The Return Of Lasagna-gate

Many Spurs fans will nod sagely at the amazing row which has broken out in the U.S, as New York State Attorney General and candidate for Governor Andrew Cuomo has become embroiled in a sticky situation involving Lasagna.

The dish is reportedly Cuomo's favorite. His partner Sandra Lee, a TV host, apparently makes it with tinned tomato soup and cottage cheese - what some may call an unusual choice of ingredients. On hearing of this, Cuomo's mother weighed into the debate, and unwittingly damaged her son's campaign by criticising his wife's culinary skills. Matilda Cuomo is apparently quoted as saying, "Maybe she puts cottage cheese in because he doesn't want to put on weight. That's not the way you make a lasagna."

As politicians do, Cuomo immediately swung into damage control mode: "On this issue, I’m going to be very, very careful," he said in a radio interview. "Since the campaign started for me... This is the toughest issue I’ve had to deal with. Lasagna is like politics, everybody gets an opinion... Everybody’s right, nobody’s wrong."

He could almost be a TalkSport presenter. It is truly all about opinions...

Then, in an almost Beckham-esque touch of blandness, of the kind footballers have been media-trained to use, Cuomo continued: "Sandy’s cooking is very good cooking. My mother’s cooking is very good cooking. As an independent Democrat, I eat everybody’s lasagna. I eat conservative’s lasagna. I eat liberal lasagna." The only thing missing from this riposte was a carefully placed "Yeah, you know."

Rewind to 2006.

A Times leader from the period first introduced the world to the damage which can truly be wrought by Lasagna to the modern celebrity:

"Up to ten players are thought to have contracted food poisoning after eating dinner at the Marriott Hotel in Canary Wharf on Saturday night.

When the scale of the outbreak became clear, just hours before they were due to play West Ham in the final game of the season, which would determine whether Spurs or Arsenal claimed the lucrative fourth Champions League place, Tottenham Hotspur contacted police who took the offending food away, believed to be a lasagne dish.

Dr Alex Mellanby, Consultant in Communicable Disease Control at the North East and Central London Health Protection Unit, said: “The symptoms developed by this group of guests may be due to food poisoning or viral gastroenteritis, so we will be working with the football club and the hotel to identify any possible sources. Food samples will be tested as part of the investigations.”

Colin Perrins, Head of Tower Hamlets Trading Standards and Environmental Health, added: “Samples have been taken and are in the process of being analysed at independent government laboratories. We are working closely with the Police, the Health Protection Agency, the football club and the hotel. We will also be engaging with the club and their doctors with a view to obtaining more key information.”

Spurs lost the game 2-1, allowing Arsenal to leapfrog them to finish fourth in the Premiership.

Club officials had tried to get the game delayed for 24 hours, with Martin Jol, the manager, claiming some players were throwing up in the dressing room just minutes before they went onto the pitch..."


Apparently it turned out that Michael Carrick had infected the rest of the group with some illness he was supposedly already carrying. But the damage had already been done, the excuses written, and the fate of then-Spurs manager Martin Jol already decided. He got the sack not long after.

I was reminded of this sorry debate on hearing both the US story and the apparently-unconnected return of Jol to Premiership football via Fulham.

Much goodwill is building behind Jol from clearly-excited Fulham fans, but also much sympathy for him still remains amongst the folk of N17. His potential return should be welcomed. If appointed, clearly, he will want to make changes to the Fulham backroom staff, to give them a chance of being what many Spurs fans still feel the 2006 team could have been - and now Harry Redknapp's 2010 team are.

Perhaps Mrs Lee should be drafted in to do the cooking?
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The Wednesday Of Discontent

On Wednesday 23 Feb 1972, the schools and workplaces of the city of Sheffield could be said to have undergone the first outbreak of mass truancy they had ever experienced.

This was a period of deep social unrest in Britain: only 3 weeks earlier, the IRA, immediately following Bloody Sunday, had destroyed the British Embassy in Dublin. Only 2 weeks earlier, a national state of emergency had been called by the Conservative government of Edward Heath, following a miners' strike. Unemployment levels had reached 1 million for the first time since the 1930s - and this in a Britain still largely reliant on its factories. The Winter Of Discontent had well-and-truly begun; and all over the country people battened down the hatches for a period of power cuts, no refuse collection, food shortages and terrorist threats.

The people's piss was, to coin a phrase, well and truly boiling, and you could be forgiven for thinking that the above-mentioned absence from work and school was brought on by a sense of localised angst at the prevailing conditions.

In fact, it was actually brought on by one of the few glimmers of sunshine to poke through the unremitting storm clouds of the time.

Pele came to England!

Having been virtually kicked out of the 1966 World Cup, you'd be forgiven for thinking he would have had enough of this country. But, in the midst of this period of deep austerity, almost unfathomably he turned up with his Brazilian club team, Santos, for a series of exhibition matches - the like of which were rarely seen at the time. Remember, unless you'd been to a match in 1966, and because Pele had never at the time played for any other team, there were only two chances of ever seeing him - slim and nil.

This wasn't your two-a-penny superstar footballer like Ronaldo or Torres, who are everywhere, this was a guy of almost legendary status: mystic, exotic, quixotic - seen on black and white bakelites in grainy reproduction, or if you were lucky on some of the early colour sets. But this was Sheffield. I'm surprised there was any newsreel footage of him in existence.

Of course, you had to go. The only problem was that the match was scheduled for 2.30 in the afternoon, due to the power cuts. Some schools, the better ones, didn't even try to stop the kids going. Entire classes were let out, or they just closed for the afternoon.

Not mine.


I begged my dad to go. Of course, he needed to work otherwise we would lose money, and so reluctantly decided it was not going to be possible - and in any case, I should be in school, learning and suchlike.

Reports of the game are interesting. One blogger writes: ' We went to Ecclesfield Comprehensive. It was a cold day, and at 11pm Oggy Jennings (Headmaster) called all the school into the main hall to announce the boilers had packed in. A muted cheer went up inside and a massive cheer outside. So we all got to go. Pele was actually nothing special but I remember Tommy Craig (legendary Wednesday midfielder) sticking to him like glue for the last 5 minutes to get his shirt at the end. There were 45,000+ from what I can remember. My Dad went to Wednesday's previous meeting with Santos (about 10 years earlier) and said Pele took a penalty, one of his shimmies, where he dropped his shoulder. Ron Springett (the hapless Wednesday goalie circa 1962) went the wrong way and Pele rolled it into an empty net.'

Another writes: 'Pele didn't score that day; I can't remember who did. But I can remember that one of their goals came when Grummitt (the hapless Wednesday goalie circa 1972) drop-kicked the ball right at one of their players and it rebounded straight into the net. There had also been a bit of controversy on Santos' tour to that point. A game against Santos was only a draw, crowd-wise, if Pele was playing - and of course they knew it. A few days earlier Santos had played at Villa, if I remember right, and on that occasion, about ten minutes before kick off, Santos had threatened to withdraw Pele from the match if they weren't paid a shed load more. It was common or garden blackmail and, in the circumstances, Villa had no option but to cough up the extra dosh. But their "tactics" were well known before the game in Sheffield so the problem didn't arise.'

A third had an experience similar to, though ultimately more successful than mine: 'It's interesting that a lot of schools closed for the day. Ours didn't. I went to Prince Edward's on Manor Top and me and my mate had to go into the Headmaster's office for permission to go. He said yes provided we were set some homework. Its always been something I've been proud of: I actually saw the great Pele play. Suppose it's the same for everyone. The crowd was huge, which was unusual for Hillsborough in those days. Had to walk all the way back to Pond Street because it was impossible to get on a bus - a long way for a kid. I was knackered!'

Well bully for him.
I stayed in school and silently seethed at my dad for what has become about 38 years.

Little did I know that my dad had felt so guilty in the run-up to the game, knowing he couldn't take me, that he had already decided to do something about it.

And so it was, about a month earlier, that I was indeed whipped out of school and taken to see the now-legendary and epic Stoke V West Ham League Cup Semi Final.

I didn't particularly like either team, but it was an amazing thrill to see a Stoke team including the great Gordon Banks take on a Hammers team which included Bobby Moore, Harry Redknapp, Geoff Hurst and the first black player most kids of my age had ever seen, Clyde Best.

The tie turned on a dramatic penalty. Geoff Hurst took a long run-up and should have smashed his shot past Banksy to win the tie for the Hammers and send them to a Wembley final. I can still picture him standing hands on hips before the kick. Hurst’s shot was duly blasted down the middle, but Banks had initially thrown himself to his right, so was already going the wrong way. However, the Stoke keeper was agile enough to twist in midair and fling his left arm up and get a strong fist on the ball to touch it over the bar. It was a save every bit as good as the one from Pele himself in the 1970 World Cup.

On 22 October of that same fateful year, Gordon Banks famously lost his eye in a car crash and retired quickly after.

So I guess that although I missed out on one legend I was lucky enough to see one of the last games of another.

Still haven't forgiven my dad though!
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The First Vuvuzela in Darlington

I was actually sitting on the toilet when I heard it.

At first, I imagined that my level of concentration had caused me to emit the kind of noise occasionally heard in football ground toilets (and no I don't mean 'They were effin' shite.')

But this wasn't the case.

If the World Cup wasn't happening, I'd probably not have recognised it. A plaintive, muted drone, a little like the mother in Charlie Brown, slowed down - but probably most closely resembling the noise made by the Ox in Kurtz' settlement in Apocalypse Now as it is beheaded in slow motion.

The first vuvuzela on my street.

Played disinterestedly by a middle-class child, the kind of curly-haired fop more interested in computer games than football, but the kind persuaded by the wall-to-wall hype to give England Town and David Rooney a look until he gets bored. Dad, a successful local businessman, has of course timed his holiday to perfection; and while his partner runs the office, has slipped over to SA for a few days - purchasing outside the Paraguay game, at a cost way-over-the-odds, said horn from a dreadlocked roadside seller. Probably his only encounter with an authentic South African on the trip.

Got to be, hasn't it?

Surely only the most-middle class of places has people who could afford to bring home a real vuvuzela? Well, up north at least - I would imagine Highbury and Stoke Newington rock to the sound as we speak.

My point is that the ubiquitous sound, heard live by me for the first time, surely captures a point in the zeitgeist - a point before next season when every scally is selling knockoff zelas with Michael Lampard's picture all over them.

A future point at which the sad trumpet has lost its novelty value, and is now simply an annoyance (if it wasn't already.) Imagine that 16-stone bald guy in front of you who yells 'ponce' at every player who doesn't actually kill to get to the ball, while spitting small pieces of pie into the air. Are you going to jauntily point your zela at his head when Cristiano Nani does a pony trick?

I thought not.

So rejoice, in a pre-zela world, where innocence - and relative social order - still pertains.
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Smells Like Teen Linament

It's getting cold again. Today was the first example of the kind of pre-winter damp fug that envelopes the north east in October and doesn't let go until around May: then, after the briefest flicker, resumes its place, sitting like a fat Cheshire cat on the skyline. Only without smiling.

Except that of course it's bloody June.

I braved the cold to pop out for a sandwich and then it happened.

Deja vu - by smell.

As I passed a group of chatting teenagers I caught the faint yet unmistakable whiff - of linament. People who have played football as an organised thing, in particular in the 70s and 80s, will know what linament is. It's a kind of warming embrocation - the consistency of calamine lotion; white like the stuff you put on trainers; and smelling of dettol. Delicious. When you rub it on, however, the true magic of the lotion is revealed. It emanates a kind of deep heat that warms muscles and is supposed to relax you. Here's some:















It seemingly being minus 12 and a howling gale for the entire 1970s the warming properties of this embrocation on your legs were much appreciated. Every team used it, and the dressing room would stink of it before we ran out; hence the smell staying with me. We looked like a bunch of Brit-abroad sunbathers who had put on too much Factor 45.

Flashback.

1975. I am captain of the school football team and all-round heartthrob. I am playing for my Sunday league team against our greatest rivals, Netherton, and their star player Danny Thomas, later to be a fixture of the Spurs team of the 80s. My personal rival. He has probably forgotten all about me, but not me him.

Netherton are the Harlem Globetrotters of the area. They are a feeder team for Coventry's youth system and as a result get to wear that amazing chocolate brown Admiral kit that Cov had in those days. See below. They've also got Stylo Matchmakers - the boot-de-rigeur of the period. Two white flashes either side of the lace. Don Revie's Leeds team were their most famous models. Unspeakably cool boots. I could never afford them, and the only player who could in our team, Andy Dickens (Dicko) was of course the best player in the team by far. It was as if you weren't allowed Stylo Matchmakers unless you were any good. The entire Netherton team had them, of course.

Anyway, back to the match.

It's a typical 70's northern industrial town pitch: cowshit at one end and broken glass at the other. In the middle a sea of mud, and yet each goalmouth as barren of anything remotely reassuring for a goalie to dive on as your average car park. What grass there is is 6 inches long.

....and Didier Drogba or whoever moans because he's turned his ankle on the Wembley surface. Are these people complete jessies?

It's about halfway through the second half. Danny and I go in for a tackle. The two titantic captains go head to head.

What Danny doesn't know is that about a year earlier I have been diagnosed with a congenital weakness to my back - basically the last vertebra in my spine doesn't fit onto my pelvis - just sits on top of it. As I grow, it stretches away from my pelvis, the nerves get trapped, the pain goes down my legs and I can't walk. I have to wear a metal corset - not a good look - to hold myself in place until the growth spurt passes. It turns out this will be my last year as captain, because the injury will force me out of the game as a player. I wake up each day in pain, but won't tell my Dad because he would stop me playing. So I'm often struggling by the time the second half approaches.

So we go in for the tackle.

Now, I'm not saying Danny was a dirty player, but he was hard, as kids who make the grade tend to be. However, what happened next would undoubtedly result in him getting an early bath if he was a Premiership player now.

Danny goes in head first. Whether he slipped or something I don't know, but the effect is that I get nutted, Zidane-style, in the chest. I go over the top of him and land in a heap. Not only are two of my ribs broken, but my back has also pinged and I'm an invalid.

Danny gets up, sniffs, trots off - much in the manner of Billy Bremner in those staged matches in The Damned United.

Ref doesn't see a thing, natch. Then has a go at me for swearing. I think the actual appearance of the ambulance persuaded him to blow the whistle a few minutes early.

Funny thing is - looking back at it. Danny did me a favour.

I was a very promising player - on the verge of trials at City - but I probably wouldn't have made it in the way Danny did. My Dad felt so sorry for me he bought me my first record player; which kick-started a lifelong obsession with music; which led to me being in a band from my mid-teens; which led to Peel sessions, record contracts, TV, major gigs.

Unfortunately, however, I did not write Smells Like Teen Spirit. That was another fella, who apparently was injured in a horror tackle by Alexei Lalas, trying out for Seattle Sounders.
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Black And White All Over

Rejoice Geordies worldwide, for your beloved team have once again attained the promised land of the Premiership.

Now the fun begins.

I don't mean the beginning of another financial catastrophe, or even the inevitable 0-1 loss at home to Blackpool on a wet Monday night in November.

No, for your average Mag, the real problem is what to wear.

Last year's striped-banana faux pas is today's paint-rag. Fashion-conscious north-easterners have quickly consigned that one to the (literal) dustbin of history. It's been bad enough having to go to Plymouth or Scunthorpe without having to run the gauntlet of mock-gay wolfwhistling at the merest sight of the sickmaking yellow away shirt yanked over your giant gut. Only a South American with long hair who pulls a Spiderman mask out of his jockstrap when he scores could find it attractive.

And he rarely scores.

But how precisely do you redesign what is, has and will always have to be black and white stripes to make them any more interesting or fashionable than last year's black and white stripes? It's the conundrum exercising every Geordie mind.

So I decided to do some research into the sartorial history of the shirt which has graced the backs of Milburn, Keegan and Supermac. Is there/could there be a correlation between the fashion status of the garment and the relative fortunes of the team that wore it - and could the present team learn from this relationship?

This one is from 1927-28. League position: winners. A fetching little corset-style collar and stripes the same width. A good start to my research.

It was an era and a style revisited in the Shearer/Asprilla/Ginola era - perhaps the club's most-revered recent period in 2003 - in which they ascended to the heights of 3rd in the Premier League. Of course they messed up royally and should have won it, but we'll not go there.

This one's the classic shirt of the 1968 Fairs Cup (children look it up) winning side. The side of Pop Robson and Bobby Moncur. The side that Geordies of my age remember as I do my beloved Manchester City of Bell, Lee and Summerbee.

However, as with City, the team underachieved, only finishing 10th in the same season. So, the little circles on the collar and socks only correspond with inconsistency.

Here's the 1976 shirt, with the famous 'winged' collar, modeled by the spud-like Terry Hibbert. Fortunately City were able to hammer these losers into oblivion in the '76 League Cup Final (Yes I know it's the last thing we won, Rags.) That year the Mags finished 15th in the league for the 3rd consecutive season. So, trendy collar does not equal success.

Moving to a more contemporary era, because basically nothing happened in the 1980s, the ill-fated Mags go and choose the ill-fated NTL as their sponsor, resulting in this, which many might see as the template for the more modern fashions. Here, the stripes have widened, like the club's ambition, and the old Newky Brown sponsors have gone, just like the brewery which once stood by the side of the ground.

This one from 2002 screams Blairite ambition, corporate sponsorship and largesse. This is the era of Blair and Keegan doing keepy-uppies together on the news. The club actually finished 3rd, but the shirt's a fashion disaster.

And finally, perhaps the most infamous of recent shirts, the one worn by the ludicrously-overpaid Owen/Butt/Smith/Barton et al, as the primadonna softies nosedive ignominiously to failure and financial meltdown.

It's mainly black, like the mood of the supporters.

I visited the ground several times in this period, and each time you couldn't get away from the ground because there was a mass protest of some kind against the team/owners/directors/staff/programme sellers/ice cream man.

I mean, look at them in this picture. They look like they don't have a clue. Meanwhile, they are laughing all the way to the bank.

Oh, hang on, the bank's Northern Rock.

Position: relegated.

Burn this shirt, if you have one.

So, what have we learned? That there is an inverse relationship between the modernity and fashionability of the club's shirt and its success on the field.

But it is when one begins to look at the away kits that the real horror begins.

It's as if, starved of a creative output by the sheer boredom of redesigning black and white stripes, the shirt designers went all Jackson Pollock on the away kit.

I cannot possibly do justice to the sheer horror of the away kit situation historically by highlighting any individual kit. The yellow peril of last season is simply carrying on a tradition.

This site expresses the nastiness in (thankfully) graphic rather than photographic terms:
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.historicalkits.co.uk/Newcastle_United/photos/newcastle-2004-away-400.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.historicalkits.co.uk/Newcastle_United/Newcastle_United-change-kits.html&usg=__FHgHRqu5zRtauZ03eb0suyWi8kY=&h=484&w=400&sz=36&hl=en&start=73&sig2=6REp6YKxp_lPMa9r_PkeqA&itbs=1&tbnid=5Ll61LxLX_R80M:&tbnh=129&tbnw=107&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dnewcastle%2Bunited%2Bfootball%2Bkit%26start%3D60%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26gbv%3D2%26ndsp%3D20%26tbs%3Disch:1&ei=SWEOTOmmNoue_gbdv923DA

I think the 1914 away kit is ultra-cool and should immediately be adopted as the first team kit.

I have no idea what was going on in 1951 but Sunderland fans will be horrified.

In '73 the club apparently thought it was Brazil, despite clear evidence to the contrary.

In '83 the real horror begins with the grey Newky Brown monstrosity. I assume like Man U in the same period they excused their rank crapness by saying they couldn't see each other against the crowd.

Then it just goes mental.

1990 is vomit on a Norwich shirt. '93 looks like the sea has washed in and taken away with it any vestige of style. '93 also has a 3rd kit so puerile it looks like a South American prisoner who has escaped into in the jungle is using it as camouflage to escape detection.

'95 is a rugby shirt.

'97 simply defies description.

Adidas get hold of it and have a go for a few years but eventually they lose interest and hire Jackson Pollock again for the execrable 2005 and poncey 2007 3rd kit.

In 2008 they decide they want to be Fiorentina - a theme continued with last year's 3rd kit in which they want to be Inter Milan.

But, senator, they are no Inter Milan.

Which brings us full circle to the bananas and custard of last year.

Somewhere, there is some poor bastard who has spent his entire life savings on this tat.

I can't wait for next year. Remember the rule - the crapper the shirt the better the team do.

Gok Wan is filing his nails as we speak....
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League Ladders

As the Summer yawns before us (small matter of the World Cup notwithstanding) in an arid chasm of football-less-ness, any sane person has one of three responses:

1) Play golf

2) Go to the pub

3)...er, that's it

Otherwise there is seemingly no alternative to a diet of reality-TV with the missus (and the frighteningly-inevitable potential for conversation this might engender) or the crap that Sky uses to fill up the schedule (called Cricket I believe.)

The beginning of the season seems like a distant planet in a far off galaxy, viewed through a pair of kids' binoculars.

When I was a child, the signal for all this tedium to come to an end was not the endless and pointless set of retrospective-previous-season-taster-for-the-next-season TV punditfests, nor was it the onset of the first good weather of the season, just as it is typically ending.

No.

It was the publication of the Shoot League Ladders.

It will seem almost quaint to anyone who has never known anything other than a computer age, but boys all over the land would use this system to meticulously track the fortunes of every club in the Football League (that's Divisions 1,2,3 and 4 in old money.)

In a nutshell, it was a large piece of card with slits in it, on which was printed from 1-24 (again, before they faffed with the number of teams) all the possible positions in each division. Each position had a slit.

Then there was a second piece of card, which had pop-out tabs with the name and colours of each team in the league (14-year-olds countrywide are probably slitting their wrists by now.)

You pressed out the tabs (STAY WITH ME) and on a Saturday night when James Alexander Gordon read out the results, or on a Sunday when they printed them in the papers, you would meticulously re-organise all your tabs to reflect the new standings.

It really was brilliant - imagine the fun of having to reorganise 92 pieces of card once a week. But children had patience then. Shane or Chlyamidia nowadays would have ripped the thing up and binned it.

So maybe, like Shoot itself, the demise of the League Ladder has been a sad one. Now you can get scrolling up-to-the-minute information on the infobar of most sports programmes and websites. But where's the fun in that? The anticipation was the thing. Remember most kids at that time hardly saw any football on TV at all, so there was still something exotic about, er, putting little bits of card into another big piece of card. This was also the era in which I glued the sellophane wrapper which was wrapped round a bottle of Lucozade onto the screen of the black-and-white telly so I could pretend it was in colour.

Everything was in black-and-white then.

So Shoot began to die.

Its circulation fell from approximately 120,000 copies per week in its heyday to less than 35,000 in Autumn 2007. Its sad demise has led to it now becoming an online-only publication. The home of You Are The Ref , the esteemed organ that told us that footballers ate steak and chips and were fans of Lionel Ritchie - is now scrapping around for business in cyberspace along with everything else - including this article.

I guess it's hard to shove a piece of cardboard into a computer, and even harder nowadays to find that magical moment of excitement when the Summer ends and the season proper is about to start.

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Feet Of Clay

This is part of what remains of Feethams, former home to Darlington FC: they as of last month a former Football League team.

Accessible only by trespassing over a disused bridge and down potholed path strewn with broken glass and urban detritus, it's a metaphor for the demise of the club itself. No Highbury-style redevelopment here, despite the land being in the prosperous part of town and close to the centre. Property prices in Darlington being amongst the most stagnant in the country, apart from a nearby Sainsbury's no developer has yet dared to chance his arm.

And yet the story of Darlington FC in recent years has, of course, been the story of one particular chancer: George Reynolds.

Reynolds built his early reputation in criminal activities during the 1950s, and spent time in jail for smuggling watches in the 1960s. Amazingly, he went on to amass a £300 million fortune. He became the chairman of Darlington Football Club in 1999 and spent £20 million on a new stadium. He initially had big plans for the club, including the near-legendary near-signing of the near-notorious Faustino Asprilla, a man not averse from activity on the edge of legality himself. Many fans at the time were seduced by these almost-romantic gestures of faith.

However, Reynolds turned out to be all promises, and left the club in January 2004 to face impending tax evasion charges and a further jail sentence - since which time the club has struggled to cover the huge operating costs of what has become a huge white elephant. Feethams, originally a cricket ground which had been in existence since the 1860s and which had been leased to the club since its inception in 1883 (that's 1883) was left to the rack-and-ruin which you see above, although part of the land has thankfully at least reverted back to its cricketing roots.

Walking around the deserted and overgrown space now, it's possible to hear distant echoes of the cloth-capped and rattle-wielding railwaymen which must have formed its initial fan base. This alley, for example, winds round the back of the ground, its cobbles burnished by the thousands of passing feet which must have shuffled to and from league and cup games of yore. The club's history site tells of how in 1868 the club ventured into the FA Cup for the first time, receiving a to-become-ubiquitous 8-0 hammering by Grimsby Town.

There have been some highlights - the club reached the last sixteen of the cup in 1910. In 1923, 13,000 people squashed into the ground to watch a famous tie with Nottingham Forest, their first game on promotion to the old Second Division. In November 1955 the club made history, participating in the first FA Cup match to be played under flood lights at St. James' Park, Newcastle. By 1960, the club had its own floodlights, but in another stroke of ill-luck an electrical fault caused the entire West Stand to be burned to the ground.

I think perhaps the uninitiated reader may be beginning to get a sense of the history of this club.

In the 60s and 70s the club repeatedly flirted with demotion from the Football League. In the 1980s only donations from fans enabled the club to survive, and a small period of stability under Brian Little began which lasted into the early 90s. Following the move to the new stadium, some progress on the pitch under David Hodgson was notable and more than once the club just missed out on the play-offs.

Which, given the odd win, just about brings us up to date. After a disastrous 0910 season, mainly under the stewardship of Steve Staunton, who should - but ultimately didn't - know better, the club finished bottom of Division Two, fourteen points behind the club above (ironically nemesis Grimsby Town) with a lowest attendance of 1296 and a goal difference of minus 54.

And yet the club fights on. The official website crows proudly of how new signing 'Jamie Chandler admits he could have been playing League One football next season - but the persuasive powers of (new manager) Simon Davey prompted him to rejoin Darlington. The 21-year-old has penned a two-year deal at the Northern Echo Arena and is already looking forward to the 2010-11 season.'

Isn't that just football all over? All over the land, fans and clubs in a similar position scrape on by the skin of their teeth; last year's (in Darlo's case the last 100 or more years') results forgotten and a bright new dawn potentially emerging amid the broken glass and detritus of last season's disaster.

Season ticket news is available on the club's website, and if you hurry up before June 11 you can still get an adult ticket for £250. Under 16s can see the entire season for 46 quid. They're almost paying you.

Forget your replica-Lampard/England/Chelsea-etc pretend-success. Spend the average overall cost of going to one 'big four' Premiership game to buy into the history and future of this club and many others like it.
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With One Bound, He's Free

Welcome to the cousin of Suspend Your Disbelief.
He's a nice bloke, wants to be a footballer and is having trials with Brentford.

He's got a Beckham-bogbrush haircut and has just learned to drive. He wears those nasty plastic bananas on his feet that some people call football boots. His girlfriend is called Tanya and has orange skin. All his mates and their girlfriends are exactly the same. They go down the local boozer at weekends and shout really loud when they get pissed. If he's got a game on Saturday he usually ends up playing with a hangover. If he doesn't make it, he'll probably try to get on that telly thing with Jose Mourinho.

He's decided to start this blog to showcase his sports writing in particular. It's not rubbish, it's actually quite good. Better than he is as a footballer. Some of it comes from his dad who is like all of those fat blokes you see at every football match in England. His dad is absolutely certain of the fact that he was better than Pele in his day - it's just that no-one noticed.

You'll still find this stuff on SYD - but for those of you who carnt be bovvered to wade through stories about Kid Creole finding severed ears, or existential cups of tea, or people who paint their cars to look like they're characters in Scooby Doo - this might be more your plate of pie n mash.

So without further ado - welcome to Through Your Legs.
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The JPS

James Hunt. Jacques Laffite. Jody Sheckter. Nikki Lauder. Patrick Depaillet. Jochen Mass. Gilles Villenueuve. Clay Regazzoni. Carlos Reutermann. Riccardo Pattrese.

Watkins Glen. Monte Carlo. Brands Hatch. Monza. Interlagos. Paul Ricard. Nurburgring. Spa.

Being a racing driver in the 70's was surely the best job ever known to man. You just had to have a name that matched the glamour of your occupation.

Imagine - as much booze as you could drink, as many women as you could possibly shag (most of them on variations of The Barcelona Shirt's Roxy Music album cover - see that post) as many fags as you could smoke - and to be able to drive the fastest, most death-defying machine known to man.

My dad and I were in thrall.

For my part, I had to have a Scalextric. I'd had one earlier as a child. Eight pieces of black plastic, an overheating transformer and two cars: Graham Hill's Brabham and, er, a red one. Driven by the mundane John Surtees. I still remember that smell of burning electrical circuits.

But Scalextric was the coolest game - apart from Subbuteo - a young boy could have. I just needed to move to the next level of involvement in this adrenaline sport.

The answer lay in the JPS.

It was the most impossibly beautiful car I had ever seen. Black, slick and slim, dripping with gold bling - like a Harlem pimp. And it was driven by the cool, hard New Yorker Mario Andretti.

Andretti cleaned up.

I remember as a child watching Steve McQueen and James Garner battling it out in Grand Prix. This car seemed to take up where that film left off. It was sponsored by John Player - the cigarette company. Yes, there was absolutely no shame or debate in that. Fuck, everyone was sponsored by the fags - Marlboro sponsored McLaren, Gitanes sponsored the French teams such as Ligier. Camel another team.

The single reason I wanted to smoke as a kid.

Of course, I grew out of wanting to smoke - even grew out of Formula 1. It's shit nowadays with its anodyne drivers, endless regulations.

In the 70's there was no such thing as health and safety, downforce, computer-aided suspension, wet or dry tyres. You just got in this big petrol bomb and drove. In those days, people died in large numbers - like Ronnie Pieterson. Or were horribly disfigured - like Lauda.

Occupational hazard.

But worth it.

Every time I go through a speed camera, or get a ticket - as I tend to do nowadays more and more (one day I won't have a car to drive anymore -or I'll be dead) I dream that I am in the JPS.
I never did get that new Scalextric.

But Andretti got a new competitor - the youthful and highly talented Jochen Rindt.


My dad ended up with a Ford Cortina GT, suburban man's version of a sports car. Modeled on a US-style Mustang, but somehow more carpet slippers - like this:












For his part, Jochen Rindt ended up like this:

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Where's World Cup Willie When You Need Him?

My dad tells me that my love of football began at the age of 3, when in an act which would nowadays be construed as child cruelty, he plonked me down in front of the old bakelite telly to watch the 1966 cup final between Sheffield Wednesday and Everton. (Don't need to identify it as the FA Cup - the cup final's the cup final, innit?)

Anyway, apparently, the Owls got off to a flying start and were 1-0 up inside the first four minutes. Jim McCalliog had a pot-shot at goal and it took a wicked deflection off the England left back, Ray Wilson. For Everton, Mike Trebilcock had replaced then-folk-hero Fred Pickering in the line up. Mike had his greatest game ever, justifying his astronomical £20,000 transfer fee from Plymouth by scoring two goals as the Toffees romped home to a win. Sam Ellis, David Ford and Ron Springett were all also heavily involved in what was described as one of the most dramatic finals ever to be staged at Wembley.

I probably just sat there and dribbled saliva. But experiences like this across the country undoubtedly created a love of the game in most of the 40-somethings who are the main demographic for live matches nowadays.

I heard a skit on the radio this week: one of those crass 'this is what was happenning today in the 1960s' (probably made by a 20-year-old producer who assumes dinosaurs roamed the earth at that time) in which it was announced with incredulity that the most popular boys' and girls' names were David and Susan respectively.

Imagine that.

And of course it made me think:

Where are all the players with names like that nowadays? They probably aren't allowed anywhere near football clubs. Picture the scenario where a failed triallist is called in to be released: 'Sorry son, you're a great player but we can't have anyone whose name is not derived from Creole Patois in the team now.'

Although the Brazilian Fred is a notable exception to this rule, it does seem nowadays that you are only likely to get a place in the starting 11 if your name is Delorian or Chlyamidia or something. You can hardly imagine Mike Trebilcock selling loads of replica shirts, can you?

And what about team names themselves? Imagine calling one of the newer sporting franchises The Owls or The Toffees!? Right now, some executive somewhere is probably dreaming up a rebranding of Portsmouth that involves them being called Portsmouth Pirates or something. Look at what a ponced-up mess they've made of rugby league. Catalan Dragons my arse, as Jim Royle would no doubt opine.

The world has officially gone mad.

And this madness has now extended to the way in which we are marketing ourselves for the upcoming World Cup and Olympics. I mean, look at the figures above. It's no surprise that someone has started a mock-Twitter page designed to take the mick out of these pathetic characters. Who could possibly conceive that calling such a mascot Wenlock was going to enable it to be down-with-the-homies in the fashion presumably intended? You really do comb your own tongue at the crassness of it.

Unless of course, I've somehow missed a post-millenium baby-boom of people called Wenlock.

In my youth, we had World Cup Willie.

A lion - representing the values of courage and strength that the national team were to so-aptly demonstrate in the pulsating World Cup Final of 66. A lion with a real, honest-to-goodness-name, representing an honest-to-goodness working class ideology.

Wouldn't last 5 minutes now would he, before someone objected to the phallic imagery suggested by the name, or complained that there was somehow cruelty to lions implied by his presence. Either that, or anyone wearing Willie merchandise would be the subject of playground beatings and religious fatwahs.

Somewhere in heaven, Mike Trebilcock is laughing his head off.
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Rotherham 1 Aldershot 0

This evening, in a miasma of boredom, I find myself watching the above match on the telly.

It's a critical game, and victory will result in the winner going to Wembley for the Division 2 Play Off Final (Division 4 in pre-Sky TV old money.)

The winner will get the chance, Quixote-style, to play Dagenham and tilt at the windmill that is promotion to Division 1 (Division 3 really - but only men over 35 will understand this detail.)

There are about 400 TV channels to watch and still I choose this.

Here are the highlights, which I've helpfully also posted on Facebook.

45 mins: Rotherham are leading 1-0 in a tight game.
51 mins: 2-0! Kevin Allison's 50th career goal. It's quality according to the commentator.
53 mins: Aldershot miss a 'glorious' chance. Kirk Henderson is looking lively.
62 mins: Don Goodman is concerned that the Rotherham fans may be celebrating too early. Rotherham are playing on adrenalin, and certain players are 'flying close to the wind.'
70 mins: Ryan Taylor's got the 'hook.'
84 mins: Ronnie Moore is concerned about the 'needless afters' that may lead to a yellow card and rob someone of their Wembley chance.

Rotherham hang on for the win and they're dancing in the streets of the Don Valley...

...Rewind 35 years to Steven Herrington's house on a midsummer morning. The 6 week holiday stretches endlessly before us and we are in the middle of what promises to be the definitive Subbuteo competition of our lives.

For the uninitiated - girls and anyone from any gender under 40 - Subbuteo was to my day what FIFA2010World/Euro/Manager/Championship/NintendoWii/PS3blahblahblah is nowadays. The basic premise was that you each had a team of 11 little men on tiny plinths, whom you would flick or nudge to 'kick' the ball - which you can see was scalewise about the size of a London bus compared to the players (they hadn't invented perspective then.)

I would imagine my sons would find it just about the dullest thing ever invented, but to us it was reality. We re-enacted entire cup competitions, game-by-game, round by round. It took weeks. Each game could be played at its full 90 mins length, so we're talking about serious commitment here on the part of a young boy. From the age of about 8 to about 14, when I didn't play Subbuteo I played football, and when I didn't play football I played Subbuteo.

You had a green beize sheet in the shape of a football pitch, which you smoothed out to billiard-table levels on the living room carpet. No dog, mother or small child's toy could come within feet of the hallowed arena. Some of the more enterprising hammered their pitches to a large bit of chipboard to keep them flat. Then you just slid it under your bed to put away until game on the following morning. Of course, Nicky Pond and any of the nouveau riche in my area were able to afford some of the accessories it was possible to buy - referees, World Cup 74 footballs with black panels (see above - the normal balls were orange) corner flags, floodlights and even stands. I believe there was even a record you could buy that made crowd noises.

But we didn't need them.

Because we could provide our own crowd noises.

In my area, there were some talented crowd-noise merchants, at least 3 of whom could do a surround-sound-dolby-stereo-bang-and-olufsen quality impression of a live game. By now, Sportsnight With Coleman had popularised football on TV (still at that time a very rare occurrence) but also the art of commentating. So now we didn't just play Subbuteo we commentated on it, to give it the excitement of the games on the telly we'd been allowed to stay up to see.

Steven Herrington did a very passable impression of ITV's Hugh Johns, whose catch phrase 'One- Nothing' was stock-in-trade to all 12 year-old boys. I preferred the effortless authority of the BBC's David Coleman (catchphrase 'One-Nil') but I couldn't cut it with my impression of him, so I ended up not making much noise at all during a game.

But the Crown-Prince of the commentators was Mark 'Sledge' Liversidge. Mark had perfected a way of manoevring spittle in his cheeks and keeping it inside his throat for minutes at a time which was an absolutely perfect copy of the crowd noise in the 1974 West Germany World Cup.

The stadiums in that competition were so large, and the fans so intent on a constant barrage of claxon blowing, plus the sound on tellies had evolved so much, that the overall impression was like a kind of Eno-esque white noise. This, Sledge did to perfection. He had even perfected the art of running with a football and doing it, shouting 'Rivelino.. to Cubillas.. to Beckenbauer' as he went along, with each touch pretending to be a different player. It was impressive.

To this day, given half a chance to play football with my kids in any park, I still do this. My kids look at me as if I am daft. But they know, for a moment, as I run with the ball, mimicking Gerson for Brazil in the 74 quarter final from Gelsenkirchen, I am exactly the same age as them.

I am also The Most Talented Footballer On The Planet And Certainly Way Better Than Them. I roll and cuss, fake and faint, Cruyff turn and generally ponce around like any Dad worth his salt would do in this situation.

I am 'Dad'alinho.

And you have the nerve to wonder why I watched the Rotherham game.

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Two Bobby Charltons For A Ralph Coates

Today, I received a wonderful present.

My friend Craig surprised and delighted me when he delivered impromptu a whole set of Manchester City football cards, which his son had collected. They were surplus to his requirements, but I didn’t care – the very feel and smell of them transported me back in time.

Marsden's sweet shop, somewhere in industrial northern England, 1970. The same shop in which Melanie Brown told the lie on me and Shorey that led to us being caned for the alleged and never-proven theft of a packet of Fruitgums – but also the central meeting place for any eight year olds worth their salt ‘n’ shake crisps.

Normally, the experience of going into Marsdens was a highly-charged one. Every lunchtime, me and Peter Scott would go home for our dinners. As I left, my mum would give me a sixpence and also one for Pete; whom I would then call for and we would in turn extort a similar sum from his mum.

Replete with our booty, we would head for Marsden’s. There was lot you could get for sixpence in those days. As beady-eyed old Mr Marsden watched my every move from over the ice-cream fridge, my sixpence would almost melt from the trauma of having to choose between the following:

6 Bazooka Joes
A quarter of Cough Candy
A Curly Wurly
A bottle of Cresta
3 giant gobstoppers
2 packets of Chipmunk crisps

...or a packet of Pannini football cards. Actually, stickers then, and certainly not as flash as the one here. Photos were often taken by amateurs - or so it seemed, due to the very poor quality of many of the images. Poses fell into two categories: tight-lipped-arms-folded-stare, and 'action shot' - usually not of the player kicking the ball because they hadn't invented electronic shutters on cameras back then.

So what you got was Franny Lee or Mick Jones running, with the ball long gone. It was a bit like Spot The Ball, the football gambling game which my dad used to let me do (just like the Bread Man and the Pop Man and the Fish Man there was the Pools Man - he'd bring the Littlewoods coupons, and also a picture with the ball somehow erased from it - way before Photoshop. You had to look at where the players' eyes were drawn to, and place an 'X' where you thought the ball was. Of course I assumed that the players would be actually looking at the ball when I did my 'X' - but it never seemed to be in the place I thought it would be.)

Anyway, the idea with the cards was that you would bring them to school, see what the other boys had, then swap yours with theirs to fill in the missing gaps in your album (at least I think there were albums then - that might have come in with stickers - it's more likely that you just kept them in a tin.)

My grandad had millions of them, being a lifetime smoker. In the 60s, as Swinging London grooved, Northern England collected coupons. It must have been a hangover from the days of rationing (I remember my mum and nannan would sing songs about rationing in the car when we'd go on journeys, as if they were actually nostalgic for it. I never did get the whole nostalgia thing - until I actually started becoming nostalgic myself. I wonder what today's cynical youth will be nostalgic for - 'Ah, Taneesha, remember the good old days of Chlamydia and Methadrone' they'll probably say as they laugh whimsically.)

Anyway, my grandad had sets of birds, cars, stately homes, scenes of rural England, biblical stories etc. The entire cohort of graphic designers which existed in the country at the time must have been kept busy by fag-smoking miners. As well as the ciggie cards, there were the Co-op stamps (Green Shield stamps) an early forerunner of the loyalty card system we have now in supermarkets. He had books and books of them, although as far as I could work out they seemed to have no value whatsoever - you could collect whole shelffulls and still only have enough to buy an egg cup.

So anyway, there I am, at school, bartering with Vaughny and Pondy et al over these football cards. It seemed as though most of the male population of the school had a collection - perhaps again, this is where the male fascination with collecting things comes from - we're all little boys at heart.

'I'll swap your Bobby Charlton for my Ralph Coates' was the playtime mantra. But what was really interesting was how, slowly over time, as more and more people bought them, the cards acquired a kind of intrinsic value - like money. The more people who played, the rarer the rare cards became. Imagine the primordial psychology among the Chro-magnon hunter-gatherer swamp dwellers which enabled the cunning to survive and prolong the existence of the human race; cunning that created money from bones or scraps of flint; money which enabled them to barter with the tribe in the next field for a leg off a Sabretooth Tiger or something - it's right there in our fights over the value of Cyril Knowles. Watch the opening scene from Kubrick's 2001:A Space Odyssey and you'll se what I mean.

So, down to the primordial swamp we duly descended. Fights broke out, satchels were looted, noses were bloodied and teeth forcibly removed over these cards. The natural order was preserved as Vaughny and his clan mugged the 'puffs' for having the sheer luck to acquire Gordon Banks from Marsdens.

And in the same spirit, did I not today receive my cards, wave them about in front of every bloke I could find (100% of whom were genuinely excited for me) to the utter bemusement of those females within hailing distance.

Then, when no-one was looking, I locked them in my drawer so no-one could nick them.

I'm buying an album tomorrow.
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The Barcelona Shirt

1974. How was a pubescent boy from the north of England going to discover romance in life?

Answer: Miss McDermott.

Miss McDermott was one of the 3 most beautiful women on the planet in 1974. All my mates had a crush. Pondy wanted her. Shorey wanted her. Vaughny wanted her. But they were all too thick and too proletarian. Miss McDermott was mine.

She taught Art and had a yellow Triumph Stag. She had long dark hair and a sultry pout. She was my heart's desire. When I think of her I think of the woman in The Lamb's Navy Rum ad, above.

Or the models on the cover of Country Life, below:

I loved Art. Mr Mellard, the Head of Art, had studied under Frank Auerbach at The Slade (no mean feat for a guy from Rotherham. By the way - Luddites - look up Frankie-boy and learn.)

But he wasn't Miss McD. Obviously.

My other main squeeze was Miss Hunt: blonde bob, and resplendent in a chain of figure hugging woolens. She had the best tits ever known to human science. I literally could not concentrate in History lessons, and put my failure to pass O Level History entirely down to drooling over her. Me and Pondy were obsessed by her.

The third most beautiful woman in the world was my Spanish teacher, Miss Henderson. In our first lesson she gave me a Spanish name, which she always called me: Pablo. All the class had names, but mine seemed somehow more authentic. I began to love Spanish life and culture, as we learned about (what was then) life under General Franco. And of course I fancied the arse off her.

I think a study should be done into the educational attainment of 14-16 year old boys. It would clearly reveal that exam success rates show a direct relationship to how much they fancy their teacher; and failure rate would likewise depend on how much they were trying to wank off in class because they also fancied their teacher.

I suppose Miss Henderson must have had a love of Catalunya, because I don't recall ever being told anything good about the Franquistas. Barcelona, was, however, the home of la revolucion, and seemed to me to represent all that was good, modern and progressive about a Spain which was still mired in manana, omerta and bureaucratic crap.

And so it was that we were given the chance to go on a school trip to Barcelona.

I've been once, and it has become my favourite city ever since. Something about it - La Sagrada Familia, the Gaudi park, Las Ramblas - seduced me and stuck with me ever since.

It was in Barcelona that I first snogged Hazel Spotswood. It was in Barcelona that I ordered my first ever cerveza.

It was in Barcelona that Johann Cruyff played football.

In Sugg's sports shop there were 4 football boots of choice to the truly discerning young player: Adidas Beckenbauer, Puma Pele Rio, Stylo Matchmakers (more of which in another chapter) ...

...and Puma Cruyff.

These were the most gorgeous boots known to man. Because Cruyff was the most gorgeous man known to woman. He was like a Dutch Georgie best - only better. His skills were outrageous: the Cruyff turn is still something today's footballers struggle to master. You wanted to be him. He had 14 on his shirt. I only thought football shirts went up to 11. It was incredible.

And Cruyff had transferred that year from the impossibly glamorous Ajax of Amsterdam, to the utterly-unimpeachably glamorous FC Barcelona.

I'm reminded of this at present, because this weekend is the weekend of El Gran Clasico - Barca v Real Madrid. The republic and the people v the preening royalists. A club still owned by its fans versus one mired in debt, debauchery and scandal. A club which did not take sponsorship on its shirt (until latterly it became sponsored by UNICEF) versus Corporate Mammon Whore. Wonderful Messi v cheating bighead, ex-Man U Ronaldo.

There is and can only be one team to support. This is what happened the same year when Barca met Real in
el clasico.



And so it was, in 1974, that I saved up my entire spending money for the school trip, and went to El Corte Ingles to buy a Johann Cruyff Barcelona shirt. The very one below.

My mum saves everything. So a year or so ago I asked her if she still had it. The answer she gave me broke my heart.

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The Rec'

The Rec' was a muddy football pitch, replete with cowpats and broken bottles; later to have the addition of a swing, that was where we hung out as kids.

It was the place I learned to french kiss with Julie Garton; the scene of my first proper appearance in a football team (managed, unfeasibly, by Neil Warnock) - in short, legendary. But legendary maybe for one particular reason.

All the good fights happened at the Rec'.

To explain why, you need to know a little more about the politics of living where I lived in the 70s.

You may have read about school bully Vaughny and his dynasty in other posts. But before Vaughny there were other contenders.

Neil Beever for one.

Bee - and later his neanderthal brother Ian - were part of a triad of loosely-related fiefdoms that ruled where we lived in the 70s.

It was like South Central Los Angeles in industrial England: to the south was Barber Close, in which Vaughny and his brother Dave lived. To the east, in 60s regeneration 2up2downland, was Beever territory. But to the north, in the old houses by the church, was the even more imposing hegemony of the Rattenburys, Neil and Alan.

For me the great fights of the 70s - Rumble In The Jungle Ali vs Forman; Ali vs Frazier in the Thrilla In Manilla - were matched, nay surpassed, by the battles taking place in my own home town.

Because when there was a fight, everything stopped. Word would go round in advance, like social networking nowadays, and any kid worth his salt would arrive at the 'Rec to see the latest spectacle.

I remember one particular battle between Vaughny and Bee. We were playing football - as we did every day after school, until it got dark, day in, day out - and often there would be some niggle between one person and another that would lead to fisticuffs.

But this was different.

Bee vs Vaughny was a grudge match trailed in advance. Vaughny's hegemony was in full swing - he was smart, attractive, hard, and clever. And Bee wasn't. He was barely able to express himself in the English language. And Vaughny had humiliated him with some taunt or other about how thick he (actually) was. And he was Einstein compared to his brother.

It was like Ali vs Frazier. Don King was probably there to promote it.

So we probably played football for 3 or 4 hours that night, and only at the end of the game did the real action start. There was no spontanaeity to it - everyone knew there was going to be a fight - but at the end of the game, so it seemed, the number of kids on the 'Rec grew by about a million percent.

I think the fight lasted about an hour. It was a truly spectacular event, in which each man fought the other to a standstill: cheered on, so it seemed, by hundreds of thousands of people.

Try as he may, Vaughny could never quite break Bee down. He tried everything - gauging, kicks to the bollocks, hitting him with tree branches - and still Bee would not go down. People came and went; bought ice creams and drinks; went home and had their teas and watched Magpie on telly; did their homework - yet Vaughny and Bee fought on.

Eventually, everyone got bored and it got dark and the fight just stopped. But Vaughny and Bee had gained a new respect for each other. From that point, two tribes melted into one, and the Vaughan/Beever alliance briefly threatened total domination. Hoppy (see Hoppy and Vincey) hitched a ride at this point.

But they still could not compete with the Rattenburys.

The Rattenburys were royalty: Vaughan and Beever merely new money. The Rattenburys' right to the title of hardest in the town went back to the days of the Domesday Book.

And it too had its defining moment.

The fight of all fights had happened a few weeks before, by the tree-swing from which you could enter the 'Rec across a small stream by the main road:

Neil Rattenbury vs his own brother Alan.

I had befriended Alan, who was at least 4 years older than me and in the 5th year (Year 11 to you modern people) at school when I was in the first year - year 7 nowadays. (By the way, what exactly IS year 7 or 11? You went to juniors until year 4 and then you started again in year 1 at secondary. Bollocks to all the rest. New age shit.)

Anyway, I think Alan indulged me because I was younger and so I became his second in the fight against Neil. We walked down together to the fight, and I remember an immense sense of pride that I was in Alan's corner. I felt good. Vaughny, Bee et al were metaphorically in the front row, checking out the opposition.

The fight was short and brutal. Alan won, memorably, by ripping his own brother's eyebrow off.

The 'Rec's reputation as a legendary venue was secure; and I was, briefly, the centre of the universe.

Alan Rattenbury went on to a life of being a butcher or something.

Somewhere in a womb, Mike Tyson was watching and taking notes.
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The Day I Grew Up

June 1973. I am 11 years old and about to leave primary school for secondary school: a whole new world of violence, Shangalang and kung fu stars.

Ian Vaughan - Vaughny - is in his omnipotent pomp: soon to graduate to the position of King of secondary school reserved for him by his brother Dave (see other blog entries).

Below him in the hierarchy: Grant Hopkinson (see earlier chapters again); Martin Mitchell; even the dreaded 'Drac' - Neil Boulton, the first child I ever saw with black teeth. Six foot of spittle and venom.

Most of the girls at primary school were anonymous in gingham and pigtails. Julie Garton however though actually only 11 herself at the time, was sex on legs. There was only one Julie, and she knew it, and she had us all dragging our tongues on the floor.

But how to win Julie...

It was impossible. Vaughny had it stitched up, and anyway she was going to a different school to the rest of us - in only a few weeks' time.

It seemed that only the most dramatic gesture would work.

And so the day came of the school sports day.

Sports days for most normal people were not the anodyne affairs those of us with our own children know so well in the modern era. Imagine the mentality of creating non-competitive sports days - as nowadays - in which everyone wins and no-one loses. I cannot think of a worse lesson in life to teach anyone. Sport teaches children how to take knocks in life, to lose with dignity and to win with sportmanship and good grace. So let's throw beanbags around in a circle to make sure no middle class Jemima or Noah cries - thus saving the school from their irate, equally middle class, equally useless-at-sport parents who themselves had suffered cruel humiliation in their own childish sports days and determined thereafter to create a legal framework where no-one actually ever wins anything in case anyone else gets upset.

Political correctness gone mad.

I'm convinced the world is actually run by people who were crap at sport as children.

So to the day. The usual egg and spoon races come and go. The scores are neck and neck. The last race is the hundred metre sprint. Peter Vince is in it (German, chocolate box house etc); so is Ian Goldthorpe (the only thing about whom I remember is he had a budgie and a clarinet - so loser from he outset)....

...me...

...and Vaughny.

He was a stick-on. Had to be. He was the best at pulling girls, the best at football, the fastest, the hardest and the most glamorous. And he was Born To Be King.

I suppose you can only imagine the events that followed if you are mentally playing the theme from Chariots of Fire in your head.

Ok... that's better...'Dum da da da dum dum...'

A photographer took a picture of it (which I have sadly lost, but which made the papers and everything) and which explains the whole thing. I have borrowed a pair of rubbish spikes from I know not who. I've trained, dieted, prepared my best and am pumped up. I've even made my own gum-shield out of toilet paper.

The gun goes.

I get off to a flyer. Streak past Vincey. Streak past Goldie. I can see my mum at the sidelines cheering me on. I can see Julie Garton watching, willing me to win, I know.

Fifty yards. No Vaughny. Sixty yards. No Vaughny. Eighty yards. No Vaughny.

By this time the crowd (seemingly millions) is in a frenzy. The shock of a lifetime is on the cards. I seem to see Julie's face at all points on the journey, as if she is following me down the track. She is saying to me 'win it for me Paul and I will be your prize', like a kind of Greek goddess in the sky. They say some religions are promised 70 virgins in heaven as a reward for a righteous life. I just wanted this one.

Ninety yards. Still no Vaughny. Julie's panties were a whisker away.

As I breasted the tape, years before Colin Welland ever had the idea in his head, the photograph was to reveal all.

We had been separated out into teams - each given a colour - Goldie yellow, Vincey green, Vaughny red and me blue. There were actually only 4 colours in the 70s anyway. We had to wear these sashes over our shoulders signifying our allegeance (Julie was also a blue, natch).

Vaughny's had become caught up as he faffed around with it at the start, and had held him back.

Of course he never forgave me. But that day I won Julie's heart - over him - and took my first step towards being a man. I felt like bloody Lancelot.

Julie left soon afterwards and went to a nearby secondary school. The only times I ever saw her after that was when we played them at football. I captained our team, and she would come and watch me after her own netball match had finished.

It is now 35 years since I last saw her.

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