The match - The first time

This is an adaption of an article I wrote for a fanzine a year or two ago.  When it was published originally people enjoyed it as it bought back memories.

So, for all those who’ve ever loved the beautiful game, this might strike a chord or two to that moment you were initiated into its ways:

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Can you remember your first time?

It’s a good while since the first time I went to a live football match but if I shut my eyes, it’s there as clear as yesterday; clearer maybe.

Getting off the bus with my mates from school and joining the throng of people that meandered past the hotdog stalls just up the road from the Cinema (which was still in use then as the archetypal fleapit).

Smelling that slightly sweet, sickly aroma of onions, trying not to tread on cast-aside serviettes stained with ketchup.

Hearing the shouts of the souvenir sellers, surrounded by fluttering silky-nylon scarves that tended to be tied around a wrist rather than a neck.

Pushing our way forwards, four young girls squashed in amongst the heaving mass of people heading for their own particular footballing Mecca. Our turnstile money was pushed down our gloves for safekeeping, as it stopped Mum moaning about the dangers of getting your pocket picked.

Coats fastened up against the cold, we travelled light then. No WAP-enabled mobile phone, no digital camera, no miniature radio to keep up with the scores from the other games. This was the early 70s, and we yearned to get close enough the pitch for a good view of the heroes that adorned our bedroom walls.

Being jostled in the turnstile queue; people around us complaining that we’d miss the kick-off (some things never change, do they?), and finally forcing our way through into the ground, and through that dark tunnel on to the Kop.

The memory of that first sight of the pitch will never go away; it lay before us, vivid, brilliant green, decorated with daubs of mud in the goalmouths and around the centre circle.

And the noise, that sound that, if it could be bottled, could probably be sold as a cure for depression. If I think of it now, the hairs on the back of my neck still stand on end.

The unmistakeable hubbub of an expectant crowd, the rasp of rattles, that booming sound made by the lads at the back of the terraces hammering on the metal sheets. Sporadic chanting and singing, hurling abuse at the away fans squashed into the away end.

Sniffing the cold air; not being tall enough to see over the heads of most of the crowd, picking our way through the crush of people on the terraces to find a space in front of a crash barrier where we would be safe when (or if!) we scored a goal. Shoulder to shoulder with lads, hair skinhead-short, crombies, patchwork jumpers, Doc Martens. Old men wearing thick overcoats and flat caps.

Little kids with home-made woolly scarves tied around their necks to keep them warm, being passed over the heads of the crowd to places at the front where they stood some chance of being able to see the game.

Kick-off approached, and programme sellers milled around, along with the guys who strolled around the edge of the pitch with massive tea urns strapped to their backs; somehow I don’t think the health and safety regulations would allow that today.

We looked across at the “posh” seats in the grandstand; who on earth would want to sit down to watch a football match?

The old clock ticked away the minutes of the game, and half-time scores were slotted into the spaces at the bottom, accompanied by cheers and boos, depending on the results.

Funnily enough, I can’t remember that much about the match itself; memories don’t necessarily work that way, but I can remember being there, the sights, the smells, the sounds, and in the end those are the important things.

I had to look up the result of this game on Soccerbase – we won, but we won a lot of games that season. It was one of our glory years (in our terms!), a promotion to Division One and a decent run in the FA Cup.

The league was a different thing then, and in the second tier of English football with us, were teams like Carlisle, Oxford United and Bristol City. The League Championship that year was won by Derby County, led to success by the one and only Brian Clough.

There were no Russians, no Americans, no billionaires, and very few foreign players – unless you count Scotland and Ireland. Sky Sports was just a vision in the future, along with the Premier League, immense cash injections into the sport and the arrival of mass TV coverage.

The most high-tech information available at the time was buying the sports paper hot off the press when you got off the bus in town.

On TV, the results were read out in best BBC English on Grandstand and on the radio, and the ticker tape printed up the scores at the bottom of the telly screen, while Mum or Dad pored over their Littlewoods coupon and totted up the points.

If you were very lucky, you were occasionally allowed to stay up to watch Match of the Day.

It sounds like an age ago, but it’s only half a lifetime, years of ups and downs of following this club.

Whatever else happened that November afternoon though, Cupid fired a little arrow with my team’s name on the end of it.

I fell in love that day.