LONG THROWS AND SOUR GRAPES

 

Printed in the National League South game v Hampton & Richmond Borough Tuesday 28^th December 2011  We won 4-1 in front of 813 

I’ve got a book about non league dugouts and bought a calendar about non league tea bars but social media has given us even more niche subjects. Non League dogs, bins and chips anyone? So I was pleasantly surprised to come across Sports Babylon that highlights national league managers losing it after games – or very occasionally singing the oppositions praises.

It certainty felt a lot like Christmas as we knocked Eastbourne out of the Trophy. The wheels on the bin fell off, my xylophone fell apart but we banged and partied our way into the next round. But someone had obviously soured the trifle for the Eastbourne manager who after the match moaned about our game plan and how it’s not the way he would like to play. That Eastbourne played the best football and Guy Hollis long throw was somehow anti football. ‘It’s what they do’ apparently. Which begs the question; if you know what we do, why don’t you come up with tactics to stop what we do happening?

Maybe its hard straight after a game to have clear thoughts, but come on take a deep breath and don’t be a plonker. You just lost 3-1 mate. We aren’t a big money club so we have to be inventive and our some of the players that have stepped up from the Under 23 squad have been a revelation.

Yes Michael Edegbe, our under 23 keeper was man of the match and pulled off some cracking saves. But tell me if I’m wrong but aren’t keepers there to try and save the ball or is not letting the opposition players walk the ball into the net anti-football as well?

We are very lucky we have such well considered managers who’ve learnt the trade of reigning it in. And we’ve been blessed with players like Warren Harris who has decided to retire because of injury. He joined the Rebels from Godalming and played 301 times with 62 goals over 8 and half years playing a massive part in helping us go from a step 4 club to an established step 2 club. It’s no surprise that he won every end of season award you could and if you wanted to make a Bakes and Unders player Warren Harris would have all the ingredients.

The only thing that could sour the day was being told that it being an FA Trophy match there would be no alcohol on sale for nearly two hours. Surely the FA can once again see the covid storm clouds coming over the horizon, and relax the rules for games with low crowds to help cubs make as much money as possible while they can. I also hope the National League have a covid plan in place after last seasons mess.

Contrast the fun I had at Eastbourne with the dullness the previous Wednesday at a premier league match. How to say this without my eldest hearing. Its so boring watching Brighton. Even harder because I have no emotional attachment to the club. That’s not to say they don’t play nice football, its just like watching a game of chess. They can’t score goals and like the majority of the premier league sides are treading water up against financial giants. But I also know football has helped my eldest grow up, mixing with different people and different ages….and getting that away day bug that puts a spring in your step on a Saturday morning or whatever time the TV companies decide to move your game too.

Obviously people are nervous about attending big sporting events but since the club clamped down on not just being to able to hand your season ticket to someone but charging you for the right to do so, there’s been thousands of empty seats. This creates an even poorer atmosphere which will come to a head on Boxing Day which TV companies have moved to an 8pm kick off. Only problems is 90% of people arrive by public transport and there isn’t buses or trains on that evening. 

Wolves support for a Wednesday night was impressive, but we seem to be at the stage where all supporters sing the same songs like some boring pub covers band. Nothing original or witty just the same old recycled classics. Saying that, it can make the hairs on the back of your neck stand to attention when you hear thousands singing Sussex by the Sea, but I always mutter under my breath Slough-by-the-Canal.

Who knows what’s in store but whatever happens you can be sure of managers blaming everyone after a defeat and the fact that anti football Slough will continue to put one over teams with our under hand, over hand tactics of scoring more goals than the opposition. And one thing you can bet your bottom dollar on, is that we will come up with some long throw songs the next time we play Eastbourne by the sea. Because, well it’s what we do.

SYNAGOGUE TO SLOUGH TOWN

 

Printed in the FA Trophy 3rd round v Eastbourne Borough Saturday 18^th October 2021. We won 3-1 in front of 400

Well that was one weekend I won’t forget in a hurry. One minute I’m in a North London Synagogue for my nieces bat mitzvah; the next I’m part of bin maintenance duty with the rag tag and bobble hat Rebel army. Then i'm hotfooting back into London for the after party in a lavish hotel with Boris Johnson one of the guests!

After those heady heights it was back to a Hemel Hempstead bump as train after train was cancelled and the Slough faithful wandered like lost souls across the green streets of the town looking for a few beers at the Inn.

Now here we are again, back to Arbour Park for another glamourous FA Trophy tie. Some clubs seem attracted to each other like moths to a flame. No disrespect but what is it with Dartford, Havant, Eastbourne and cup draws. How I looked enviously at Dulwich's trip to Plymouth Parkway while the Dorks go to Southend. At least if it was in Eastbourne I could have enjoyed the delights of an evening in the town. A hotel room overlooking Slough high street just doesn’t cut it as much.

As Christmas and COVID wave four approaches we need to look out for each other more than ever. What that weekend highlighted was that we are want to belong and paradoxically the pandemic that has caused such isolation has accelerated technology that can help. The banks of computers full of zooming in faces, will no doubt be a permanent feature of places of worship especially for those old and infirm.

In between the Hebrew songs I heard about the story of Joseph who went to the Pharaoh after his dreams warned of 7 years of famine after 7 years of plenty. He convinced the Pharaoh to order people to store grain in the times of plenty so when crops failed there would still be food. This biblical tale is similar to the one told by a Premier League chairman who complained about football fan led proposals, likening them to Chairman Mao’s great famine! So how comes, in a time of football plenty, so many clubs have fallen into administration or even gone bust. This brings not just a terrible economic hit on those local communities but affects those whose football clubs give a sense of belonging. It seemed the demise of Bury Football Club especially hit home to the Crouch review authors.

So how do we humans adapt as we try and get life back to normal? Staying in Kings Cross we headed to the old Granary, another upmarket area full of trendy places to eat and drink and settled in a plush outdoor Spanish restaurant where our kids got to lob meat and fish on our table BBQ. Back at the hotel the young staff were overwhelmed thanks to the self service booking-in system not working for nearly two days. These places rely on cutting staff costs to the bone and with no self service they just couldn’t cope as queues stretched out the doors, families with young children slept on the floor, while others were given rooms where people were already sleeping! As we walked up the stairs, scared to get in the lift in case we were blasted into space, our patience had been tested especially as we are so used to clicking our fingers, and the goods and services are ours. So just wonder how we would feel if our families lives were in real danger, if we could see no economic future, if climate change was making life unbearable. Wouldn’t we want to escape and build a better life?

Human migration has shaped the history of our world just like pandemics do. I can understand why the authorities didn’t want to let us know that pandemics aren’t usually over in a few weeks, but after reading the excellent Apollos Arrow history of plagues I got my head round that it would rumble on for a few years. At least we have vaccines and boosters but if we don’t help vaccine the rest of the world then it will just go round in circles with us all learning new variant words.

KINGS CROSS TRANSFORMED

My old Aunt Bet wouldn’t believe the transformation of Kings Cross from the time she ran the Scottish Stores pub during the Second World War. While we talk about how violent the world is now, my grandparents grew up with bombs dropping on their head every night with my relatives running a pub that made the old Kingsfisher boozer in Slough seem like a ocean of tranquillity.

I used to chat to my nan before Slough games about her life and she told me ‘Your Aunt Bet always said the pub was a finishing school. It wasn’t a comfortable pub really with the fights and the prostitutes. The soldiers would come off the trains, Kings Cross and St. Pancras station and head to the pub.

‘We used to have a couple of gangs that came in there, the Deaf Boys and the Angel Boys, who used to beat the Americans up just because they were American. The Angels gang were rough, like you’ve got your hooligans now. They were Army dodgers. They made out they had a bad back or something. A lot of them paid the doctor to pass them off as invalids. They’d shoplift, there was a massive black market on beer and cigarettes and all like that. One of the gangs was a deaf gang. If there was a fight, Dummy they called him, oh he was a big man, he couldn’t talk ‘ck off, ‘ck off’ and they’d look at him and go ‘ok mate, ok’.

‘It was a good pub, but it was rough pub. We used to take your uncle Geoff and your mum up there. Geoff was about a year old and we went up there, Christmas time and they had a big parcel. There was a board and easel for your mum, a Meccano set for Geoff. The prostitutes had clubbed together and bought that. They were decent girls. Most of the girls come from up North, they come down to London and got caught in that trade. One of them had two beautiful boys, she showed me a photo, they had little bow ties. They were with her mother.”

‘The police wouldn’t go near there, they were too frightened. There used to be a copper on the corner directing the traffic and there was a fight one night and your Granddad went up to the copper and he said ‘give us hand mate we’ve got a fight in the pub’ ‘what pub’ ‘Scottish Stores’ ‘f-you’ and walked off, he wouldn’t come in. The military police used to come round more. I don’t think a pub ever got closed down – it was a different time.”

For a while the Grade II listed building was renamed The Flying Scotsman, a strippers club, but in recent years it has re-opened again as the Scottish Stores, but with a more upmarket clientele.

With London flattened by bombs, huge blocks of flats replaced the houses, communities were scattered, and my nan and grandad moved to Langley with their young family. The last time I saw Aunt Bet she told us rather colourfully to go back to Slough after we had blocked her rubbish chute with cardboard then lost the rubber bit of her walking stick trying to unblock it. Like the nan in Catherine Tate she didn’t mince her words!

The world moves on, sometimes so fast it makes our heads spin. While some find solace in places of worship, some of us make do with the solace of football. The highs, the lows, those shared memories, that friendly face as we come through the turnstiles, that fist-bump and a beer with some footballing friends, our songs of worship. Now that’s got to be worth something to bang on about and cherish.

CROUCH-ING TIGER

Published in the National League South game v Tonbridge Angels Saturday 4th December 2021  We won 2-1 in front of 526

A new independent regulator for football is one of the key recommendations in a far reaching report on the future of football. But before people even had time to turn the pages, the Premier League attack dogs were out. Already frothing at the mouth, they’ve so far compared having to share some of their millions to Maoism and the Great Chinese Famine.

Former sports minister and Conservative MP Tracey Crouch talked to 130 supporter groups representing 100,000s of members giving more than 100 hours of evidence. A survey was completed by 20,000 individual fans.

The failed Super League and the collapse of Bury and Macclesfield were the straw that broke the camels back. With cross party support and MPs realising that football clubs are the beating hearts of their communities, could real change be around the corner?

The review makes 47 recommendations including

10 per cent levy on top-flight transfers, to enable an administrator to redistribute £160 million a year down the football pyramid.

New owners and directors tests

Supporters properly consulted by their clubs when making key decisions.

Provide improved mental health support to players released from the game, particularly at academy level, and for a similar review to be conducted for women’s football.

At our level the more relevant points include

Clubs promoted to the football league should be given a three-year grace period to lay a grass pitch, after Harrogate and Sutton had to rip theirs up following promotion. Sutton estimated they have lost £200,000 a year from community use of their 3G pitch as well as having to fork out £½ million to reinstall grass.

Pilot scheme to allow the sale of alcohol in sight of the pitch at matches in the National League and League Two. Supporters owned Dulwich Hamlet have said that a quarter of their income comes from alcohol sales (rumours that is close to 80% when Slough visit have not been confirmed) and promotion would have a catastrophic affect on budgets.

Investigative football journalist David Conn said: “The Premier League opposes the proposal but the single top division has largely brought this recommendation on itself. Since the new Labour government held a “football task force”, to examine the fault lines of the game’s commercial makeover, the Premier League has habitually argued and lobbied against regulatory changes.”

So while the Crouch review acknowledges the game’s accomplishments since 1992, it recognising its calamities. “This success story of English football is a credit to the hard work and vision of countless people over many years,” the report says, “but it is possible to simultaneously celebrate this achievement at the same time as having serious concerns about the future viability of football in this country.”

David Conn continues “Throughout all the years of inquiries the top clubs have succeeded with a core aim: to keep as much of football’s money as possible for themselves. The resulting fierce inequality is laid out on page 28 of Crouch’s report with a very simple colour graph illustrating clubs’ 2019-20 revenues. Towering over all other clubs are the four that played in the Champions League, averaging £444m revenues each. That was £424m more than the £20m average made by Championship clubs with no parachute payments. Those with parachute payments – which, as the report recognises, impossibly distort the football leagues finances – still make only little stumps on the graph, averaging £52m. The review calls for more equal sharing, to be imposed by the regulator if the clubs cannot reach agreement.

“The near 30-year concentration of football’s money so heavily at the top has turned the venerable clubs originally founded as Victorian community institutions into investments, for owners likely to “exit” some day and sell for a vast personal profit.”

As Crouch’s report notes, professional clubs have collapsed into insolvency 62 times since the Premier League breakaway.

Anyone can see the current model is broken but already some premier league chairman have complained it will damage competitiveness as if the football wild west benefits more than just a few clubs. As football writer Rob Draper put it so well “The Premier League is basically 20 cats in a bag fighting. Left to themselves, they’ll destroy each other.”

Kevin Miles, chief executive of the Football Supporters Association, said: “This is potentially a huge step forward for football governance – the Government committed to a fan-led review which has listened to the voice of fans. It’s now up to the Government to deliver upon the recommendations. The review’s proposals to strengthen the voice of supporters in the game, protect football’s heritage and the pyramid, and provide genuine independent regulation, lay the basis for a prosperous and sustainable future for football at all levels.”

Tracey Crouch added : “Our national game is at a crossroads with the proposed European Super League just one of many illustrations of deep seated problems. The commitment and passion of the fans who have contributed to the review has been genuinely humbling to see. Where this passion had been betrayed by owners it has been heartbreaking – and testimony from those who had lost their club in Bury particularly so.

“The sophistication of thought about the problems of the game and solutions presented by those fans was also remarkable. It is often said that football would be nothing without the fans. The same can be said for this review and I want to thank each and every one who has contributed.”

You can read the full report here