MATCHDAY ISN’T JUST FOOTBALL!
BOSTON, Lincolnshire, where cabbages grow and no motorways go. As well as being the epicentre of the coleslaw industry, it’s one of the more remote destinations on the National League North tour, requiring me to take a train from King’s Cross to Peterborough, from where the Sussex-based pessimist currently standing in as my driver was waiting to give me a lift. Bowling into the station car park in my garish blue Chester smock, I was surprised at the heavy police presence, presumably aware of my fearsome reputation. Or it may have been for the visit of Portsmouth.
Full-kids dads
Hitting Boston in good time, we ducked into the nearest pub for the start of Spurs v Liverpool, the frame rate of which suggested that it might not have been from an official source. Decamping to a town centre multi-screen monstrosity for the second half, like every single market town in Britain, it was home to a phalanx of full-kit dads glued to the screen supporting a team from a completely different part of the coun- try. Celebrating Liverpool’s victory with an audacious third pint, they were seemingly oblivious to the fact that an actual football match in an actual stadium was about to take place mere walking distance from the foul hostelry in which they were entrenched. How difficult is it? They like football. And judging by the fit of the replica kit, they also like lager. Both of these things were openly available at York Street, home of the Pilgrims. You could even go via a chippy, an option we hungrily took, standing in suspended animation waiting for the chief fryer’s Man From Del Monte moment as he eventually, dramatically, declared the chips cooked (they weren’t). Hitting the ground full of potatoes, peas, ale and optimism, we were rewarded by an absolutely turgid goalless first half that made us envy the full- kit dads sleeping off their lunchtime bender. However, a rip-roaring second half saw Chester grab a deserved 2-0 victory, a world away from my last away game at Telford where joint-managers Bernard and Jonno received dog’s abuse.
Immortality
But this is life on the road, a range of experiences that simply cannot be replicated by gawping at Sky Sports in a polyester poncho. I was recently a guest on The Non League Football Show podcast and during our entertaining chat, the genial host Tim Fuell posited the theory that the breadth and variety of stories accrued from following a Non-League club is much greater than if you predictably supported an established Premier League team. It’s a valid point, and exponentially more so if your entire exposure to the sport is through a plasma screen, legal or otherwise. There’s so much more to football than the football. Match day is about the sights and sounds – and smells – of the stadium. It’s about broadening your mind, not just your gut. It’s about being part of a communal voice, or simply bellowing your non-sequiturs into the ether, free to behave like a savage for 90 minutes or more. In other words, the very stuff of life itself.
Someone should write a book about it. Oh hang on, here’s one I prepared earlier. Since I last graced these pages, my weighty tome, The Card, in which I attempt to get to every Chester FC game of an entire season, has been nominated for the prestigious William Hill Sports Book of the Year. The readers, apparently, took great pleasure in my desperate struggle to achieve immortality and earn the mild respect of my fellow fans. It was a remarkable journey that almost destroyed me, but I came out the other side of it ultimately more fulfilled than if I had sat at home, reaching for the Sky remote. At the time of writing there is still a handful of valuable first editions left on Amazon. Selling the Non-League dream, one book at a time...