The Taking Part

International Football is not something that I’ve a great deal of experience of; strangely enough, the side I’ve seen the most is England Under 21. Back in April 1983, they played at St. James’ Park against Hungary, winning 1-0. I joined a fairly partisan crowd, for the express purpose of booing mackem player Nick Pickering. Of course, I was only 18 back then; when I was 30, in November 1994, Ireland visited St. James’ Park and I obviously attended to support the Boys in Green. We lost 1-0, but I managed to enjoy myself by booing the mackem Martin Gray.

While resident in Slovakia, I was able to see 3 games in the 2000 European Under 21 Championship finals; England 0 Italy 1, England 6 Turkey 0 and England 0 Slovakia 2, in a glorious, uproarious, raucous atmosphere. I wrote an article for When Saturday Comes about that one; read it here http://www.wsc.co.uk/the-archive/99-Crowd-control-&-policing/3655-the-bratislava-pack .  Returning to Bratislava for another academic year, I saw their Under 21 draw 1-1 with Sweden at Dubravka in October 2000, before seeing the full international between the two sides end goalless at Slovan the night after. My other full international was at Trnava the following March, when the home side overcame Azerbaijan 3-1.

Back in England, in summer 2001, I accompanied the Chinese Under 18 football squad, for whom I was English language tutor at their base in Slough, to the Madjeski Stadium (having already taken in Rotherham 2 Crystal Palace 3 on my birthday – it’s a long story that I wrote up in When Saturday Comes and you can read it here http://www.wsc.co.uk/the-archive/31-Players/3110-the-teachers-tale ) for the purpose of taking in England 4 Holland 0. Closer to my own fireside, St. James’ Park hosted England v Turkey in March 2003; I took Ben and my dad, who had worked in Turkey long before I was born, and none of us stood for the national anthem. Finally, I travelled to mackemland to support Shola Ameobi as England overcame Slovakia 2-0 in June of that year. My next, and most recent, international experience was the Ireland v Italy game in Sligo at the start of June that I blogged about at the time.

It isn’t that extensive a list of international fixtures it has to be said; in my defence I can say that I only really supported Ireland and Slovakia in any of the games I attended, though being neutral and attending just so I could say I was there is part of the reason why I was at Bulgaria 1 Romania 0 at St. James’ Park in the European Championship Finals in 1996. You’ll remember that tournament no doubt; clearly I wasn’t caught up with any of the 3 Lions on our Shirt bilge, as I was still smarting from Holland eliminating Ireland in a play-off the previous December. I did know, at an instinctive level, that I had to be at a minimum of one game in the tournament. Good job I was, as it was the game with the lowest attendance in the whole competition; less than 16k.

To explain this, the game featured 2 sides who’d brought the fewest fans and who, economically, were so stuffed by the cost of living over here, not to mention the ridiculous £30 minimum ticket price that many of them were forced to camp and couldn’t even afford to drink in pubs. Post-match I remember being in The Hotspur (we had a midnight extension in all bars in the NE1 area, which was unheard of Bohemianism in those Calvinist days) with jubilant Bulgarian fans who alternated between drinking a carry-out from the Co-op and minesweeping for slops. It had all started off to civilised as well; Chimay and croque monsieurs outside the late lamented Bier Rex in warm June sunshine. Still, at least I could say I was there.

Obviously, the current Olympics provides another opportunity for similar event spotting. For predictably contrary and curmudgeonly reasons, I’d affected a studied lack of interest in the whole proceedings, same as I had with the European Championships. Indeed, as the opening ceremony took place, I bored myself silly struggling to stay awake, watching a wobbly feed on the PC that kept me abreast of Olympiakos 1 Newcastle 1 in some low-key kickaround tourney at Faro in the Algarve. However, Danny Boyle’s superbly choreographed reanimation of the Post War Social Democratic Consensus inspired me to queue for football tickets at SJP on the Monday, but only after I’d watched Ryan Taylor’s free kick of the century win the highly important Faronese trophy as we beat Braga 2-1, not to mention feeling a slight flicker of jealousy watching Honduras defeat Spain at SJP on the Sunday night.

Monday morning saw me spending longer in the queue for tickets than I would in the ground itself. Perhaps the worst aspect of the wait was enduring Sir Clifford Ahmed of Laygate droning on in the background; still, at least I had my Ipod to drown out his inanities, and those of a tedious posh bloke who was welded to his mobile phone. I took the time to discover who it was I was actually going to see; I knew the Wednesday game would be Brazil versus New Zealand and that if they won that, they’d be back for the quarter final against Honduras on the Saturday.

I was delighted I’d not be seeing Team GB for a whole raft of reasons. Firstly, there’s the whole patriotism thing that leaves me cold. Secondly, there’s the issue of the worst football strip I’ve seen since Coventry’s chocolate brown away kit. Thirdly, there was the dismal spectacle of their truly atrocious showing in the warm-up game against Brazil. You could tell it was played in Smogland; a half empty stadium with the home side being crushed in to submission by vastly superior opponents who cruised through it all in first gear.

Most importantly, there’s the issue of the manager; I loathe Stuart Pearce. Punk fan he may be, but humourless, thick, nationalistic and dull is how he comes across to me. I’ve never had any time for him and disliked having to endure his presence in a black and white shirt as much as his hideous celebration after scoring a penalty in the shoot-out against Spain in Euro 96. However, as Team GB weren’t coming anywhere near Tyneside, I didn’t have to worry about him.

Wednesday 1^st August was the third anniversary of my dad’s death; a sad memory, but one I’ve now learned to accept. Despite warnings about needing to get there early, I had to go to the doctor’s, on account of impacted wax in the lug, at 2pm, so I didn’t get to SJP until 2.23pm, but I still made my seat by kick off. A great seat for £20 it was too; on an aisle, 3^rd row from the back at the Leazes end of the East stand, in line with the corner flag. The only drawback was Lord Ahmed in the row behind, but thankfully the football distracted me from him. Brazil, including Neymar, cruised to a 3-0 win. In fact, it could have been 6 if they’d wanted to score that many.

The atmosphere was rather too nice for me; all Mexican waves, photo opportunities (including me taking a snap of Maximo Park frontman Paul Smith in a Gremio shirt) and families sharing tubes of Pringles, but that was only to be expected in the context of the event I guess.  Indeed, Bradley Wiggins’s gold in the cycling was more a topic of half time conversation round me than the game we were all there to watch. Frankly, I enjoyed my evening with Winstons, now including former NUFC striker Anth Lormor, and our 3-1 victory over South Shields Catholic Club, allowing me to experience both ends of the football evolutionary scale that day.

Saturday will be a busy day; 10.30 Winstons v Mill View Club, 2.00 Percy Main v North Shields and 5.00 Brazil v Honduras. Read all about it here next week.