for the Iron. Viv Richards even played in the 1974 World Cup qualifiers for Antigua before he focused on becoming the best batsman in the world.In latter years cricketers have often trained with football clubs to maintain fitness in the close season, Graham Gooch and Steve Harmison being two famous examples.

The last word however falls to referee Martin Bodenham who has this season graduated as a first class umpire.

The Birth of the Football Fanzine

When the football historians come to assess the latter decades of the twentieth century, the role of the fanzine will be judged to have played a significant part in the evolution of the administration and culture of the sport.

Their heyday was a brief one, lasting from the mid eighties to the end of the century, but their impact in inspiring a generation of football supporters to take a more active role and influence the game they love will surely be felt for many a year to come.This alternative press has led to a consideration of the supporters' viewpoint becoming compulsory with many clubs now giving a seat in the boardroom to a supporters' representative, and some clubs even being wholly run by supporters.

This locates the fanzine in a political setting, and the use of a do it yourself press to agitate for reform is a fine British one, dating back to the early nineteenth century when publications such as the Black Dwarf scurrilously challenged the established order. This tradition re-emerged in that great liberal decade, the 1960s, when the likes of Private Eye, IT and Oz finally began to demolish Victorian values with daring humour.

At this time football was run by autocrats such as Alan Hardaker, at a national level and club level, with players and spectators expected to shut up and be grateful. Jimmy Hill and the players' trade union the PFA took the first step in the players gaining their freedom, by successfully campaigning for the overturning of the maximum wage, but there was no equivalent for the supporters who found themselves expected to pay ever increasing admission in shoddy stadia. With the established press dominated at all levels by tabloid hackery, a gap existed to articulate an alternative supporters' eye view. In the mid 70s a publication called Foul tried to fill this gap but proved to be a lone voice perhaps because of its origins at Cambridge University, a world away from football's working class support base.

Instead it was left to the Punk revolution in the word of music to spark a publishing boom. This movement was spread by a plethora of home made fanzines such as Sniffin' Glue, and the ease with which these bedroom operations spurned a vibrant and entertaining alternative press led by the beginning of the 80s to the conclusion that many young men decided to produce a football version.

Usually club based, the likes of City Gent (Bradford City) and Talk of the Town End (Enfield) had spurned hundreds of imitators by the end of the decade.With the lot of the football supporter becoming an ever more arduous one thanks to grounds which were downright dangerous, not helped by the over zealous attentions of the police, many were inspired to put pen to paper, and with all the publications laced with a healthy dose of humour there was a hungry readership desperate for material more entertaining than the somnolent match programme.

Non club issues also came out such as Off the Ball, The Absolute Game (Scotland), Hit The Bar (North West - a personal favourite) and When Saturday Comes. The latter, originally produced by Juma who now print this programme, assumed a kind of leadership by devoting pages of each issue to a directory of all available fanzines.The movement was spurred on by evidently hitting a nerve as livid officials countrywide tried to stamp it out, the ultimate treatment being meted out to Wealdstone's The Elmslie Ender when it was banned from every ground in the non league pyramid for daring to complain about a last minute penalty!

Naturally Maidenhead United was not immune to this cultural explosion and over the course of this season this programme will look at each issue of the twenty that were produced, starting with Issue One of The Shagging Magpies.