The idea of football tourism as a leisure pursuit depends rather obviously on two things. With football no longer a possibility, is tourism alone a legitimate substitute?
‘People flock to Venice in their millions without the city having had a decent football club for decades.’
Of course it is under normal circumstances, although even then it might seem perverse in some cases. At one end of the scale, people flock to Venice in their millions without the city having had a half-way decent football club for decades. But at the other, the questionable lure of the sights is now compounded by the closure of many attractions and facilities.
Towns of Two Halves has always maintained that any town can be regarded as a tourist attraction if you approach it with the right attitude. That becomes a difficult position to maintain when towns are shutting down. You’ll have seen a lot of newspaper columnists lately pretending to have read La Peste by Albert Camus; Nevil Shute’s On the Beach also comes to mind, with the old boys in the Melbourne club wondering whether they have time to drink their way through the port collection in the cellar before the fallout cloud arrives.
Jack Redshaw’s free-kick grazes the Ebbsfleet bar; as close as Halifax came to an equaliser in English football’s last match until further notice.
It was possible on the 14 March to watch Halifax play Ebbsfleet in the National League and to visit the Calderdale Industrial Museum, Halifax Minster and the Square Chapel Arts Centre. A handful of days later, all were closed until further notice. Now public transport is beginning to wind down – by this time next week travel in general might be discouraged, which would finally knock any idea of tourism on the head.
When the crisis has passed – and China appears to have got on top of the coronavirus in about four months – both elements of football tourism will probably take much longer to recover. Many football clubs seem ill-equipped to cope with the routine demands of the season; a prolonged shutdown will sorely test their viability. The EFL has made a fund of £50m available for clubs in difficulties. It’s a tidy sum, but if all 72 clubs applied, it could pay their players’ wages… for a month. Some of the local museums, galleries, country houses and other establishments so beloved of Towns of Two Halves also exist only where tolerances are so fine that a feeler gauge is necessary.
They will need all the help they can get. It’s hard to imagine that lower league football clubs or local cultural enterprises will be high in the Government’s list of priorities. When football returns, revel in the chance to be a tourist again. Any day can be a festival, just as any town can be a tourist resort.
‘Someone in a distant marketing department thought Chesterfield was the epitome of glamour’
‘Its careful drawing of riverside minarets and domes suggested yashmaks, houris and the dripping head of John the Baptist. It stopped just short of camels’
I have a soft spot for Chesterfield. During my many years as a smoker Chesterfield was my cancer-stick of choice.
It may have been the endorsements by Sugar Ray Robinson, Willie Mays, Bob Hope, Tyrone Power, Ronald Reagan, Rita Hayworth, Lucille Ball, Frank Sinatra and many more. It may have been the enticing promises of ‘No unpleasant after-taste’, ‘Cooler smoking’, ‘Man-size satisfaction’ and the astonishing assurance from the American medical fraternity – or, at least, that section of it represented by someone looking discouragingly like cub reporter Jimmy Olsen – that ‘Chesterfield is best for you’.
Or it may simply have been delight at the idea that someone in a distant marketing department thought Chesterfield was the epitome of glamour. Of all the brands competing for my addict’s mite, from the glittering yet cheap Embassy Gold to the vaguely patriotic Winston, this was the name that caught my eye and held my loyalty.
I don’t know whether Liggett & Myers still produce Chesterfields in packs of 20 (or, as I discovered in Australia, 30, where my daily consumption, attuned to a pack a day, effortlessly adjusted itself to a 50% increase in supply). If they do, the glamour of the modest Derbyshire town’s name will be offset today by a blank package embellished only by menacing warnings and pictures either of diseased body parts or a psychologically broken man trying to come to terms with erectile dysfunction. These anti-marketing devices would probably have increased my consumption as well. Anxiety is a powerful trigger where the committed smoker is concerned.
Besides, the packaging of the Chesterfields I smoked was risible. Its careful drawing of riverside minarets and domes suggested yashmaks, houris and the dripping head of John the Baptist. It stopped just short of camels. The general explanation for the name of the brand is that it has nothing to do with Derbyshire but derives from Chesterfield County, Virginia. Chesterfield County must have taken its name from somewhere not a million miles from the A61. It may have arrived in Virginia via an English milord (Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield actually), but he would have traced the title back to Derbyshire.
When I couldn’t find Chesterfields – as happened occasionally, since Chesterfields were a lower-league, minority-interest cigarette – I fell back on Winstons, but only Camels in an emergency. In a Sheffield newsagent’s once I drew blanks with both Chesterfield and Winston and, with a sigh, asked for a box of matches and a copy of The Guardian. “Aye,” said the shopkeeper, “tha’ll get a good smoke off that.”
The other reason for Chesterfield’s continuing appeal to my sense of nostalgia is that the Recreation Ground, Chesterfield, was where I became an Oldham Athletic supporter. This was the form teenage rebellion took in me with the 60s still a recent memory. Having supported my dad’s club, West Bromwich Albion, I decided it was time I found one of my own.
A home-town club was a slightly complicated option: I was born in a north Manchester mill town close to Oldham but not far from Rochdale or Bury either, and one branch of the family came from the Bolton area. After a process akin to holding auditions, I made the short journey from Sheffield to Chesterfield and watched a rather dreary 1-0 win for the home side.
It was the worst football match I had watched in some time and the Oldham team looked inept. But the crowd was great fun and the warmth of the famously dry northern sense of humour was cheering. Most important, perhaps, that Oldham team contained one or two obvious and authentic characters, especially a tricky winger called Alan Groves.
Groves was the kind of player who was never content merely to beat a full-back if he could humiliate him as well. Passing to the full-back and then taking the ball off him, stopping as if to tie his bootlaces, explaining to the crowd what he was about to do, all these were part of Groves’ repertoire.
Around Oldham he apparently became a familiar sight in a flashy car, sporting an afro and working his way through 80 cigarettes a day. Beyond football, he had the distinction – rare in any footballer, much less a Third Division one – of having featured in The Observer’s Quotes of the Week. Groves had married a 16-year-old girl who promptly left school to become his homemaker. The local education authority insisted she should still have been at school. Groves apparently replied to the effect that he didn’t care if she knew the date of the Battle of Hastings as long as she had his dinner on the table when he got home. Her father (her father! It was another era, just 45 years ago) was eventually fined £5.
Groves’ own story ended sadly: a very fit player, he died of heart failure at the age of 29.
What to do in Chesterfield, then? Gawp at the crooked spire, of course, and look round the museum and gallery. There are lovely parks and, in Sutton Scarsdale Hall, a fine old country seat to admire. But beware: a visit to Chesterfield might change your life.
Chesterfield 1 Oldham Athletic 0
Recreation Ground, 16 March 1974
