All clubs will get the same love from me
People often ask me who my football team is. They expect – largely because I spend my days rearranging the words in this very paper – my response will a club mucking it out in the lower leagues. But it’s not. I was born, despite my softly spoken southern tones, a few meaty kicks away from Ayresome Park and so my team, as much as it pains me to admit it at times, is Middlesbrough. We’re not quite Non-League, but give it time I say…
When I reveal this, people often follow it up by asking if there is a Non-League club I have a soft spot for. I sometimes try and offer some random affection but the truth is; there isn’t really any on offer. I am a one-club man, and Boro are the only club I have time to cry over. Even when I was a reporter covering Aldershot Town, I couldn’t shed a tear for them when they missed out on promotion to the Football League in 2004, losing the play-off final to Shrewsbury. I wanted them to go up to help my progression as a journalist but I felt nothing for the club on a personal level.
It was the same with Farnborough Town, another club on my reporting patch at that time. You would have had to have a heart of stone to have not felt sympathy for Boro when Graham Westley left them high and dry for Stevenage in 2003 following the highs of an FA Cup run that had taken them to Highbury. ‘Penniless’ and almost ‘playerless’, you could see the club wasting away and to my mind they have never recovered. But it was merely background noise; a story to follow with my notepad rather than my heart. When I left that paper to pursue my career elsewhere, I kept one eye on their fortunes for a while but it wasn’t long before I had scratched it all from my memory.
Bottom line: I love Non-League football and all the emotions it brings, but there are no favourites. It is what it is. And that’s why I get slightly irked when people suggest we (the paper) favour certain clubs over others. Take Billericay as a case in point. Their battle for the Bostik Premier title last season carried all the hallmarks of ‘good’ versus ‘evil’. One club (Dulwich Hamlet) fighting for its survival against property-developing bullies, kicked out of their home and robbed of their footballing identity, the other (Ricay) flaunting their wealth in people’s faces at every opportunity with a chairman/owner who couldn’t help himself by trading insults on social media to his army of ‘haters’ (the abuse was often a two-way thing, it must be stressed).
But I can honestly say one club did not get preferential treatment from this paper. Yes we found it amusing when Glenn Tamplin sacked himself as manager and then reinstated himself within a few days – and we had to follow the circus act to some extent – but both clubs got the unbiased coverage they deserved as they marched to their respective promotions. Billericay deservedly won the league, adding the Essex Senior Cup and League Cup to that honour, and we embraced their success as we should have done.
The NLP remains a neutral voice. Unlike many newspapers, we do not park our opinions in one corner. Please let us know if there is something we are missing from your club. After all, this is your paper...