… 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?
Last night in Workington a huge fight broke out involving 200 people. Which sounds fun, at a distance.
But Workington has already its own unique football-kicking-scrum involving everyone, which may look to the eye like a giant fight : it’s the Uppies & Downies which takes place every Easter since anyone can remember, on the Cloffocks. Sacred ground. Of Village Green status. Deeds were written once giving the land over to the people. The deeds are desperately being sought as Tescos has planning permission to concrete over the Cloffocks. This Easter could be the last. Everyone including you are welcome you won’t be eaten alive quite – you can even join in what looks like a mass fight but has noble undercurrents and true, genuine sportsmanship and you’ll leave the match at some unknown hour thinking I am glad I played a part in that.
Star wrestler Chris Walton was killed on the tracks by a freight train near Haltwhistle whilst delivering coal. In 2001 he was signed by Newcastle United’s soccer academy whilst developing as a Cumberland wrestler until he damaged a kidney when being thrown to the floor. Both careers ended.
His return to the ring was quite miraculous and he took titles above his weight, using skill and tactic to outsmart.
Dad, the game has changed. It’s no longer one on one, but move and pass. Loyalty less to one team, but career-moves every season or so. Contact isn’t what it was – the referee embarrasses you – makes you see red, should you get stuck in. Players want to play but are mindful they could get sent off or sidelined if they are over physical and get injured. Players once played through niggling injuries like complete cartilages gone but now you’d be found out after seconds (by the cctv) should you have as much as a nervous twitch.
The ashfelt where we used to stand is gone. The Rookery position where we you used to stand is now a no-mans land between two sets of supporters. Many of the players names are unpronouncable but the Diddie David Hamiltons of this world have become better at prounouncing them. At Watford a player was deported only to be hailed back through public outcry. You can’t park in the streets by the ground like you used to as people living near the grounds tend to have their own cars now.
There are no characters left now in football, everybody is an athlete or a professor of the game but then comes Jimmy Bullard and Kevin Keegan so I’m talking rubbish. The game keeps reinventing itself and you would love it now.
Gotta go, African Cup of Nations is live on tv and the mighty Cameroon are taking on the well organised Tunisians. I know, they were joke sides in your day.
FAVOURITE SONGS FAR FROM A DESERT ISLAND INDEED HERE & NOW WHILST BEING INTERVIEWED ABOUT MY FESTIVALS PHOTOGRAPHY BEING TURNED INTO A BOOK & AHEAD OF THE COMING FESTIVALS SEASON. Songs which would melt me particularly if heard over a tannoy, approaching a windswept football match of an evening. Probably cold.
Sweet Caroline, The Northern Ireland Football Supporters but not committed to a tame recording – one can hear them sing it live at any home match.
Sarah, Bob Dylan – The dream of perfect happiness, in a family way, on the beach “the children with their buckets to fill”.
When Will I See You Again, The Three Degrees – I live for that next hit. People have mistakenly thought I live in the past and in remembering things.
The Power of Love, Frankie Goes To Hollywood – Approaching Xmas, about the time they start filling up the shops with junk, I get the warmest of feelings coming at me out of the darkness.
Fields of Gold, Sting – For the rest of the year it’s all about summer, or the loss of.
A Different Corner, George Michael – When I arrived in The Lakes I soon met the vicar’s daughter and fell head over heels in love with her and the entire holy place. Then we were forced apart and I waited for her, for months on end.
Babylon, David Gray – At Selsey, where we always holiday, and go on all the rides and bumper cars, I was gobsmacked by this song on the radio when buying Cadbury’s Cream Eggs in The Spar.
Long & Winding Road, The Beatles – I married an old teenage sweetheart at Selsey, with high hopes, but came to regret it.
The River, Bruce Springsteen – I walked too far from my father’s shadow – I know that now – we should have worked together on something – he was slogging his guts to provide and I was filling myself with the University of Life. Then he died and to my surprise I found I was a father.
Lakelands, Dean Friedman – I am married to The Lake District. No one has come close. Who is Sarah you sing about in Lakelands? I asked Dean Friedman before his set at a festival. I wouldn’t say, I can’t remember and I’m not playing it anyway, he insisted. Then during sound practice I heard him teasing (me) with some of the verses.
Roll Away The Stone, Ian Hunter & Mott The Hoople – We lack the social functions like barn dances to meet and greet people (and not just potential partners) PROPERLY.
Do Anything You Wanna Do, Eddie & The Hot Rods – people in cities haven’t got a hope in hell. They need to get out to the countryside.
In The Garden, Van Morrison – It start and ends in the garden, I feel. There must be some sort of judgement of us and our lives. Or what’s the point?
The moment I heard it
…the plan to take a 39th step abroad, I was excited. Me of all people with my ‘fans’ background.
I am used to putting on shows about British football mostly for the British people but also with the foreign market in mind – I want to show off what is peculiarly ours to those that would lap it up on first sight and those who are harder work, perhaps with their own agenda. British football particularly has thrilled me over the years. Only thIng is I’m probably the only one who insists on seeing all my exhibitions home and abroad.
Even so, my perception is a weekend perfectly placed in the exact middle of the season which is unlike any other and which is when the homegrown fans can have a day off, put their feet up, ask all their mates around and have a great time watching all 10 premiership pairings one after the other, with something at stake. I don’t think their loyalty is at stake. I don’t think it’s the beginning of the end – indeed it’s the greatest opportunity to ask of the Premier League something special be returned to the fans to help reestablish football as part of a community fabric in the country that shall ever be the cradle of the game.
My team Carlisle had lost 5 away games in a row.
After a round of ground-hopping (Aston Villa v Newcastle United, Walsall v Yeovil, Wolves v Stoke) I arrived to take in the whole of the second half of Port Vale v United. On my way in I found my way almost blocked by the most massive and lavish coach. The Carlisle team coach.
Watching the team tinker about on the pitch I realised that had they travelled in 3 or 4 cars, like many teams, albeit non-professional teams, perhaps had to get the wheel-jack out on the way, I am sure they would have got down to business, fleet of foot, mindful of their fellow man. And not have pansied about tossing away a must win in front of their loyal away support. The ‘team’ simply felt they could just turn up – riding high up on the fancy coach.
Ten thousands of starlings have gathered near the estuary, seen from the motorway, on the borders between England and Scotland. Their number swelled to 50,000 by the arrivals of more escaping Russia’s serious cold. The gathering of the clever little birds paints patterns across the sky as they move and circle and dip, as one, changing shape, losing sections only to rejoin. This is in the sunset and beneath the full moon. The shapes are glorious and pyschedelic, ranging in split moments from a pharoah sat upright to a dolphin swimming. Then a spaceship, then a figure of eight. Anything you want to see will be there if you look for long enough. Certainly a love heart, definitely a face. Humans gather knowing they have met their artist.
Within sight at Gretna, the football club is in shock. The patron gravely ill. The manager departed. The wages delayed or gone for good. The club bottom, detached. They were top for years on end, success upon success. THAT goal which got them to the Premiership proved their undoing. Almost a year ago in April I watched from a safe distance the owner (Brooks Mileson) choaking on the drama, his team’s chances ebbing away into many minutes of injury and torture time. Then wee James Grady popped it in. Gretna were up!
But it meant moving away from their small stadium – playing every game away at Motherwell, dragging what support they could muster to many miles from home and always away from the home of the fairy-tales. With a refit of players continually throughout the season as oldies once goodies on borrowed time and long contracts were farmed out and the younger legs needed schooled in. All in mid-flight. With mountainous appointments with Hibs and Hearts, not to mention Celtic and Rangers. All this needing the guidance of one man now gravely ill. The Premiership adventure was a season too soon.
Get well Brooks, and get home – the starlings are in sight of your house.
