Excerpt from Life At The Top by Mark Hodkinson
The ball is in the net (apparently) and my new best friend has me in an aggressively affectionate headlock. He is screaming - yelling - shouting down my ear. When my brother grim finally lets go, I have to stay on my feet and volunteer an extra syllable to Barnsley as we cheer "Barns-a-lee" to the afternoon sky.
I am not a Barnsley supporter (I am not even from Yorkshire), yet here I am at Anfield, the only impartial observer among 3,000 devotees in the away end. As experiences go, this is strictly X-files, like passing a church and suddenly finding yourself at a wedding ceremony among strangers, and strange strangers at that.
The day begins at Oakwell, a fog drifting across the club car park. We all
have neatly printed coach tickets and neatly packed lunches. Barnsley, at
the foot of the table, have lost their past five away games and conceded 40
goals already this season. Understandably, no one mentions football as the
coach picks its way through the mist towards Liverpool. The man behind me,
however, mentions crisps a lot. He has a two-year-old grandson and has found
a sure-fire way of making babysitting easy.
"Crisps, I just feed him crisps," he explains.
"How many does tha' give him?" his friend asks. "Oh, about
four packets."
The coach parks alongside Stanley Park at the ludicrously early time of 1.30pm - this day is going to be long. I look at my match ticket and start to worry: Row 1, Seat 36, and, just to confirm that I have got the seat from hell, stamped across it is "Uncovered Seat", which means get set to get wet.
Now, I'm actually very lucky to have the ticket. Barnsley is a club loyal to its principles, and, initially, only season ticket holders were allowed to buy one. "They'd lynch me if I sold one to a reporter," revealed a member of staff. Row 1, Seat 36, in the Lower Anfield Road End is as appalling as it sounds.
To create Row 1, Seat 36 in your own living room, you must switch on Match of the Day and lie down flat on your stomach about six inches from the television. Place a fruit bowl between you and the screen - at Anfield, this is a photographer and his equipment - and, just in case there remains a modicum of enjoyment from your mole's eye view, ask various members of your family to push past wearing fluorescent jackets in the manner of club stewards.
The supporters sharing my mole hole all appear to be disconcertingly above
average height and weight, not to mention volume and intoxication. On either
side, sit two blokes the size of telephone boxes. When they both stand up,
which is every ten seconds, I have no choice but to rise with them. The one
on my left is middle-aged, and, it seems, fairly peaceable. Abruptly, he asks
a steward to move out of the way.
"You couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery, yer Scouse bastard,"
he yells as an afterthought.
If football has gone effete, no one has told Barnsley. Everyone sings. Mums, dads, lads, they all scream themselves hoarse, and the look in their eyes is intense; it betrays a raw, bloody-minded passion for their team, their town, their family, their mates. They sing as if their lives depend on it, and I do too.
Out on the pitch, Barnsley are hardly in the game, but, on a break, the ball appears to find its way into Liverpool's net. Here comes my head lock, and, for a horrible second, my neighbour is squeezing me violently, pressing his face close to mine. In this melee of hostile pleasure, I have never felt so lonely, never missed my own team and my own kind so much.
No one in the stalls has any idea who has scored, since the goal went in at the Kop End which is only visible with the aid of a tripod and a pair of binoculars. Somehow, Barnsley hold out and the goal celebrations are repeated at the end of the match. They are given extra seasoning as the supporters around me goad the stewards and police into a few minor skirmishes.
Back on the coach, we are made to wait an hour before setting off, and it takes almost a further hour to negotiate the traffic congestion in Liverpool. It is still foggy in Barnsley when we arrive just before 8pm. A couple are just leaving their house, dressed up for a Saturday night out. "Was it a good match?," they shout. "Yeah," I reply instinctively. The truth is, I don't know.