Spotland: The Sun Also Rises (And Other Football Stories) by Mark Hodkinson (Pomona 2010)

August 2009

A summer barely worthy of the name passes us by. At least the rain was a bit warmer than usual. The three-month break from football and Rochdale AFC hadn’t reinvigorated me. I was tired, still in last season's clothes. This was my 36th year as a Rochdale fan; I’d learned not to dance across the carpet when the calendar struck August. We had made the League Two Playoff final two years before at Wembley, losing 3-2 to Stockport County. And in 2008/09 we lost to Gillingham in the Play-off semi-final. There you go, then: final to semi-final and all set to start a new season with practically the same squad of players — clear, indisputable evidence that we were slipping back to staying put.

Most of us had believed that appearing at Wembley would be the apogee of our support; it was downhill from here. One Dale fanatic who had followed them passionately for 40 years was so convinced of this that he made it the catalyst to end his support. He broke the tie and moved on. I was envious of his resolve. I wanted to be him, living a life divorced from the fortunes of this cruel club. I became lost to reverie: for how long would you still check the scores? What did you do when the team was playing—how did you displace your thoughts, the longing to be at the ground? When did you forget to remember that they were actually playing on a certain day? What did you do with your life? I was told he had moved to a rural area far from Spotland. I saw him walking down dirt tracks, among dry stone walls, throwing rocks into streams. This solitary figure, lost. How heavy was his heart? And while I was imagining all this, I then thought how daft it was to feel this way, about a daft team playing a daft opening match of the season at Port Vale. What did it matter? Nothing and everything: that was the problem.

Football fans place far too much emphasis on the first game of the season. In it they are convinced they see the rest of their season distilled. I didn’t go to Port Vale because I was still sulking about losing out to Gillingham in the play-offs. And I’d been to Port Vale the previous season when we had lost 2—1 three days after Christmas, conceding a late goal. Unhappy Christmas. I didn’t like returning so soon to places where I had been made to feel miserable, annoyed. The journey home afterwards was too fresh in my mind, that irritable feeling in the stomach. There was no point in going there again and jabbing at an old wound.

I listened to updates from the match on the radio. We took the lead through Joe Thompson. I always like it when Joe scores because it confounds supporters. You can tell within seconds of seeing Joe on a football pitch that he is a nice lad. He’s even- tempered, plays the game fairly. Many fans want him to get stuck in more, growl at the full back. But Joe has this easy, almost lackadaisical manner about him. He plays as if he’s having a kick-about with his young nephews on the park. Such is his demeanour, it can pass you by that he’s actually working hard, covering runs, playing simple but effective passes. Some of the Main Stand moaners around me have an almost pathological hatred and holler for him to be taken off almost as soon as he's sighted in his kit. (If they got to the ground early enough, they'd probably shoo him away as he walked across the car park.) The pro-Joes tell them to shut it, give the lad a chance. The anti-Joes tell them no they should shut it; he's had his bloody chance. But when Joe scores we all stand up, cheer and love him as we would a perfect son.

This Artistic Life by Barry Hines (Pomona Books 2009)

One day, when we were playing in the sand outside the prefabs, we became aware of the large numbers of miners walking up Tinker Lane from the pit. Usually, there was a lot of laughter and banter when they were coming home from work, but this time they were unusually quiet and serious, and the only sound was the clatter of their clogs on the roadway. Instinctively, we knew something was wrong.

"What's happened?" I shouted.

"Doug Westerman's been killed!" one of the miners replied.

The name meant nothing to me or to any of my pals, so after watching the silent procession for a minute or two, we resumed messing about in the sand.

Later, when I went home for tea, my mother was sitting in the armchair by the fire, sobbing into her hands. My dad, still wearing his pit clothes and unwashed, had his arm round her shoulders, trying to comfort her.

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"Your grandad's been killed," she sobbed.

I stared at her. Then the penny dropped and I realised that Doug Westerman, the dead miner, was my grandfather. I hadn't made the connection because I didn't know his name. I only knew him as grandad.

After the death of her father, I was always aware of my mother's uneasy glances at the clock when my dad was late home from work.

"Go and see if your dad's coming," she would say, and I would go outside and look down the lane towards the pit, praying that he was, so that I didn't have to go back inside and disappoint her.

(from 'Tinker Lane')

The Last Mad Surge of Youth by Mark Hodkinson (Pomona 2009)

Woody was one of the few who lived with his real dad. Barrett had christened him 'Luigi' after calling round one day and finding him wearing the coolest sunglasses he'd ever seen. The rest of his apparel was strictly dads' stuff of corduroy trousers, patterned cardigan and Hush Puppies. The glasses, though, were straight out of The Godfather.

Carey recalled that Luigi had driven them to their first proper concert - Hawkwind at a large concert hall. On the way there Luigi spoke gravely as though they were preparing for war: don't talk to anyone; keep a good grip on your tickets; go two at a time to the toilets; leave a few minutes before the end to avoid the rush; if anyone steals your seats, tell the usherettes. Woody told him they didn't have usherettes at gigs, unless that was the name of the support band.

"Well, you know what I mean, whoever's in charge."

Woody sad no one was in charge. His dad told him to stop being a clever arse.

Soon after they entered the hall, a skinny bloke ambled on to the stage carrying an acoustic guitar. He began singing caustic songs about pregnant teenagers and getting beaten up on council estates. The crowd was in uproar. People left their seats and moved down the aisles to get closer:

"Fuck off."

"Twat."

"Get off."

Barrett, Carey and Woody went to the toilet. While they were standing at the urinal they saw a dishevelled longhaired lad turned slightly to the side, fiddling with himself. Woody wasn't shy:

"What you doing?"

He turned around.

"I'm trying to piss in this bag."

He had a crisp bag, half full of piss. He was drunk and struggling to hold it, splashing the floor and his shoes.

"What are you going to do with that?"

"Wuzz it at that bastard on stage. He's lucky it's just piss."

He turned back to the job in hand before looking over again.

"How old are you lot?"

"You look about nine."

Carey and Barrett noted the name of the bloke with the acoustic guitar billed as a 'punk-poet' on the posters: Patrik Fitzgerald. They were going to buy his record, the one about having a safety pin stuck in my heart, for you, for you.

Believe in the Sign by Mark Hodkinson (Pomona 2007)

Back then mums and dads didn't go in for quality time or anything so fey with their kids. They lived their lives (whatever that involved) and you were left to yours. You could play football in the street. Or lie flat on a railway sleeper floating through a culvert on the canal. Or you could follow the motorway for miles on the other side of the fence, passing through factory units and farm yards. Or you could see who could jump furthest down concrete steps on the stairwells at Ashfield Valley flats, carrying the whimpering victor home later. Or you could get out your bike and ride to Hollingworth Lake where the tougher kids, knees knocking, chins trembling, waded out into the icy blue, fearful of gigantic child-eating pikes.