DISCOMFORT ZONE
A tricky time at the match
IN THESE days of fan segregation, all-seater stadia and the memory of an inquisition I received some years ago on the phone from the Kenilworth Road ticket office as to which team I supported when trying to attend a Middlesbrough visit to Luton, what do you do when you want to see a game with a good mate whom you don’t see very often when your respective teams are playing each other?
There are decisions to be made – where do you go in the ground? It’s often not that simple. Do you split up and make for the appropriate partisan enclosure ? I think not.
I’ve known Andy for over 30 years and we’ve been to matches together, normally involving the team he’s supported all his life, Lincoln City.
I’ve been a Boro supporter since the 50s and, in fact, I do confess a soft spot for the Imps as my first visit to Ayresome Park was in November ’57 when Lincoln
were the visitors, then in the Second Division.
That day I saw Brian Clough score a brace and his future sidekick Peter Taylor throw the ball what seemed to my nineyear old eyesight to be the whole length of the field.
In those days footballers lived fairly near the ground - the other goal that day was scored by winger Ron Burbeck, who lived just around the corner from us in Branksome Avenue.
There can’t be many Boro fans left who recall that their last two league visits to Sincil Bank both resulted in 5-2 home wins.
Andy is my kind of football fan, loyal, knowledgeable, full of historical anecdotes, and very much the proverbial ‘quiet fan’ as celebrated by Ian Plenderleith (also an Imps fan) in his book of that title.
Sure, Andy went just a little bit ape recently when his team notched a 96th minute equaliser against Exeter, but you won’t find him indulging in histrionic displays of triumphalism or taunting opposition fans.
Like me, he doesn’t wear colours to a game. He used to cover the team for the local paper in his journalist days and is convivial, informed company at a match.
As for me, domiciled in Herefordshire these days, I don’t get the opportunity to see Middlesbrough more than once or twice a season, either when visiting my brother on Teesside or occasionally catching them at West Brom or Bristol City.
I did see them at Hereford in a dead-rubber League Cup second leg some years ago but I don’t think there’ll be a league encounter there any time soon.
During the last 15 years I’ve developed an affection for Forest Green Rovers in
Gloucestershire, which happened when I became inexplicably wrapped up in their regular relegation struggles in the National League in the days before Ecotricity’s backing helped propel them into the Football League.
Middlesbrough remains my primary affiliation, of course, but I want to watch football more regularly and more affordably than I can in the Championship, and I can’t get excited about Boro reaching the Premiership again only to present a season of sterile football and come straight back down.
I am also less emotionally involved since Ayresome Park was demolished to be superseded by The Riverside.
It’s true Ayresome was a dilapidated slum at the end, but it’s where I had been comfortable, partisan and where my early football memories were focussed, and I saw a World Cup there.
I like to have the option to stand, the freedom to wander a little, and I want to attend a game in a warm, non-threatening atmosphere which doesn’t tax my pocket and where I can occasionally take my wife, Rachel.
In my customary anonymity on the home terrace, I do actually feel like I matter, and the preservation of the Green’s hard-won League status really matters to me, even if I’m not a fan of the meat-free cuisine.
So Andy decides he’d like to see Lincoln visit FGR in Nailsworth, and could we meet up and go together? Initially, I decided I’d just go with him in the Away End, which at the New Lawn is not in fact the ‘end’ but the side, the West terrace.
This initially presented no problem for me. I’d had plenty of practice keeping quiet as a Boro supporter infiltrating home fans, notably a visit to Brighton at the Goldstone in 1986 with my old Seagulls-devoted college friend Steve (a great 3-3 draw), a very unpleasant occasion at Stamford Bridge in 1988 when I sat mute amongst scary Chelsea hordes as my team won a promotion play-off on aggregate to return to the First Division, and I was in complete neutrality in 2016 at Molineux to spend some time with my son who supports Norwich (don’t ask!).
I’m just a very undemonstrative supporter, so I can be as quiet as is required to maintain both sanity and safety. So being with Andy amongst the red & white striped tops held no terror for me.
Then things became complicated. The wives wanted to come, too.
Well, great. But naturally they both wanted to sit. That’s what Andy’s Dominique is used to. Rachel simply wanted comfort and warmth.
My wife has little sporting culture in her background beyond once being a cheerleader for Cheltenham’s It’s A Knockout team in Germany when she was a teenager. Oh, and she once served Geoff Hurst on the check-out at Waitrose.
However, although Rovers recently introduced some limited covered seating accommodation to the Away terrace, it was already fully booked, and there was no way the girls were going to stand on that open terrace with rain forecast.
So I booked four seats in the Main Stand with the home fans. We arranged to meet for a pub lunch, and then I’d take our friends to the Park & Ride via the scenic route (which they found breathtaking), up the Cotswold escarpment via Frocester Hill with a glorious view of the Severn and then five miles along the main access road to the stadium from the west, a country lane with passing places!
As matchday approached I began to get a little apprehensive. This was a new experience, not the discreet guest this time, but a home supporter entertaining away fans.
Is there a specific etiquette in such circumstances? Is it discourteous to an old friend if you leap to your feet with a vociferous “Get in there!” as your team takes the lead?
Do you offer insincere forced congratulations if you find your team 3-1 down at half-time (“They don’t deserve to be in front anyway.”)? Or will your day be spoilt by a graceless local in the row behind who picks up the different accent when they hear your guest eulogising as their defensive kingpin blocks yet another home attempt at goal (“Played O’Connor, bloody brilliant!”), and exposes the foreign presence to all around with a loud “What are you doing in here?”. Will Andy and I have a heated argument over a penalty given or not given? Or will the worst-pos