Aldershot

Chieftain tank, Aldershot, Aldershot Military Museum
A tank stands guard over the car-park at Aldershot Military Museum

Aldershot is a nondescript, slightly down-at-heel sort of town with a huge feather in its cap. Ebenezer Howard, father of the Garden City movement, would have been very proud.

From close to the centre (undergoing development) of the town a boulevard heads off towards Farnborough and barely deviates for almost two miles. To either side are smart residential developments, recreational greenery, sports fields, a cathedral, administrative buildings and a museum or two. This is where the British Army pitched its tents in 1854.

To fully appreciate Queen’s Avenue, it’s best to approach it from the south. In fact in January 2023 that was the only likely approach – access from the A331 at the northern end was blocked off, and the diversion signs were not entirely reliable. Besides, from the south you’ll have seen a little of Aldershot by the time you get to Queen’s Avenue and you’ll be ready for something better.

A visit to the Aldershot Military Museum will take you up most of the length. On the way, to the left opposite the stadium, you’ll pass a series of playing fields on which I turned out in midfield for the Powell Duffryn Computer Services XI in 1977. The game was briefly interrupted by descending parachutists.

The Military Museum is a modest affair: three sheds, really, with a variety of vehicles drawn up within and without. One of the sheds was used by Montgomery and shifted to the present site. One or two of the vehicles look as if they might be of similar vintage.

The first shed is devoted to local history, and particularly the importance in the area of an émigré French dynasty. Napoleon III’s widow lived close by after the disaster of the Franco-Prussian War and the loss of her young son. The property was previously owned by the Longman publishing family. Samuel Cody, pioneering aviator and a relative of Buffalo Bill, is also celebrated. Aldershot only really enters the picture with the arrival of the Army.

The second hut tells the story from 1854 onwards, in slightly piecemeal style. It’s nicely laid-out: considering the limited amount of space available, it never feels crammed. And there’s plenty for kids to do: a crawl space, replica vehicles, dressing up and, outside, a junior assault course. Connoisseurs of mannequins will appreciate the quality of the eyes on the Military Museum’s models – these things look as if they’re welling up.

Outside, tanks and armoured cars and something as ordinary as a Bedford truck complete the displays, although in the area that serves as ticket office, café and gift shop there’s a demonstration of rifles. It is, as noted, modest, and slightly touching as a result. This was, after all, a central cog in the functioning of the British Empire.

Aldershot, statues, galloping horse
Military statuary in the square in front of Princes Hall: in the foreground, a horse galloping over a symbol of a bailey bridge, and in the background a Ghurka carries a comrade to safety

Elsewhere in the town, military history is recorded in different ways. Pub names, for example: the one across the road from the football ground is called The Crimea. And statues: in front of Princes Hall is a patch of grass with statues of a para, a Gurkha rescuing a soldier and a horse galloping across a bailey bridge. Further from the centre is a famous equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington.

Buddha, Aldershot
A Buddhist community centre has the football ground as a neighbour – there’s a floodlight just visible top-left

During the Oldham game a number of curious things happened. Most involved the referee.

At one point he left a blob of spray for a free-kick and went to mark the line 10 yards away for the defensive wall. Behind his back the Aldershot full-back Ollie Harfield scooped up the blob in his hands and moved it a yard forward. The referee, perhaps alerted by the outraged howls of the fans, put it back… but did not book Harfield. It’s only cheating, after all… Later, however, he booked Oldham striker Mike Fondop for accidentally running into an opponent at a restart. We wondered whether Fondop should perhaps be substituted, partly to avoid the risk of a sending off and partly to get the pacey Timmy Abraham on to the field. The referee saw that coming, and for no obvious reason booked Abraham as he was warming up on the far touchline.

And the Oldham goalkeeper, Magnus Norman, saved a penalty hit very hard straight down the middle. He simply stood his ground, parried the ball upwards and caught it. Was this a lucky guess, or had he done his homework on the Aldershot penalty-taker? Either way, it was a wonderful save.

Aldershot Town 1 Oldham Athletic 1
EBB Stadium, 28 January 2023

Maidstone

Lady Godiva
The Maidstone Godiva: shy and vulnerable

There’s a rather moving sculpture of Lady Godiva in the Maidstone Museum. Your first reaction is to wonder: “What is it – she – doing here?”

And if you’ve seen the Godiva in Broadgate, Coventry, you’ll be struck by significant differences and another question. “Does this woman – girl, really – come from the same story?”

The Maidstone Godiva – let’s call her the Maid – is pale and marbled (in plaster, actually), slightly larger than life-size, on a horse of course but also mounted on a plinth and therefore hard to miss. And the first thing about her that you can’t help but notice is how grateful she would be to be missed. She is clearly self-conscious and even the horse’s head is bowed.

The Maid is vulnerable and unhappy. Her eyes are closed, her head is lowered. Her right hand supports her forehead and helps to bring her long flowing locks into a defensive curtain. Her legs – she rides side-saddle – are interlocked where the toes of her right foot curl around her left calf, perhaps for balance, perhaps for security. Her hair obscures one side of her face and cascades across her lap. Her left breast – indeed the left-hand side of her body – is exposed. The horse looks powerful but restrained, as if sensing the rider’s distress.

The Coventry Godiva – Diva, let’s say – is in bronze, also larger than life. She is much more recent – mid-20th century, where the Maid is Victorian. She has a name; the statue is called Self Sacrifice, having always been intended for prominent public display. Equally oddly, for almost 20 years of her career in central Coventry she sheltered beneath a canopy.

The Diva rides side-saddle but sits upright. She looks ahead, expressionlessly, making no attempt to conceal herself. Her left hand touches the reins, her right stretches out behind her to steady herself. She seems proud of her body and, if not at ease, not entirely uncomfortable.

The Diva’s hair, as long as the Maid’s but straighter, frames her face and falls across her left breast and between her thighs, which are parted. Her posture on the prancing horse looks precarious.

Both are young. No doubt they were betrothed – a deceptively gentle word – at an early age. Godiva, an 11th century Anglo-Saxon, is said to have been the wife of Leofric, Earl of Mercia. She appealed on behalf of the townspeople of Coventry against a tax Leofric proposed. He accepted her plea, on condition that she ride naked through the streets of Coventry. The townsfolk undertook to stay indoors behind shuttered windows, in solidarity with her. A tailor called Tom drilled a hole in his shutters and became the original Peeping Tom.

The story seems contrived and unwholesome, like an upskirting shot on the Internet. Leofric, Tom and even the sculptors take a timelessly prurient interest in what the tabloid era would call ‘posh totty’. Godiva may actually have been young, beautiful and completely naked, but in essence she is another stereotype of an era when story-tellers were exclusively men.

But if sniggering at a glimpse of female nakedness is the topic, it would be dishonest not to identify the artists involved. Their names belong to a particularly English linguistic tradition. The Maidstone Godiva is by John Thomas (1813-62). The Godiva stepping out in central Coventry is by Sir William Reid Dick (1879-1961).

Maidstone on the Medway
Maidstone: a historic Medway town

Maidstone United, a Football League club from 1989-92, play on a 3G artificial surface at the Gallagher Stadium north of the town centre. It’s a short walk from Maidstone East railway station.

But if you arrive by train – or any other way – take a walk down through the centre of the town and back along the River Medway. Through Brenchley Gardens there is, as noted, an excellent local museum and art gallery. At Jubilee Square, the town makes a transition from a rather characterless shopping area to an authentic medieval quarter. The Archbishop’s Palace dates from the 14th century – the last time Oldham Athletic won two matches in succession – and was the residence of Archbishops of Canterbury. Across the Millennium Footbridge, a riverside walk will take you northwards towards Whatman Park, where another footbridge brings you out alongside the football ground.

Maidstone United 0 Oldham Athletic 0
Gallagher Stadium, 19 November 2022

Maidenhead

The town now known as Maidenhead may have been known to the Romans as Alaunodunum. But we only have the word of ‘a 16th century antiquary’ for that, and when historians refer to antiquaries you can bet they mean amateurs.

Maidenhead, Thames, Boulter's Lock, river, fishing
The Thames at Maidenhead

Alaunodunum or whatever it was may subsequently have been visited by Vikings. The evidence for this is that Danes sailed up the Tamesis before disembarking and establishing a stronghold at Reading. Alfred the Great turfed them out, making Maidenhead safe once more.

In medieval times Bristol, as a port facing the Atlantic, became the second city of the country. Maidenhead was on the route. When Brunel built the railway in a very straight line straight through it, the town’s future was assured.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel… it’s a name to conjure with. Isambard was the middle name of his French father, Marc; Kingdom comes from his mother’s maiden name. He lived to be only 53 but much of his legacy remains in daily use.

The Maidenhead railway bridge is an example. Immortalised in JMW Turner’s Rain, Steam and Speed, it crosses the Thames to the west of the town. Two main arches of 128ft meet in mid-stream on a small island. The arches were the flattest ever attempted, for their extent, and the nervous owners of the Great Western Railway asked that the wooden supporting structure used during the bridge’s construction be left in place, by way of insurance. Brunel acceded, but lowered the structure slightly to leave his brickwork to its own devices. The wood was later washed away by floods; the bridge remains.

Maidenhead, Maidenhead Town Hall, fountain
Civic buildings: the Town Hall

Just a couple of hundred yards upstream is the road bridge that carries the A4 over the river. In the old coaching days, a wooden bridge replaced a ferry on the road to Bath and the west out of London. Maidenhead grew up as a place at which travellers rested, stayed overnight, had a meal etc, while the teams of horses on their coaches were changed. In one instance, apparently, the ostler of an inn was the same individual who would have held them up had they been foolhardy enough to press on through Maidenhead Thicket after dark.

The stone road bridge built in the Georgian period also inspired art. Jacques Joseph ‘James’ Tissot painted a rather lantern-jawed young lady disembarking on the north side of the bridge in The Return from the Boating Trip. It’s not his best, if you ask me, and the young lady doesn’t look greatly impressed either.

And another quarter mile upstream is the scene of a third painting, Edward John Gregory’s Boulter’s Lock, Sunday Afternoon. This depicts many, many pleasure craft of the late Victorian era approaching or leaving the aforementioned lock. Very few of the boaters are looking what they’re doing and one blogger has suggested the painting might be a poster for a Water Safety campaign. The original is in the Lady Lever Gallery on Merseyside; you’ll find a copy in the Maidenhead Heritage Centre, between the football ground and the town centre.

Maidenhead, Maidenhead Heritage Centre, ATA, Spitfire, flight simulator
Maidenhead Heritage Centre: a Spitfire simulator will put you through your paces

The Heritage Centre is quirky and very attractive. Downstairs, carefully laid out to make the best use of limited space, is a cute little local museum. Pride of place goes to an early motor car, from a time 100 years ago when Maidenhead led the world in automatic transmission. Upstairs, for a small fee (£3.50 in 2022) is a very sophisticated Spitfire flight simulator, featuring a cockpit, multiple screens and an instructor who uses appropriate lingo – “let’s try a roll-out now”. With surrounding exhibits it commemorates the Air Transport Auxiliary, a WWII civilian initiative set up to move military aircraft around. The ATA had its headquarters two miles away at White Waltham. It was supposedly unique in recruiting women pilots and giving them equal pay. That’s as maybe; while I was there, the people trying out the simulator were men of my age. I didn’t join the queue – I had a substandard football match to go to.

Maidenhead United 1 Oldham Athletic 1
York Road, 8 Oct 2022

Bromley

Bromley, Owl Prowl, public art, Amanda Quellin
Owl Prowl: a Bromley attraction in summer 2022. This one is called Nocturnals, by Amanda Quellin

Oldham Athletic’s descent into the National League obliges me to face my own prejudices. They came most sharply into focus recently as I walked through Bromley, looking for something to say about it.

But if I found Bromley characterless and uninteresting, and if I expect to react in much the same way to Wealdstone, Dorking and others, I should perhaps try to see Oldham through the eyes of supporters of those clubs. When Bolton Wanderers’ first taste of European competition was against Lokomotiv Plovdiv in the UEFA Cup in 2005, ticket sales were initially disappointing. Plovdiv, it was suggested in the UK press, were not the most attractive opponents. Nobody thought to ask residents of the cultural capital of Bulgaria how they regarded the prospect of a trip to Bolton.

Bromley, Charles Darwin, HG Wells, Market Square, public art, murals
The Darwin mural, Market Square

In Bromley, I wandered idly up the High Street, along West Street and back down East Street where, to pass the time, I ate an outstanding pie in the Cow & Pig. The route brought me back to Market Square, where echoes of a more bucolic past go beyond the name.

First, there’s a municipal water pump on the eastern side. Behind it, occupying a three-storey gable end, is a mural devoted largely to Charles Darwin.

Darwin, depicted as a younger man than the Biblical white-beard we are familiar with, is sitting beneath a tree. He appears to be taking notes. References to his accomplishments are recorded at intervals across the foliage. Darwin lived at Downe, a few miles away.

There are nods to other notable locals. The trail-blazing archaeologist John Lubbock is a small figure in the distance to Darwin’s left; and emerging from the upper left of the tree is HG Wells.

Wells was born only a stone’s throw away, on Bromley High Street, and this same wall had previously been adorned with a mural celebrating his work. Wells may no longer merit his own mural but the site of his birth – now Primark- has a blue plaque. This isn’t a National Heritage plaque – that one is close to Regent’s Park – but it indicates the abiding popularity of the author. At least 11 plaques, in various colours, record the presence of Wells at various stages of his life in places as far apart as Sevenoaks and Stoke-on-Trent.

Bromley, Picturehouse, Art Deco, cinema, architecture
Bromley Picturehouse: a six-screen Art Deco cinema beautifully restored

It would be dishonest, though, to leave the subject of HG Wells without noting that he didn’t appear to be particularly fond of Bromley. He might also have found the rest of the town’s literary heritage decidedly middle-brow. Enid Blyton lived for a time on Shortlands Road, recorded by another non-EH blue plaque. Richmal Crompton, creator of William, lived the last years of her life at Bromley Common. But more recently Hanif Kureishi was born and grew up in Bromley.

At the match, the question of whether Bromley was or was not dull became entirely moot. The only relevant fact about Bromley that afternoon was that it had a much better football team than Oldham. Onwards and upwards? Not necessarily…

Bromley 3 Oldham 0
Hayes Lane, 24 Sep 2022

York

York Minster, York, city walls, tourism

There’s something appealing about a city you can walk round. York is especially undemanding in this respect, being girt by an almost complete circuit of city walls. You can literally walk around York in about two hours.

The walls give you an elevated view of some of the city’s other attractions. On the southern side there’s one of the most conical castle keeps you will ever have seen; on the southwest the magnificent railway station, the largest in the world when it opened in 1877; and along the west side the Museum Gardens and the Minster.

York, Monkgate, city walls, fortifications
Monkgate: one of several magnificent bars and gateways around York’s walls

From time to time the trail returns to ground level. There are three short stretches where the walls have gone, and a couple of areas where they proceed without the trail, presumably for safety reasons. Then there are the gates, or bars: at one or two points steps descend on one side of a monumental gateway and go back up on the other side of the road. It’s a small price to pay, on reflection, but at the time it feels like an imposition.

Doubly so if you encounter traffic. The staircases are one-way without passing places, and that goes for sections of the wall trail as well. Here the girth not of the city but of the citizens comes into play. You will either have to give way or compress yourself against a battlement. Or, in favoured spots, there will be a bastion to retreat into and contemplate the world below.

River Ouse, York,
River Ouse: focal point of the modern city

The River Ouse on its way to a junction with the mighty Trent interrupts the circuit at two points and the River Foss at a third. How was security maintained at these points when the walls served a serious defensive purpose? In south-eastern York it looks as if castles were the answer. The one on the north bank remains, but the ‘Old Baile’ south of the river is no more than a mound now. Where the Ouse enters the city, the defences seem to have been towers: Lendal and Barker Towers facing each other across the river.

Topiary, animals, snail, duck, Edible Wood
Snail and, top left, duck in the shadow of the Art Gallery

Masonry is a recurrent feature of York’s attractions but there are gentler lines to appreciate. Animal shapes rendered in artificial turf turn up all over the city. Some are close to obvious tourist spots – outside the Castle Museum, for example – but others will take tracking down. Beyond the Edible Wood, itself an annex of Museum Gardens, you’ll find a snail and a duck. Who knows where the rest of the collection is to be found. Perhaps the tourist information office will be able to help, but from the online explanations it looks as if the project is fairly informal. Not all are animals, either: in Minster Yard, behind the Minster, people take pictures in front of the letters of York in man-sized green block capitals.

In the Yorkshire Museum, a section devoted to topiary would have had a snappy caption: The Grass Menagerie, perhaps. The museum delights in such things. A sequence on worship is headed ‘Northern Soul’, and of course there’s ‘Living in the Past’. This is unnecessary and quickly tiresome. Also, having done that kind of thing for a living for decades, I’d have to add that it does nothing for the copywriter’s soul.

Besides, when you’ve got the Rydale Hoard and the only British statue of a Roman emperor, what need have you of cute captions? Constantine the Great, the first emperor to embrace Christianity, was acclaimed emperor by the army at York (then Eboracum). He does not look like a man to be trifled with.

Elsewhere in Museum Gardens you’ll find plenty of scenic ruins. The Abbey of St Mary is perhaps the most atmospheric. At one time the abbey church would have counterbalanced the Minster, a couple of hundred yards away, but Henry VIII applied his own brand of dissolution and now only the walls of nave, crossing and cloisters remain.

Multangular Tower: a Museum Gardens highlight

A Roman structure called the Multangular Tower was a part of the legionary fortress. It has 10 sides and represents a missed opportunity, in my view. ‘Multangular’ is a clumsy designation, imprecise and apparently missing a vowel; they could have called it the Threepenny Tower, which would have been far more memorable. Granted, the pre-decimal threepenny bit had 12 sides, but who would know?

Down by the river is the Hospitium, associated with the Abbey but not too closely – it was where lay visitors were put up. Now it earns a living as a venue for weddings and other events. Between the Hospitium and the river, by the way, is the Dame Judi Dench Walk celebrating a famous daughter of York.

(Where glorious sons of York are concerned, you’ll notice many references to Richard III around the city. The dispute over where Crookback Dick belongs has long since been settled in favour of Leicester, but York continues to press its case.)

Opposite, at the top corner of Museum Gardens, is the Edible Wood. Planted in 2015, this is some way off maturity, but it’s already worth a look for the ingenuity of the planting. Visitors are asked to “take inspiration from the garden but leave the produce for everyone to enjoy”.

The Museum Gardens are without the city wall, so to speak. Likewise the Art Gallery, just to the north, and the National Railway Museum across the river. Most of the rest of York’s big set-piece attractions are within the walls and therefore just a short walk from each other.

York, railway, mural, Premier Inn
York railway station: something special

There’s too much in the Minster to do it all justice here. Don’t miss the stained glass and one of the most camp memorials – Grinling Gibbons’ rendering of a former archbishop – you’ll ever see.

Walking south through the famous, teeming Shambles will bring you to the Jorvik Viking Centre. According to the reviews on TripAdvisor it divides opinion. I didn’t go, and cannot express one.

Further south again is York Castle and the Castle Museum. The castle mound and tower survive, rising steeply on a promontory separating the Ouse and the Foss.  At their base is the Castle Museum, where another ne’er-do-well called Dick is recalled – Dick Turpin. The cells are just one distinct section: a visit to this museum involves sudden transitions between eras and topics. It is never dull.

York City 1 Oldham Athletic 1
LNER Community Stadium, 29 August 2022

Abbatoirs

Abba Voyage, image by Johan Persson

There are many reasons to regard Abba’s Abbatars with caution, not least for the threat they might pose to the future of football.

First, consider the nature of the event. People are paying more than £150 a head to listen to an assortment of session musicians – an ad hoc tribute act – play Best Of tracks behind an unusually sophisticated lights show. That’s all. Interaction? With what? Yet the enthusiasm of ‘concert’-goers seems unfeigned and they call it an ‘experience’. Tellingly, they say it has to be seen to be believed.

Second, the ‘concert’ marks a new high-water mark in the encroachment of digital trickery on reality. Arthur C Clarke’s famous observation comes to mind: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Reviewers have quibbled over whether the figures on stage are holograms, avatars or something else. They miss the point. Whatever the figures on stage are, they are not musicians.

Third, the age of the music itself is troubling. Abba split up 40 years ago. What does it say for contemporary music, or for the output of the past two score years, that people will spend so much on a night’s nostalgia and make-believe?

Fourth and not least, what kind of precedent might the apparent success of the Abba experience establish?

This is where football needs to take note. Several developments might converge on the Abba model. The people who thought a European Super League was a good idea will surely have noticed the potential.

Football is already a game played largely for television audiences. Meanwhile, video games as spectator sports appear to be growing in popularity. If it can be done with ‘musicians’ in a purpose-built arena, why not ‘footballers’ on a ready-made screen?

Apparently the Abba avatars are least convincing when at rest. That makes the technology sound ideally suited to modern footballers, whose movement varies between languid and frenzied but is rarely static. Not so the greats of the past, but there would be no need to restrict teams of avatars to current squads; as Abba demonstrate, players well past their prime could be drawn out of retirement. The teams might represent Best Of XIs.

Could teams of avatars play out 90-minute competitive matches? No injuries, no refereeing controversies, no massive wage bills (once image rights are resolved), just tireless footballers scurrying around in perpetuity.

  • Last night I saw a French film called La Famille Bélier, the charming if slightly heavy-handed drama of which the award-winning Coda is an English-language remake. At the end of the film, a number of people – a good proportion of a thin audience – applauded. La Famille Bélier was made eight years ago. Nobody involved was present. People were applauding flickering coloured lights.

Calling time

See you next year? Oldham players applaud the fans after a rare victory

It has long been my contention that the legendary Jack Sprat was and is an Oldham Athletic supporter. Now it turns out that he is related to Old Mother Hubbard, and the cupboard is finally bare.

Would Jack have been among the pitch invaders on Saturday? I suspect not. I see Jack as a philosophical fellow, accustomed to long years of decline at the club he has followed for decades. He is too old and too phlegmatic to be crossing any lines. Also there were a few minutes left to play… Athletic might have snuck a couple of goals past a tiring Salford.

Jack would have looked with regret at the online fans’ forum afterwards. Here, the people to whom Oldham Athletic’s fortunes really mattered were in an unforgiving mood. They vented their anger not only on the club’s owners and directors (past and present) but also at each other. Later, some apologised (though not to the club’s owners and directors).

Jack might have tried to get an optimistic thread going, to offset the sorrow and occasional ferocity. Rather than apportion blame, how about acknowledging those individuals who emerge from the wreckage with any credit? The efforts of manager John Sheridan, above all, deserved recognition, but also those of club captain Carl Piergianni and a number of other players (though fatally somewhat fewer than 11). And the supporters who responded vocally and in huge numbers to Sheridan’s return… they deserved better.

Or he might have looked for silver linings. Fans of the other relegated team, Scunthorpe United, had no top-tier success to look back on, no League Cup final nor FA Cup semi-finals. In fact Oldham may be the most distinguished team ever to appear in the National League – Notts County have more history, but not much within living memory.

But Jack did not. His heart would not have been in it. The tone of the majority of deeply disappointed supporters struck a sympathetic chord. If Jack felt it less acutely, regarded it as a matter of regret rather than of any real importance, to have said so would have been to give gratuitous offence.

Besides, there was the question of whether the club would actually survive to begin the next season in the National League. Relegation from League Two stripped away any lingering sense of the club being special. Why, then, might it not stumble down the same ill-lit path as Bury and Macclesfield Town? It was hardly in rude health financially. Supporters might look at the National League table and contemplate visits to Eastleigh, Wealdstone and Bromley with dismay, but that was better than nothing.

Phlegmatic but occasionally prone to sentimentality, Jack would have let his mind wander back to October 1961, when his dad had first taken him to Boundary Park. Playing in the old Fourth Division, now League 2, Oldham had beaten Accrington Stanley 5-0 that day. The result was later declared void as Stanley went out of business. It was an unhappy augury.

Jack would have felt sorry for the younger fans in particular. He, at least, could look back on good days; he’d had his money’s worth. For a period of a few months in 1990 Oldham were the Team of the Nineties. But there had been no promotions since 1991, little to savour apart from an odd result here and there. A generation of fans below the age of 20 had known only mediocrity, decline and, now, fall.

Jack Sprat would have gone home on Saturday knowing that Oldham Athletic offered him even less to look forward to than usual. As he tucked into his dinner – the top off his father’s egg – he would have reflected on the perverse satisfaction he derived from that, the curious fit of the club’s fate with his own character. Mrs Sprat, who had abandoned Manchester United for Manchester City some years earlier, had the usual 5-1 win to celebrate.

Tottenham Hotspur Stadium

Tottenham Hotspur Stadium

Hard-core members of The 92 aim to keep their membership up-to-date. Aside from League 2’s annual intake, they also try to visit the new stadia that clubs continue to build and move into.

I go to Sutton, Hartlepool and the like for the sake of a day out, but I’ve never been too bothered about new grounds. The paperback version of Towns of Two Halves shamelessly records visits to Burnden Park, Highbury and Plough Lane among many other half-forgotten football venues. On this as on so many other subjects, I am (as Gore Vidal said of Thomas Jefferson’s relationship with truth) occasionally prone to it but never fanatical.

Tottenham Hotspur Stadium
View from the Broadcast Booth: the gods, in the language of theatre, or paradis in French

On the other hand, it seems negligent to go to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and not write some sort of report. It is, after all, one of the modern wonders of the football world.

Pros and cons, then. Or, in this case, a Con first:

Con
1) As at so many other top-flight football grounds, it is not easy for a casual admirer of good football to get a ticket. One way round this is to fork out for one of Spurs’ many hospitality packages. A related Con, then, is that my visit (on the ‘Broadcast Booth’ ticket) cost a small fortune. But this turned out to be a Pro, too.

Back, then, to the usual order:
Pros
1) Watching top-class football from a box in the gods, waited on hand and foot, in comfort and warmth – it’s a treat.
2) Booking online: the club website is clear enough in laying out the options.
3) The people who work in its marketing department are accessible and helpful.
4) On matchday, there are plenty of easily identified staff in attendance.
5) The views from the 9th floor, outward over London and inward over the pitch, are sensational.
6) The catering is lavish.
7) The waiting staff, Spurs Legends, managers and engineers are attentive, efficient and pleasant.

Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, Aston Villa
Far below, Spurs run the clock down to preserve a 2-1 lead over Aston Villa

Cons
1) Parking is not included in the package.
2) Tickets and itinerary were not provided until four days before the fixture.
3) Tickets are supplied digitally and must be downloaded (in the case of Android phone owners) to Google Pay. Yes, that’s the same Google that was massively hacked in January 2020. An independent YouTube video guide to Google Pay suggests that “if you’re at all concerned about entering your bank details, perhaps Google Pay isn’t for you”.
4) Nobody checked my Covid status at the stadium.
5) This is a winter game: coat hooks in the booths shouldn’t be too much to hope for.
6) Alcohol was not permitted in the booth while the match was in progress.
7) The screen in our booth showed the Aberdeen/Celtic match happily enough but we could coax no action replays of the game in front of us.

Overall, the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium is a remarkable and beautiful place. The quality of the game you see would almost be irrelevant. In my home town, there is a restored Art Deco cinema that is so gorgeous you could enjoy just sitting in it for the length of a film – Spurs’ new home is in that category.

TV or not TV

television, live football, supporters, jigsaw puzzle, missing pieces, 2020/21 season, covid-19, coronavirus, social distancing

The pandemic has accelerated a regrettable trend. For the time being, football is a game played exclusively for a television audience.

At the top level the game has been heading that way for a number of years. The tinkering with kick-off times and even dates is only one aspect of the extent to which broadcasters call the tune. The interests of fans inside the stadium are neglected in many other respects: VAR is a particularly good recent example, having been devised apparently so that only TV viewers can know what is going on.

As the new season approaches, subscription TV or streaming is going to be the only way to watch live football for a while. All being well, fans may be allowed back into lower division grounds in carefully controlled numbers from October. It will be interesting to see how enthusiastic the take-up is.

Some parts of a club’s fan-base may choose not to return. The old boys who’ve been going for decades may decide it isn’t worth the risk. Another, younger cohort will have discovered during lockdown that they’ve saved a fortune not following a bunch of honest (or barely honest, as the case may be) triers around the country.

But the greatest risk to clubs lower down the leagues, where match-day revenue is proportionally more important, is that the collective experience depends on the dynamics of a crowd. It’s hard to imagine that experience not being deeply diluted by social distancing. It might compare unfavourably with the atmosphere in your lounge, where beer and pizza are easily available.

In many a ground, stewards turn a blind eye to some supposedly banned behaviour – fans standing throughout a match in all-seater stadiums is a particularly good example. But it’s hard to imagine that being applied to transgressions relating to Covid-19.

Tolerance of almost any kind of gathering is diminishing, if the rising penalties imposed on organisers and participants are any guide. And the most obvious penalty that a football club might face – to be obliged to return to the closed-doors policy – is easy to implement. For fans, sitting on egg-shells, socially distanced and on their best behaviour does not sound like much of a day out.

Back to the Future

Wellington, Basin Reserve, banners, football flags, visiting supporters
Tourist offices! Spare a thought for what away fans will contribute to the local economy

A timetable is emerging for a return to something like the old routine, in the lower divisions at least.

The key dates are:
Week beginning 17 August: publication of EFL fixture lists (21 August has been specified in reports, but neither the week nor the particular day is confirmed)
Weekend of 12 September: first games of the 2020/21 season, behind closed doors
1 October: all being well, limited numbers of supporters in grounds.

The new season’s fixtures usually create a buzz of interest. Their publication breaks up the close season, the Gobi Desert of the football calendar; and it gives fans something to look forward to.
This year, however, the close season in Leagues 1 and 2 is already five months old and until we can get into grounds there is very little to look forward to.
So a letter from Rochdale chairman Andrew Kilpatrick to his club’s fans, published on the Rochdale website, is of much wider interest.
From 1 October onwards Rochdale anticipate being able to have 2,170 fans inside the Crown Oil Arena. That’s a little over 20% of the ground’s capacity. More to the point, perhaps, it’s almost 60% of the average home attendance last season. At any level it’s better than nothing, obviously.
The prospect of a return to the possibility of football tourism remains distant. Casual visiting fans are unlikely to be a priority while numbers are restricted.
But that’s a very short-sighted view. Local tourist offices should urge clubs to focus on fans who will contribute most to the local economy. Given that the home fans will be contributing anyway, that means giving priority to incomers.