WE WILL ALWAYS BE UNIQUE
NON-LEAGUE TRAITS NEVER DIE
Mere mortals regard those dead days between Christmas and New Year to be the time to reflect on the 12 months just passed and anticipate the 12 months to come. For the sainted world of football, that point of the calendar is reached in May, when tea huts close their shutters, goalposts go into hibernation and stadia fall silent. It’s a time to take stock, when the turning point of the season just gone can truly be identified, when blame for a misfiring campaign can be correctly apportioned. Could have, should have, would have.
Somersault
It’s also a time for the person who originally uttered the words ‘We’ll come back stronger’ to kick themselves for not copyrighting the phrase. The royalties from its over-use by managers and fans of clubs exiting their league through the trapdoor of relegation would keep that pension pot topped up very nicely indeed. In the semi-pro world, it’s also a time when we look beyond our own teams and take a barometer reading of the Non-League nation. Always a community that celebrates the differences, there will certainly be some expressing concern at the narrowing of the gap between the professionals and the semi-pros, at how the culture of the top-flight game continues to make inroads into Non-League with every passing season. This can raise its head off the pitch (see here the growing breed of impatient chairmen with increasingly itchy trigger fingers), but it’s mostly conspicuous on the fields of dreams. We can all name visiting strikers whose prowess at the spectacular somersault is up there with the best: Jurgen Klinsmann, Ashley Young, Tom Daley. Perhaps they’re losing their footing because they’ve been blinded by the kaleidoscope of day-glo boots favoured by everyone from Sunday League cloggers upwards. The boots apparently make them look the part, as does, supposedly, covering 80 per cent of their body’s surface with the tattooist’s ink. I saw a League of Wales match a few weeks back where the number ten – from his physical appearance, at least – appeared as if he were marshalling Juventus’ midfield. He fitted the bill: copious body art, a reassuringly expensive mohawk and more attitude than a Tyson Fury press conference. However, whenever the ball came his way, even he surely realised that he should have spent more time on the training pitch and less in the tattoo parlour. But don’t despair. The vanities of the professional game will not overwhelm our treasured Non-League ways. A couple of months back, I appeared at a literary festival in Glasgow, reading from The Bottom Corner and making half-formed pronouncements about the semi-pro world. Also on the bill was the author Daniel Gray, whose Saturday, 3pm: 50 Eternal Delights Of Modern Football gives us two-score-and-ten reasons not to get all maudlin over the summer months. Gray’s beautiful, slim book reassures us that – whatever nonsense the job-justifying administrators and marketing men try to throw in our direction – the fundamentals of football are unimpeachable. There will always be timeless pleasures to be derived from even the least glamorous games.
Pleasures
Gray sings the praises of what has entertained past generations and what will entertain future ones. It might be when outfield players are forced to go in goal, or ‘races’ between opposing physiotherapists charging onto the pitch to be the first to attend to their injured player. It might be jeering passes that go out of play, or experiencing the frisson of excitement that a match under floodlights invariably gives off. These are indeed eternal delights. No amount of day-glo boot-wearing divers can take them away from us. For those embarking on a little close-season reflection, by detailing these irrefutable pleasures, Gray offers solace and hope for the future. And, yes, we’ll definitely be coming back stronger.