The British went for Christmas like there was no tomorrow, but the feeling the morning after was one of wrapping paper.
A spiritual dimension craved for, outside of the church, was finally offered up not even at New Year, but on January 5th/6th with the staging of The 3rd Round of The FA Cup. This is a key date for the British, north and south of the border, shown live on terrestial tv. We feel connected, we feel humbled, ennobled – appreciative of ‘the underdog. We love our uneven battles, uneven playing surfaces, costume dramas, weathers. The winter sun low and yellow was a dazzler.
At Burnley’s Turf Moor there were shades of “It’s A Wonderful Life” but missing the snow. The football club has new faces, but in the corridors there are many of the old faces, albeit looking older and older. Some of the new faces are related to the old faces. Paul Fletcher is back in town only he wasn’t there today – he was in Barbados. He starts tomorrow, waving some wand, building a new old era, including a new stadium.
Before I go on about the magic of the Cup , there are several new stadium plans afoot, so the Burnley story is doubtless replicated elsewhere, albeit in different colours, different accents.
Bristol City, Liverpool and Everton both, Luton Town, Morecambe, Oldham Athletic, Portsmouth, Scunthorpe United, Southend United, Tottenham Hotspur are all seemingly ripping up or repointing what is in some cases more than 100 years of heritage on the same spot. The process of new stadium building is not over. I set out in The Homes of Football (incidentally first shown at Burnley in 1991) to put a face to the changing football culture that it might be a mirror to society. It seems appropriate to continue that portrait given all these big plans in or around town.
At Burnley v Arsenal in The FA Cup, there were applications of lip gloss – the match was being screened live on terrestial tv; there were autograph hunters particularly of Arsenal players; there was barracking from both sides : “You’ve only come to see the Arsenal” versus “We are English, We Are English” versus “You’re just a small town in Blackburn” versus “You’re just a small town in France” versus “You could do with more Foreigners” and “We pay your rent through our taxes” versus “Burnley Burnley Burnley No One Likes Us we don’t care”. On this day Arsenal won the battle of the wits on and off the pitch. In 1961 Burnley would have been more than a match for them. Some of the oldies no doubt pointed this out.
The local couple wandered home up the local streets, through the puddles, flag as cloak on the girl. Past the chip-shops and hardly noticing the showy cheeky boys who had nicked the blag sheets from outside the paper shop heralding the coming of the League leaders to Burnley.
By the time the cars had cleared Turf Moor, the stadium was heralding the next match PLYMOUTH ARGYLE. But not in the Cup. Burnley were out of the Cup for this year.
Without wishing to sound alarmist, all of us need to make a 3 year business plan (which includes personal aspiration) as the world is changing rapidly. Not only are the major rivers full-to-bursting, those little brooks running through the hamlets are in days like these, like torrents. Fords could pen you in, stop you reaching your destination. Added to this the eastern seabord is tilting ever more down into the sea. It’s time to do something. Plan. Make it happen.
On this eastern side sits Newcastle-Upon-Tyne.
On Saturday was coronation day : a new old king of Tyneside returning from a needless abdication. I drive from west to east and back again. Past the castle/cathedral/throne/play-house in the middle : St.James Park. At first light I see Newcastle as one : Blaydon across the River and clear on up the Scotswood Road, looping up through Gosforth, Heaton, Jesmond and Sandyford, through Byker where cars are hardly allowed, to Walker and Wallsend, pausing at Swan and Hunter, with its brightly coloured cranes in semi-dismantlement. No Keegan shirts hung over their vast frames. Just yet. Three lads cycle past, weaving stripes of black and white, fishing rods to the fore. Everyone on this day is bearing flowers and ringing Mum – Valentines Day come early. Rosettes on every chest : on all the staff in the joke shop, all the staff in the bakery.
Ordinary people in the streets knowing exactly why they don’t know why they are smiling (teeth gone to the tooth-fairy).
A magical figure is in town.
Supermarket football
The man in the Liverpool shirt putting shopping in his car looked a bit out of it. When I informed him his reds were losing 1–0 to Havant & Waterlooville, he just shook his head like that dog in the Churchill adverts. Loading his many bags of shopping in the boot.
Then it was my turn. To try and work out one end of the super supermarket from the other. To try and find a shop assistant who knew where things were. They all thought they were in some sort of performance, microphones attached to their mouths.
By the time I found my way back to the car, the man would surely have known of the drama in the game we had both missed.
… is an art possibly lost from the modern game. Legend has it Shankly greeted each player off the visiting team bus assuring them they were terrible and going to lose. A thread of some art picked up from his harsh coal-mining Ayrshire background which also produced Stein and Busby.
Now it is the pantomine tabloid hacks like super Star scribe Brian Woolnough who do the equivalent – willing everyone to lose!
Returning to the noble art, there is another sport on my doorstep which offers a clue as to how it can be done. I hate the charade that is World Wrestling, but as for the original Cumberland & Westmorland outdoor wrestling… here is an excerpt from our local newspaper :
“Some wrestlers have a necessary routine before wrestling. Ted Dunglinson walked into the ring with his very big toes pointing up towards his nose. Alf Harrington used to cast off to the right and circle the ring anticlockwise, before taking hold. The great Northumbrian wrestler Alan Davidson used to thump you into your place on the field with his great chest before a bout. Peter Hunter, more subtly, would take a quiet hold and then utter the killer words “Are you right…lad” before the wrestling started. Alan Jones meanwhile overcame nervousness by going into a rage, entering the ring second – his opponent isolated in the middle. He would then bend forward, legs apart, pull up his socks, adjust both knee braces, fiddle with his bandages (still appearing in a huff), pluck some grass, rub his hands together and then walk with dramatic urgency with a bulldog face into the centre of the ring to take hold of his man. I trained my son to counter such intensity by pretending he hadn’t seen him and turn his back just as raging Alan reached the centre, so that he had nowhere to unleash all that intensity”. (Roger Robson, Cumberland News).
Now, imagine one team on the pitch all having their back turned to the opposition up to the second the referee blew his whistle to commence proceedings. What effect would that have?
