At Home with John and Debbie

This is an article I wrote for the Leamington FC Fanzine Windmill Wonderland. It was distributed at the Retford United FA Vase match last month, and since it’s sold out now, I thought I’d publish the article here as well.

Curzon Ashton knocked us out of the FA Vase this weekend, by the way. 4-1 at their place — Debbie’s dad is a jinx.

Confessions of a Football Know-Nothing
At school, I was the kid who didn’t like football.

Being brought up in Aberystwyth, there was no obvious League Division 1 (as I recall the teletype thing on Grandstand called it) team to support. The Welsh teams allowed into the English League were too distant to matter. Nobody really cared about Welsh football (not even S4C). Some of my school friends had migrated to Wales from the Midlands, and supported Wolves or Villa. Some supported the big names of the time – one of those red teams from the North West – while others were wilfully obscure, picking distant and exotic teams like Ipswich Town, Plymouth Argyle or even Celtic.

If pressured, I resorted to my birthplace of Harrogate, and pretended to support York City. As the 90s began, I found out that Leeds was just as close to Harrogate as York, they were doing well, and they had natty collarless shirts, so I switched, but I never felt any enthusiasm for either of these teams because they weren’t attached to a place I really cared about.

Aberystwyth had a team, but their matches in the playing field near the swimming pool, before a crowd of non-paying passers-by didn’t look to me anything more constructive than a schoolboys’ kick around. In any case, what was Aberystwyth to me? Somewhere my parents had chosen; somewhere I was living for the timebeing.

I have a nostalgic fondness for Aberystwyth now – I like it more than when I lived there. Aber Town now has a respectable league position in the Welsh Premier League, a fancy new riverside ground with an impressive stand, and crowds just below what the Brakes get.

I didn’t watch enough football to understand it, and I reached my 30s without spectator sport being important to me in any way. Of course, when friends invited me to the pub for England matches, I’d go for the beer.

My other half has a much more auspicious football history. When I first clapped eyes on Debbie, in a student bar in Birmingham, I wondered why her shirt claimed she was someone’s brother. It turned out to be a Man City home shirt. She’d spent her teenage years pretending to be 14 in order to get into City matches on a child’s ticket.

Debbie tried to educate me by taking me to see West Brom play Charlton. Later, she took me to support Rochdale in an FA Cup match against Wolves at Molyneux. Travelling fans marvelled at the stadium: “You see it on TV, but you never expect to be there in real life�. I didn’t know we’d be similarly starry-eyed at Colchester or Bescot one day.

During half time, the PA baited the Rochdale fans: “We’ve had a call from the train station’s lost property office. Apparently somebody’s lost a flat cap and a line of whippets�. “I believe they’re thinking of Oldham�, huffed Debbie.

I spent a year living in Leamington because chance brought me there, but three years later, I sought a job in Warwick because Debbie and I knew Leamington was where we wanted to live. And so, although I didn’t know it yet, at last I had an emotional attachment to a town with a football team attached.

Over the course of 5 years, we would often idly mention that there was a football team, and that maybe for a change of scene, we could go and watch a match. We didn’t get around to it. Then, during the 04/05 season, we finally strode out on a fresh autumn afternoon, to catch the Brakes Bus to the NWG.

However, that plan fell apart when we passed a property that was for sale, with a sign inviting views there and then, and we popped in out of curiosity. Instead of proceeding to the bus stop, we rushed home to make frantic phone calls to mortgage lenders. We ended up buying that flat, but we didn’t get around to watching the Brakes that season.

One of the benefits of moving there was getting to know our new neighbour Steve – a Geordie as loud as he is pale. You may have heard his singing. You may have scolded him for his foul language before he cleaned up his act for the current season. He may have coached your son! He had “frozen his nuts off� at the NWG once, but was not at that time the Brakes Superfan he is today.

On Saturday 20th August 2005, we decided once more to go and see what was going on. We mentioned it to Steve, and he said he’d join us. It was a home match against Rocester, with a highly satisfying 4-0 result. I picked up the names of some of the players by eavesdropping on other spectators – scorers Blake, Rodman and Howell would become familiar faces. I have to admit I don’t remember Steve Smith, who scored his only Brakes goal of the season that day.

I went to work on the Monday babbling excitedly about my trip to the football. My colleagues were amused. “I bet�, said one, “you don’t go to any away matches.� So we had to go to Stratford that Tuesday, where we heard the amusing “Two nil or not two nil� chant, before a 3-1 victory.

We settled into a regular pattern: unless there was a good excuse, we’d see every home match, every Saturday away match, and we’d make a value judgement on weekday away matches. We bought wardrobes suitable for standing in the rain in near-freezing conditions.

Watching the Brakes taught me to watch football. I don’t think it’s recognised enough that watching a game of football is a skill. Many fans have been brought up watching football, and I’m not sure they realise how their minds have become trained to recognise an attack forming, a weak defensive formation, a missed opportunity, a flash of tactical brilliance. Without these, it’s just a bunch of blokes kicking a ball. Watch an unfamiliar team sport on TV, and you’ll see what I mean. I’m basically learning from a clean slate.

Every match, I learn a bit more, and I’m gradually gaining the confidence to form actual opinions on strategy and tactics. I was particularly interested to see the dramatic change in Brakes strategy that came about when Richard Adams moved on. The “boot it into the Rich zone and let him pick it up� tactic won us plenty of matches, but I find the more varied attacks we’re making now more entertaining. I think the less predictable play is helping us win.

Learning to watch live football has also vastly improved my enjoyment of televised football. If watching football is a skill, watching football on TV is a greater skill. When you have a full view of a ground, you can see at a glance where off-the-ball players are, and it’s only over time that you get an instinctive feel for where you expect them to be. I’m convinced that TV editors expect you to have that skill.

I’m also enjoying having a whole new seam of odd people to give a cheery wave to on the Parade.

This season has been amazing so far: winning never stops being fun, although the games I’ve enjoyed most have been the more difficult ones – our epic pre-Christmas match against Romulus was absolutely thrilling. I don’t want to tempt fate by assuming we’ll be promoted to the Southern League, but if we do I eagerly anticipate some really nail-biting matches.

I still don’t have a Premiership team, nor even a League team. I don’t think I ever will, unless Leamington’s success continues beyond all expectations.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 5th, 2007 at 15:04 and is filed under Brakes, Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.