There’s an intangible magic about live football, and you can feel it at every ground in the Football League. The chatter of the fans as they stand clutching a pie or a mug of tea on a chilly away terrace, the sumptuous sound of a ball being whipped in from a corner, the fleeting moment of brilliance when your hardworking but bumbling centre-forward somehow fires home a rocket of a shot from 30 yards out. It’s a magic which keeps football fans squeezing through old turnstiles and taking to their seats, scarves wrapped around their necks, many of them here week-in, week-out for decades.
Every fan’s stories are a little bit different, a product of their own loyalty and memories, but that aura of possibility, of camaraderie, of joy and despair, has us hooked on live football. Whilst going through every Saturday afternoon I’ve spent in Mansfield or Middlesbrough peering towards a muddy goalmouth scramble would take me an eternity to write, here’s a largely unorganised journey through my experiences watching live Football League games during the past 3 seasons.
The first thing I notice is that whilst fans generally have a concept of a season as being – good, bad or awful – individual games often don’t fit that narrative. I saw a Tom Bradshaw-inspired Shrewsbury Town demolish a lacklustre Swindon at Greenhous Meadow in glorious August sunshine. This was in August 2013, just nine months before the Shrews dramatic relegation to League Two. Similarly, I saw a thoroughly frustrated Burnley lose 1-0 at home to Middlesbrough in April 2014, just weeks before the Turf Moor club gained promotion to the Premier League. It seems strange how nuanced every season is for all of the 72 clubs, never simply a success or a failure in the way that the fog of history and the final league position make it seem.
I’m also reminded of how varied the quality is. I’m not talking of the basic idea of the Championship being superior in technical and fitness terms to League Two, but of the disparity between wonderful, dramatic, attacking football and defensive dirges – regardless of division. One glance at a Middlesbrough FC ticket from March 2013 sends me (and my Boro-mad companion, Matt) tumbling back into the frame of a truly abysmal contest, finally won by Lee Clark’s Birmingham City,the points going in the away side’s favour, as a pass tricked in off Nikola Žigić’s leg. 1-0. Conversely, I stood rapt, fascinated, within a cauldron of noise at Brunton Park, where Carlisle United’s 3-3 draw against Hartlepool United in League Two provided a joyous, attackingly skilled exhibition of free-flowing football.
The atmosphere, too, cannot be replicated on TV. It ranges from the all-encompassing – like the constant, fierce chanting as Mansfield Town clashed with bitter rivals Chesterfield – to those wonderful, singular moments, like one mouthy young Staffordshire lad hurling unrelenting abuse at the opposition ‘keeper, to a mixture of bemusement and amusement, as the Brewers outclassed QPR with a 1-0 League Cup victory.
Even the bad bits are a story. Staring with concern at my frozen hands, in the environs of Prenton Park, desperately waiting for the referee to blow for full-time for the last 30 minutes of the game, but unwilling to leave, lest something wonderful happened (I didn’t!). A broken phone screen, dropped in excitement, a small price to pay for watching Wycombe Wanderers pull off a narrow victory at Oxford – and, the game’s undoubted highlight, a mascot falling over an ad hoarding. Well worth a battered iPhone 4 and £19.50 of anyone’s money.
As someone with a love of history and of architecture, it’s also been a pleasure to spend time in some of the most magnificent sporting arenas around. I’m not talking in terms of size, or cost, or even grandeur. It’s the way that Elland Road has that magnificent, slightly faded majesty. It’s the simple, unfussy joy of the Main Stand running alongside the touchline at Accrington Stanley’s traditional Crown Ground – which feels like it’s been transported here from the 1950s. It’s in the solid, modern, sleek facade of the disputed yet beloved Ricoh Arena and the old, historic turnstiles of Spotland. This is an era where stylish new-builds mingle with grand old stands awash with the whiff of Bovril and old club songs mumbling over the tannoy. What a time to be alive.
But, more than anything, the last three seasons have reinforced my sense of connection with the Football League. It’s given me a warm feeling, a sense of joy, to be there to see every touch of an emerging young talent. To witness moments like Michail Antonio’s breathtaking winner for Forest against Rotherham, looking down amidst the floodlit night, to see hugs shared between 11 jubilant players. It’s clapping off the teams as they clap the fans back, whether it’s been a frustrating loss or a joyous victory. It is all about being there.
