Friday, 25 April 2008
The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate
I can't say I've ever cared a great deal for Peterborough United Football Club. In this, at least, I have something in common with most of the population of Peterborough.
Partly this is my generalised horror of all those commuter towns north of London. There's never anything to do there because it's all happening down in the capital. Seriously – if you think living in Grimsby is boring you've never spent a week in Bedford.
As far as the football goes, it's about envy and fear. All through the 1980s and 90s, Town's shrewd management meant we punched well above our weight, one or two divisions higher than the teams representing much bigger towns and cities like Bristol, Northampton, Stoke, Hull and Peterborough.
And just as you always knew that eventually Town would mess it all up and crash back to the fourth division, you always knew that eventually some 'self-made' business types, with no charisma, no mates and nothing more fun to do, would see these small clubs in big towns and splash loads of money in the hope of making them the new Reading and winning some admiration to compensate for the lack of love they received from their parents in early life and the incessant bullying they suffered at school.
Sure enough, all those clubs are now comfortably better off than the Mariners. And Peterborough stand poised to surge up through the divisions thanks to the personal fortune of a bored Irish millionaire who stuck a pin in a map.
The one thing in their favour, though, is that they are not Milton Keynes Dons. They may represent perfectly the abhorrent current tendency for the outcomes of football to be distorted as clubs become toys for rich men to amuse themselves with. But at least they haven't stolen their league status from another community 60 miles down the road.
So despite my gut dislike of Peterborough I was looking out for their results all season in the hope that they'd pip the Franchise to the last promotion spot. It's like that presidential election in France where it got down to the last two and everyone voted for the horrible right-wing candidate, just to keep out the even more horrible extreme right-wing candidate.
But of course, the Franchise are already up (they've had even more money pumped in than Peterborough) and their 'fans' will be looking on the internet for the songs that football supporters are supposed to sing when their team wins promotion.
So it's back to business as usual tomorrow. The Posh are just another club with much less history than us and a shedload more money. And if they all keep getting promoted ahead of the Mariners, who will we have left to despise?
Partly this is my generalised horror of all those commuter towns north of London. There's never anything to do there because it's all happening down in the capital. Seriously – if you think living in Grimsby is boring you've never spent a week in Bedford.
As far as the football goes, it's about envy and fear. All through the 1980s and 90s, Town's shrewd management meant we punched well above our weight, one or two divisions higher than the teams representing much bigger towns and cities like Bristol, Northampton, Stoke, Hull and Peterborough.
And just as you always knew that eventually Town would mess it all up and crash back to the fourth division, you always knew that eventually some 'self-made' business types, with no charisma, no mates and nothing more fun to do, would see these small clubs in big towns and splash loads of money in the hope of making them the new Reading and winning some admiration to compensate for the lack of love they received from their parents in early life and the incessant bullying they suffered at school.
Sure enough, all those clubs are now comfortably better off than the Mariners. And Peterborough stand poised to surge up through the divisions thanks to the personal fortune of a bored Irish millionaire who stuck a pin in a map.
The one thing in their favour, though, is that they are not Milton Keynes Dons. They may represent perfectly the abhorrent current tendency for the outcomes of football to be distorted as clubs become toys for rich men to amuse themselves with. But at least they haven't stolen their league status from another community 60 miles down the road.
So despite my gut dislike of Peterborough I was looking out for their results all season in the hope that they'd pip the Franchise to the last promotion spot. It's like that presidential election in France where it got down to the last two and everyone voted for the horrible right-wing candidate, just to keep out the even more horrible extreme right-wing candidate.
But of course, the Franchise are already up (they've had even more money pumped in than Peterborough) and their 'fans' will be looking on the internet for the songs that football supporters are supposed to sing when their team wins promotion.
So it's back to business as usual tomorrow. The Posh are just another club with much less history than us and a shedload more money. And if they all keep getting promoted ahead of the Mariners, who will we have left to despise?
Labels: chairmen, franchise, peterborough, promotion, relegation
Friday, 9 November 2007
Having a 'mare
I had a dream the other night that Town were in the Conference. The Osmond stand was falling down, and the fans were making up new songs about all the turmoil. Everyone was having a laugh.
Tomorrow the FA Cup takes Town to Carlisle, who were bottom of the entire league for about eight years before they finally dropped into the Conference, with a chairman who said he'd been abducted by aliens. In case everyone wasn't already thinking he was bonkers, he went and appointed himself manager for a year, just to make sure.
I think Brunton Park is a fine ground. Maybe this is because I can't stand big, ostentatious stadiums that say "this club is going places". They're rubbish. Give me a ground that says "we don't know where this club is going, really – it's probably just staying here for the time being because we haven't got any money".
And there's nothing very wrong about staying in one place for a while – as I like to tell myself when it's almost noon and I haven't got out of bed yet.
Dozens of clubs have been brought to the brink of ruin by 'visionary' businessmen who have seen 'potential' and massively over-invested. Eventually they always discover that the reason nobody had tried it beforehand was not that they alone among all humanity had the true vision and the sheer guts to take their club to the top. It was actually because they were completely, spectacularly wrong.
And maybe Town's problem right now concerns our own expectations. Whatever might be wrong off the pitch, we're all still mightily irked that we're in the fourth division – despite having a fourth division stadium, a fourth division catchment area and fourth division support – and much of that disgruntlement is feeding back onto the pitch. We expect the players to give their all for 90 minutes – but what sort of signal does it send to them when Blundell Park has almost emptied after only 80 have been played?
Maybe we could learn from Carlisle, whose fans realised that the right thing to do to pick up their club from the very bottom was to pack into Brunton Park week after week and sing their bloody heads off.
And maybe, just maybe, we can learn to just support our club from one week to the next, without wishing we were somewhere else and beating ourselves up about where we are in the league, and where we think we ought to be.
After all, if we don't relocate to the Fentydome, the chairman may leave. We could end up in the Conference with a ground that's falling down. And the only way we'd get through that is just by making up new songs and having a laugh.
Tomorrow the FA Cup takes Town to Carlisle, who were bottom of the entire league for about eight years before they finally dropped into the Conference, with a chairman who said he'd been abducted by aliens. In case everyone wasn't already thinking he was bonkers, he went and appointed himself manager for a year, just to make sure.
I think Brunton Park is a fine ground. Maybe this is because I can't stand big, ostentatious stadiums that say "this club is going places". They're rubbish. Give me a ground that says "we don't know where this club is going, really – it's probably just staying here for the time being because we haven't got any money".
And there's nothing very wrong about staying in one place for a while – as I like to tell myself when it's almost noon and I haven't got out of bed yet.
Dozens of clubs have been brought to the brink of ruin by 'visionary' businessmen who have seen 'potential' and massively over-invested. Eventually they always discover that the reason nobody had tried it beforehand was not that they alone among all humanity had the true vision and the sheer guts to take their club to the top. It was actually because they were completely, spectacularly wrong.
And maybe Town's problem right now concerns our own expectations. Whatever might be wrong off the pitch, we're all still mightily irked that we're in the fourth division – despite having a fourth division stadium, a fourth division catchment area and fourth division support – and much of that disgruntlement is feeding back onto the pitch. We expect the players to give their all for 90 minutes – but what sort of signal does it send to them when Blundell Park has almost emptied after only 80 have been played?
Maybe we could learn from Carlisle, whose fans realised that the right thing to do to pick up their club from the very bottom was to pack into Brunton Park week after week and sing their bloody heads off.
And maybe, just maybe, we can learn to just support our club from one week to the next, without wishing we were somewhere else and beating ourselves up about where we are in the league, and where we think we ought to be.
After all, if we don't relocate to the Fentydome, the chairman may leave. We could end up in the Conference with a ground that's falling down. And the only way we'd get through that is just by making up new songs and having a laugh.
Labels: carlisle, chairmen, conference, expectations, fa cup, fentydome, new stadiums, support
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