Lionhearted

What’s the worst way to lose a game of football; farcical own goal? Last second keeper error? Clear foul in the build up? Outrageous, unpunished handball? Cruel deflection? All of them have their merits in the end of term report at the school of hard luck stories, but for me, the penalty shoot-out is the absolute epitome of sporting tragedy, providing the winners glory without a sheen of honour and the losers naught but futile, bilious anguish. To have come so far and then lose in a manner that makes the apportioning of blame so simple and yet so unnecessary a task, truly does macerate the most indomitable of spirits. There is no possibility of a response or even a riposte after the ignominy of failed kicks from the penalty mark. This is the end, beautiful friends, the end.

When that cursed shoot-out concludes a Cup final in the last game of the season, with the added spectacle of ungracious, shirtless victors cavorting across the turf, spraying lager over each other, the sense of loss is as profound as the death of a loved one. Having seen Richie Slaughter and then Dean Holmes denied from 12 yards by Shane Bland on Easter Monday 2019 at Seaham Red Star’s ground, to hand the Brookes Mileson Northern League Cup to West Auckland Town, I felt considerably more miserable than when my mother died. I was almost physically sick; such was the anguish and despair. This, after all, was my beloved Benfield on the losing side.

Here’s a quick bit of background; Newcastle Benfield FC, formed 1988 as Heaton Corner House, home ground at Walker Park, merged with Brunswick Village in 1989, won Northern Alliance Division 2 in 1990, then moved to Sam Smith’s Park for the next season, changing their name to Benfield Park, merging with North Shields St Columba’s in 1995, to become Benfield Saints, joining the Northern League in 2003, changing to Benfield Bay Plastics in 2005 and, finally, in 2007 adopting Newcastle Benfield as our name. 

My first visit to Sam Smith’s Park was for a Northumberland Senior Cup quarter final against Newcastle United back in February 1995. It was a dank, foggy February evening with exhaled breath and cigarette smoke climbing in spirals through the floodlit gloaming, when the crowd attending must have been a ground record for the time; especially considering our current record was the 926 who showed up, not including me, for the visit of York City in the FA Cup in October 2006. York won that one 1-0 and Newcastle United won my first game 3-0 and I recall little, if any of proceedings, other than the cold and the lack of a clear view of the pitch, which isn’t something that often disturbs me these days, as our crowds remain resolutely around the 150-200 mark.

I’ll admit back then, only a couple of years into my non-league odyssey, I knew nothing about Benfield, other than you get off the Metro at Walkergate, and only fractionally more about the Northern Alliance. Even worse, I presume I was supporting NUFC rather than the Lions. In my defence, that night was more than 3 years before the great Cusackian migration to High Heaton and almost 8 and a half seasons until Benfield Saints (as was) ascended from the Alliance to the Northern League.  Coincidentally, unintentionally and passionately, within a month of the Lions entering the Northern League and one whole week after I’d moved into my current abode, I fell madly and completely head over heels in love with Benfield, which is a state of affairs I can’t imagine will alter at any point during the rest of my life.

That first game in daylight was an FA Vase preliminary round tie on Saturday 27^th September 2003; Newcastle had played the night before, losing 3-2 at Arsenal and consequently I was at a loose end. My game of choice just had to be the one closest to home. The walk from mine to Benfield takes about 15 minutes; enough time for anticipation to build. I wasn’t exactly excited, but I was more than a little intrigued by the thought of having my own Northern League club of choice, almost on the doorstep. I sat in the back row of the same stand whose front row I sit in today and thoroughly enjoyed a warm, late Summer afternoon, made all the better as Benfield, then as now with Andy Grainger in goal, beat Thornaby 4-1. From that day on, my affection for Benfield grew, especially as my lad Ben, in those days a handy keeper for East End Under 9s, loved to station himself behind Andy Grainger and learn from the finest and most consistent non-league keeper I’ve ever seen, while munching on an enormous hot dog from Snack Attack; Ben that is, not Andy. The bairn and I became regulars and saw some memorable games that first year, such as Shildon thrashed 6-0 and Thornaby clouted 7-0 in a League game; it was a great deal of fun being there, which wasn’t something I was feeling about Newcastle United. Indeed, I fell out of love with NUFC completely when Bobby Robson was sacked in 2004, but it took until 2009 before I finally divested myself of the indefensible habit of lining Mike Ashley’s pockets.

At the end of that first season, Benfield finished runners-up to Ashington and achieved promotion to Northern League Division 1. That’s where we’ve been ever since, though only a final day win away to Consett in the last league game ever played at their old Belle Vue ground, maintained top flight status after a particularly exacting 2010/2011 campaign. Over the past 15 years we’ve seen some brilliant players in blue and white at Sam Smith’s Park: the magnificent centre half pairing of Phil Lumsden and Kev Leighton, combining elegant interceptions and teak-tough tackling, the midfield artistry of Paul Antony, enthusiasm of Steve Bowey and tenacity of Alu Bangura, wing wizardry by Adam Scope and Ian Graham, as well as the legendary goal machines: Michael Chilton, Stephen Young, John Campbell, who scored the best goal I’ve seen in my entire life in a 1-1 draw with Billingham Synthonia in February 2010, Dan Taylor and, best of all, Paul Brayson; 42 in September and the scorer of 200 goals in the last 5 seasons.

We won the League Cup for the first time in 2006; an Alu Bangura 30 yarder crashed into the bottom corner against Washington Nissan at Dunston’s ground. We won it again in 2009 on a Friday night at West Allotment’s Blue Flames; Andy Grainger played like Gordon Banks against Pele as we saw off Penrith 2-0 with the clincher by Ian Graham still one of the finest finishes I’ve ever seen. This came only 10 days after we’d won the title; 1-0 away to Penrith after the last game at their old Southend Road ground. We’d never been top all season, until Steven Young’s delicate, curling 86^th minute effort made the dream come true, taking us from 4^th to 1^st. Mind I wouldn’t go for a celebratory pint afterwards as they were using the local Tory club for post match refreshments. There was a third League Cup win in 2011, when Spennymoor were seen off at Dunston, with Andy Grainger again the hero. We were runners up in 2013 against Spenny at Consett and, sadly, in this season just gone, when our newcomers Dennis Knight, Dale Pearson, Joe Robson, Jake Thompson and Reece Noble have distinguished themselves alongside experienced campaigners like Mark Turnbull, Richie Slaughter, Jake Orrell, James Martin and Rhys Evans, not to mention the legendary Brassy and Andy Grainger, the raven at our Tower of Benfield.

There have been disappointments over the years; not all managers have worked out (no names, no pack drill) and our record in the Northumberland Senior Cup is woeful. One final in all that time, which we lost to Whitley Bay, the only year it wasn’t played at St James’ Park. The FA Vase remains elusive; three defeats in the quarter finals and the same number in the last 16. League form is patchy, always; we finish top 10 consistently, but we should be top 5, especially going forward with the FA’s plans for league reorganisation at Step 4 finally emerging in considerable detail. You see, after 16 years in the Northern League, it seems to me as if the time for change is just around the corner; if all goes well in 2019/2020, we may be looking to take a step upward as part of the FA’s reorganisation of Step 4, the level above where we currently operate.

The top 4 Northern League Division 1 sides, along with the same number from the Northern Counties East, will be promoted into the Evo Stik Northern Premier League Division 1 East in May 2020. Further boundary work will see marginal clubs, presumably such as Stamford, Wisbech and Spalding, laterally moved to create a Northern Premier League Division 1 South (or Midland?), parallel to the existing East and West divisions. For those heading upwards from the Northern League in 2020 and later, the bugbear of significantly increased travel has been largely addressed by this move, as has fixture overload with all Step 4, 5 and 6 divisions being limited to 20 clubs and Step 3 expanded to 24.

Such modifications, as well as the judicious use of Bank Holidays for games that kick off at 3pm and not noon, like it’s a pub league where the game is incidental to us all getting hammered as soon as the final whistle blows. The rules are crystal clear; the league table will be the single ultimate, meritocratic arbiter. It has to be; anything else risks the nebulous and contentious spectre of unscientific subjectivity muddying the waters. That aside, I think this is the greatest opportunity for ambitious clubs to progress and crash through the glass ceiling that has been bearing down on the Northern League for two generations or more.

Basically, when the FA introduced the concept of the non-league pyramid, the fiercely parochial Northern League blue blazers and brass hats insisted on remaining in complete isolation, with then chair Arthur Clark and secretary Gordon Nicholson making the mind-boggling decision not to accept a role as one of 3 direct feeder leagues into the Conference. Once Nicholson had finally been removed from office, the league belatedly came to their senses and went, if not quite cap in hand then with an air of studied contrition, to the FA and were glad to be situated 3 rungs lower than the initial offer. Meanwhile, the Northern League had seen the more ambitious clubs such as Blyth Spartans, Bishop Auckland, North Shields and Whitley Bay quit in search of pastures new. Of course, only Spartans managed to make a go of it and the other 3 returned, slightly chastened, whence they came, with considerable subsequent success over the years in the case of both Shields and Whitley it has to be said.

The fable of these prodigals, plus the plummeting vapour trails of the Icarus Airline tours of Step 4 by the seemingly cursed Durham City and now defunct Newcastle Blue Star, not to mention the murky dealings that allowed Spennymoor to assume Evenwood Town’s registration in the league after the original Moors flatlined, were used as scary bedtime stories, delivered in the manner of a pouting, theatrical martinet, by the Northern League management, especially former chair Mike Amos, to frighten clubs into staying close to their own hearth. Other than Whitby in 1997, no Northern League champions accepted promotion to the Northern Premier League until the reformed Darlington did so in 2013. Since then Spennymoor in 2014, South Shields in 2017, Marske United accompanied by runners-up Morpeth Town in 2018 and now Dunston UTS in 2019 have all ascended the ladder of ambition.  This is in spite of the atonal Northern League choir evangelically proselytising their doctrine of footballing pre-determinism by endlessly bellowing

The rich man in his castle,

The poor man at his gate,

God made them high and lowly,

And ordered their estate.

from their single hymn sheet, while proclaiming that all things remain bright and beautiful, as long as the status quo isn’t disturbed. Such flat earth, apocalyptic doom mongering has been utterly disproved by the sight of South Shields, Marske United and Morpeth Town’s taillights fading as they disappear over the horizon. The supposed geographical isolation of the north east may not have been eradicated, but the worst aspects and anomalies (South Shields away to Colwyn Bay anyone?) have been ameliorated by the new West, East and Midland Evo-Stik divisional structure. The very real possibility of Knaresborough Town (and what a day out that’ll be eh?)being moved from the Northern Counties East to the Northern League shows that the parameters and boundaries of the world’s second oldest league are not just in a state of flux, but radically changing for good, if not the universal good…

It is fair to say Morpeth Town didn’t face the prospect of forced promotion positively a year ago; indeed, Chairman Ken Beattie even mooted legal action against the FA to try and remain in the Northern League. It’s amazing what hindsight shows you; Morpeth, despite still enduring trips to Wisbech and Spalding, have been crowned Champions of Evo Stik Northern Premier league Division 1 East by a dozen points and I’m delighted for what Nicky Gray and his lads have achieved.  Certainly, there’s not a hint that they wish they had local derbies with Ashington rather than Darlington to look forward to.

Of course, this restructuring exercise won’t work for every club. While I could see, in no particular order, Bishop Auckland, Consett, Hebburn, Stockton and Benfield immediately hoping to benefit from the opportunities provided, I would also imagine the likes of Ashington, Billingham Town, Penrith and hopefully Whitley Bay also wishing to better themselves. Some outfits will be more than happy to continue where they are, for a multiplicity of reasons; financial, historical and locational being the most likely. Pragmatic realism is often a more sensible driving force when one is cutting cloth according to circumstance.

For the Northern League, the challenge will be to maintain 2 divisions of 20 clubs, especially in the face of seeing only promotions upwards and no demotions inward, probably denuding the top division of at least 4 clubs. As a result, the standard of the top division will inevitably be diluted, but that is the cyclical nature of football. The reason the Northern League Division 1 has never been stronger may just have to do with the lack of upward mobility over the years. The real question is about the second division; when the likes of Brandon United can only keep going by accepting an offer from Northern Alliance third tier outfit Coundon and Leeholme to take over the playing side, lock, stock and barrel, because their current Welfare Park facilities extend as far as being a pitch with a rail round it, it begs the question whether ground grading rules should be relaxed to allow an influx of teams of higher playing standards but without facilities to match? I feel it is a question the FA will be answering soon, as their soon to be published plans for Step 7 leagues to be run by county associations may have some bearing on this.

Good luck to all clubs at steps 4,5, 6 and 7, with especial good luck to my beloved Benfield. I sincerely hope restructuring works for us, but even if it didn’t, I’d still be there supporting us if we were back in the Northern Alliance, playing at Walker Park and calling ourselves the Corner House again. I’m Benfield ‘til I die.

Vivat Rex

Alex Rex, Lavinia Blackwell & The Mekons didn't play Newcastle on their April tours; it's a good job I don't hold grudges...

MUSIC:

You know what’s astonishing? I’ve not been to a gig yet this year and I don’t imagine I’ll get to one until the BMX Bandits play the Head of Steam on Saturday 18^th May. This is partly down to the fact that I’m predominantly working 2.00pm to 10.30pm shifts these days, but it’s also as a result of few, if any, acts on in town appealing to me. There is a sad aspect to this situation as well, in the sense that some of my very favourite bands have been on tour, but didn’t play Newcastle, or anywhere accessible at the weekend.

Almost exactly a year ago, Ben and I headed to Brudenell Social Club to see The Mekons 77 turn in an absolutely blinding set. This year The Mekons themselves returned to the self-same venue for their closest date to me, but on a Wednesday night and so I had to miss out. Thankfully, I have purchased a copy of their brand-new album, Deserted.

My last couple of encounters with The Mekons, live as Mini Mekons in 2015 and the sparkling Mekons 77 stuff last year, has been incredibly positive. Allied to that, reviews I’d seen of Deserted were on the warm side of ecstatic. Thankfully, this is with good reason as Deserted is possibly their strongest and most experimental release since the gloriously eclectic F*U*N*9*0. The cover and provenance of this album from the desert by the Joshua Tree had prepared me for a revisit to the C&W tinged tones of The Edge of the World, but nothing could be further from the truth. Alright, so lyrically there’s a reference to aridity and barren plains in just about every song, but musically we’re closer to The Royal Park than The Grand Ol’ Opry. In fact, we could be next door to The Royal Park as Deserted is the soundtrack for the best night I’ve never had in The Brudenell Social Club, which is where thumping opener Lawrence of California would rightly bring the house down, with its more than glancing nod to Rock and Roll era Mekons. As yet In the Sun / The Galaxy Explodes isn’t doing it for me; it seems too meandering, though it suffers by being in the shade of the first solid gold classic of the 9 cuts available here.

How Many Stars? first appeared on the Mekonville 12” in 2017 and, at the time, I felt it was a pale, timid effort compared to the Mekons 77 cut Still Waiting that was on the other side. Lo and behold, my copy has a badly cut, woozy, off centre version, whereas the proper version on the album is another in the litany of superb Tom Greenhalgh crooners, harking back to English Dancing Master in tone and with a guitar solo that is the cousin of Corporal Chalkie. I’m actually rather irritated I’ve been robbed of knowing what a brilliant track we have here for the past 2 years. Remember how I mentioned the crazy, off-kilter art punk of F*U*N*9*0?  The wiggly, wriggly, trippy trance tones of In the Desert could be un homage to that immense release. This is real lighters in the air, throwing shapes, out on the doors at Midsummer madness; choral singing and the violin weeping with the sheer enormity of it all. Fucking dynamite stuff.

Things don’t let up either. Mirage starts off like a tribute to At Home He Feels Like A Tourist and just gets better. Tom and Sally screaming “This is as good as it’s gonna get,” because the message is more than medium cool important and we need to listen; the band prowling, ready to explode. The Mekons are the real swinging sixties, chronologically speaking y’know… And then it just gets weird; Weimar Vending Machine with its tempo changes (they couldn’t do that 40-odd years ago!!) and lyrical tribute to Brecht and Weill, with trashy glam breaks that could come straight from Another Green World. The Caucasian Corporal Chalkies squaring the circle, if you like. Two tracks left and it’s time to calm things down; Andromeda is one of the most affecting, gentle numbers the band have ever done, its fragility thrown into even sharper relief by the uplifting final maelstrom of After The Rain, bringing down the curtain on one of the band’s top 5 releases of all time. In normal circumstances, we’d be declaring an end to 2019’s album of the year contest, but we are not living in ordinary times.

I have to admit, the dissolution of Trembling Bells last September hit me hard indeed. As you’ll no doubt remember, the late Summer and early Autumn weren’t a good time for me on any level, so the band I’d fallen deeply, desperately and enduringly in love with on first listen in May 2010, calling it a day knocked me right back on my heels, even more so than news of Gerry Love’s departure from Teenage Fanclub. Unlike the TFC situation, there was no fanfare, no traumatic falling out and no time to prepare. The end came out of nowhere, seemingly. The first inkling any of us had was when Lavinia made a post on Facebook saying the late September gigs would be the last she’d be doing with the band. It seemed such an unnecessarily definitive move; for the whole time the band had existed, each and every other member had more extracurricular projects to keep themselves busy than you could shake a stick at. After all, Lavinia herself had started gigging with fiancé Marco and his pal Stu from The Wellgreen under the moniker of Stilton. The only reason I can offer for breaking up the band was a desire to have complete artistic control over the production of their own songs. Perhaps that’s why we’ve got Alex Rex, Stilton, Lavinia solo and Simon’s Youth of America project to consider already, not to mention the 20,000 other things Alex has been up to this last fortnight or so.

Clearly once the departure of the most passionate, strident and swooping female vocalist since (and you just know I’m going to say this) Sandy Denny had been announced, it meant Trembling Bells would be no more and so it came to pass with barely a whisper of dissent or discord. After a Sunday night performance at Leicester Musician, the party was over after a decade during which they’d released very finest quality body of work I can recall from any band, bar Teenage Fanclub, The Wedding Present or The Mekons. September truly was the month of death. Only a couple of months earlier, they’d dropped in to play The Cumberland on a boiling July evening, ending the set with a new one; I Am the King. The band that just got better with every subsequent release, have moved on from the pastoral 1967 era folk rock of Carbeth to the psychedelic cusp of the 70s vibe of Just as the Rainbow to 1972 Sabbath stylings on The Prophet Distances Himself from his Prophecy showed that there was no way in which their parting of the ways could have been because of creative bankruptcy. With this new cut, which appears as the lead track on the 2019 Record Store Day split 10” they share with Alex Rex, that acts as both epitaph and manifesto for The Bells and their future plans, the band show themselves to have evolved into a version of  1973 Roxy Music, or Rexy Music perhaps? Glorious though I Am the King is, it is eclipsed by the beguiling avant garde mixture of surrealism and nursery rhymes that is Medusas. We’re talking Henry Cow meeting Slapp Happy for the purposes of genre hopping germination. Breathtaking stuff and, tragically, another one I never got to hear live.

But what we do have, and I want to say this in the strongest terms possible, is a potential series of artistic journeys that will eclipse almost everything they’ve done before. Not just what we heard across 7 albums by Trembling Bells, but the output by Blackflower, Crying Lion, Death Shanties and everything else the members have involved themselves with. As yet, Alastair C Mitchell has not been spotted, which is somewhat difficult to believe if you’ve seen him. Musically, he is yet to surface, while Mike and Solveig seem set for another summer of rolling out their semi-stoned folksy gems from the back of a VW campervan. Let’s hope for tangible releases in the not too distant future, learning from the example of Simon Shaw’s Youth of America, whose YOA Rising album came out on January 1^st 2019, which put them ahead of everyone else.

Having dropped a teaser with the Night of the Comet 7” a couple of years back, the album is a glorious melange of bubblegum West Coast surf glam, with cutesy hooks and harmonies, not to mention a seam of consciously late 70s powerpop running through it like a location stamp through a stick of seaside rock. It’s properly lovely, completely summery and it has as much in common with pastoral English baroque formality as diamond has with carbon. This is heading to the beach fun, not tramping the North York Moors or lighting a modest fire in a bothy out past Carbeth.

Now, like any good pretend grandparent, I would never seek to rank the bairns in terms of quality, but those freshly solo artistes who I have come to regard with the kind of protective pride only an aged paterfamilias could know, have very different qualities to recommend them. My prediction for the future would be that Lavinia will achieve commercial success as well as artistic approval, while Alex will come to be regarded as the finest musical polymath we’ve known in decades. The Ginger Genius combines the finest and worst moments of Peter Bellamy, John Cale, Cornelius Cardew, Bob Dylan and just about every esoteric and arcane marginal figure in every genre of music there is.

So far, I’ve only heard small snippets of Stilton on-line and I really like what they’re doing. There’s still the folk sensibility of early Trembling Bells, but little of the more dramatic, swooping sturm und drang epics that came more to the fore as time passed. Stilton appear to be a happy, upbeat folk rock band with a great ear for a tune and I look forward so much to seeing them at The Cumberland on June 30^th, if Lavinia’s plans come to pass. Until then, I will continue to play her sumptuous Waiting for Tomorrow 7”, both on record and on-line, so I can get another glimpse of  the gloriously kooky video to accompany it. The b-side All Seems Better is a treasure too; less overtly jolly than Waiting for Tomorrow, it is a highly promising slice of what Lavinia’s solo songwriting, or tunes crafted in partnership with her significant other,  will offer in the future. This is naturally commercial, bespoke folk pop of the finest vintage. And that voice; I know I will never tire of it.

And now, I must write about Alex Neilson’s latest work. As I said earlier in this piece, we do not live in ordinary times, not when there is an album such as Otterburn to consider. It is a record that leaves the listener profoundly changed and chastened. The stunning, unimaginably tragic inspiration for this record was the sudden, tragic death of Alex’s younger brother Alastair who passed in his sleep just under 2 years ago. In every possible way, the world would be a happier place if Otterburn, named after the houseboat Alastair called home rather than the Northumbrian village, did not exist. However, and I am still not sure I have the right to say this, as a tribute it is perhaps the most moving and loving epitaph his brother could have been given. There are words by Alex on this record that are the equal of Ben Jonson’s On My First Son as a way of articulating grief in a way that induces uncontrollable weeping. Musically, the only comparable experience I have would be memories of listening to Joy Division’s Atmosphere for the first time, so profound and so total is the quality of sentiment and sound.

Otterburn is, of course, an album and so the music, as well as the words and the cause for it to exist, must also be addressed.  If we accept that Trembling Bells encapsulated the entire gamut of English underground music from 1967 to 1974, then here we have Alex as the Glaswegian Dylan placing his own blood on these tracks, or even feeding his desire to keep heaping ginger on ginger, as the wickedly ramshackle ensemble pieces veer from ersatz klezmer bier Keller bawling on Amy May I? to the introspective, melodious Always Already,  the good time spleen venting of The Cruel Rule and the grief streaked acapella of the closing Smoke & Memory. I dare you to listen and not sob.

I am more than proud, I am honoured to know Alex and it will be a source of lasting regret that I didn’t get to see the Alex Rex Showband on his recent tour. The only viable night was the Todmorden date, but it sold out so quickly I couldn’t make it happen.  However, I have Vermilion, Otterburn and, of course, his tracks on the I Am the King 10”to give satiating solace. They’re both covers;  You Know More Than I Know is a John Cale number, hitherto unknown to me. Alex’s mam likes it, so he’s done a version for her, which is lovely. However, and I hope I don’t offend; it pales into insignificance when compared to his jaw-dropping, heartbreaking take on Luke Kelly’s Night Visiting Song.

Luke’s last ever performance was a version of Night Visiting Song on RTE’s Late Late Show, a matter of weeks before his death in 1986. Alex’s version is better. Without question. Alex had a dream after Alastair’s passing that the two of them sang this song together as a way of saying goodbye. This version starts like All Tomorrow’s Parties and dwarfs even that magnum opus. Every single second of the 4 minutes 45 is drenched in love and commemoration, with a band suitably chosen and playing at the top of their game.

And yet there is more… The third Neilson brother, Oliver, has made a video for Night Visiting Song, which includes a central, repeated image of Alex walking along the High-Level Bridge from Newcastle to Gateshead in the hours of darkness. The last building on the Newcastle side is The Bridge Hotel. It was there, at the folk club formed by Johnny Handle and Louisa Killen in the late 50s, where Luke Kelly, who spent two years working on the sites around Tyneside and lodged in the less than handsome bit of Bensham between Coatsworth and Whitehall Roads, first sang in public. Not only that, one of Luke’s regular partners, duetting on traditional songs from the 32 counties, telling of love, drinking, freedom and rebellion, was my old fella; the late Eddy Cusack. Synchronicity makes you think and Alex makes me weep, but every time I listen to his music, I feel thankful his genius exists and is out there. Make sure you share this experience sometime soon.

As well as I Am the King, I made several other purchases on Record Store Day. Unlike previous years, I did my research properly and made a hit list to take with me. I had an early night, slept well in the afterglow of Newcastle’s win at Leicester, set the alarm and struck out for town. First stop was Reflex, which is my normal go to shop in town. I’m not sure why, as RPM is far more friendly. Anyway, I didn’t get within half a mile of the door of Reflex as the queue extended all the way to the corner where The Pineapple used to be. Inspiration struck and I decided to head for Windows; the venerable music shop in the Central Arcade that has been resolutely indie since it was established 111 years ago. The queue was minimal and the reception cordial. Within five minutes I’d been in and out, leaving with the aforementioned Alex Rex & Trembling Bells 10” under my arm, together with 12” singles by Jacques Brel and Suicide.

With the bairn being unavoidable detained in his pit during the hours of daylight at the weekend, I had a list for him as well; the Average White Band’s Pick up the Pieces 12” proved unobtainable anywhere in town, but RPM, gloriously chaotic and boasting Lou and Rob on the decks, came up with the goods as I snaffled the only copy of Bardo Pond’s Big Laughing Jym. I’d decided against getting the Dylan remix of Blood on the Tracks, as paying just shy of £30 for an album I already own is indefensible. That said, if I’d realised the Suicide 12” was north of £20 I’d not have bothered.

What about the music? The keynote purchase we’ve already discussed, while the other two are just lovely bits of nostalgia that fill gaps in my collection. Brel’s charmingly mannered torch song histrionics, recorded live at Maison de la Radio in Paris in June 1965, are as beguiling as the day Bowie, Scott Walker, Marc Almond and a dozen other camp, firebrand artistes fell for them 50 years ago. The highlight track is Amsterdam, of course; delivered en francais like the others as well, hammed up like a Gallic Kenneth Williams. The three other cuts, especially the imploring Ne Me Quitte Pas make this is a superb purchase.

Suicide were incredible, weren’t they? Cheree Cheree backed with Frankie Teardrop on a battered second hand 12” I picked up at Tynemouth Market for a couple of quid perhaps a decade back, needed to be complemented by Dream Baby Dream and now it is. That sleazy, claustrophobic minimalism harks back to the days when using a synthesiser was a genuinely revolutionary musical act, rather than a shortcut to mainstream success. The short version is brash and succinct; the long take bewitching and hypnotic. A solid gold, all time classic that should have a place in every serious collector’s haul. Too bloody pricey mind.

Despite the usual prohibitive and indefensible expense, at least the purchases I made on this year’s RSD were all by artists I already knew and loved, though I do admit I am a sucker for buying stuff I’ve not heard before, simply because reviews make it sound interesting. Hence an idle chat at work about House if Pain led me, via the wonders of the internet, to investigate if there was an Irish Grime or Drill scene. As ever with such organic street phenomena, YouTube is the prime source for a plethora of shakily shot, largely inaudible camera phone footage of Hardy Bucks throwing shapes outside several branches of Abrakebabra and Centra in Edgeworthstown, Limerick and Portarlington. However, I also came across the far more aesthetically pleasing Soft Boy Records, who have released several slices of Irish hip hop in physical form. I bought the two releases currently available; Wastefellow’s Post Human Potential 12” and Kojaque’s Deli Dreams album. I’ll say straight off that Wastefellow isn’t for me; I need to give it a second hearing, but my initial dislike of the dull trippy beats and quasi Italian house piano fills was profound. I may be missing something, but there’s nothing remotely intriguing on first listening.

In contrast, the Kojaque album is brilliant. At one memorable moment, label founder and lyricist Kevin Smith in his MC persona as the eponymous Kojaque, announces that what we are listening to is “the Emerald Isle’s answer to The Chronic.” A pretty bold claim, but one I’d imagine has been made by this cocky, talented visual arts graduate from Cabra with his tongue firmly in his cheek. However, what we actually have here is the Mike Skinner of Da Nort Soide, in terms of Smith’s ability to create a plausible narrative, involving a rounded, central character. In this instance a young bored worker, slaving away making paninis, burgers and chicken nugget snackboxes in one of ubiquitous fast food sections of Irish newsagents and small convenience stores, urban and rural. Lyrically impressive, verbally dextrous and blessed with the gift of perfect delivery in an uncompromising DNS brogue, Deli Dreams is truly the sound of urban decay and social dislocation from Parnell Square, Dorset Street and all points north and west to Phoenix Park, the Royal Canal, Glasnevin and Fairview. A truly astonishing record and one that appears to be giving Kojaque the leg up his work deserves. Who loves ya baby? I do.

BOOKS:

As I mentioned in http://payaso-de-mierda.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-year-of-reading-vocariously.html it was a stated aim this year to read more books. Unfortunately, not all of them have been great works of literature. Paul Morley manages to outdo Tony Parsons in terms of being a smug, arrogant, pseudo-intellectual, ex music journalist in love with the sound of his own prose. He even breasts the tape ahead of Stuart Maconie in the supplementary category of professional Northern twat. However, bearing all this in mind, I still wasn’t prepared for the sheer pretension found within the 450 pages of shallow piffle dressed up as scholarly hagiography that his deeply irritating The Ages of Bowie conspires to be. There will be a book that describes how it felt to be a bit different growing up in Stockport or some other woe begotten wool enclave in the early 70s and kicking against the pricks by modelling your look and your attitude on Bowie, Ferry and their ilk; this isn’t that book. While beginning as a self-justifying paean to the importance of Bowie to his own dull youth, The Ages of Bowie then veers wildly off course, turning into a sketchy, second-hand, unsatisfactory, distant biography.

Like everyone else, Morley actually stopped listening to Bowie when the 80s turned up; however, for the purpose of this wearisome tome, he’s done his copy and paste research by giving a tiresome year by year rundown of albums he won’t have listened to and films he hasn’t seen, judging by the glowing review he gives Labyrinth.  There isn’t a single sentence of analysis or appreciation of Bowie’s work post Scary Monsters, while the desperately sluggish tempo of the writing and unwieldy structure of the book mean that Bowie’s final releases, The Next Day and Lazarus, are discussed in the same shambling, leaden-footed way as everything else in the book, meaning one’s reaction to Bowie’s untimely death is reduced to the level of disappointment to be felt when your local branch of Office World closes its doors for the last time. I will never read another line of Morley’s work in my life.

David Pownall is one of those versatile, jobbing writers who has been churning out 300,000 words a year for half a century now. God Pekins is a short novel set in a failing provincial theatre, around the battle of wills between the artistic director and the writer in residence. Unfortunately, the sheer number of characters and the utterly indistinguishable nature of their speaking voices, mean this is a baffling list of names rather than a satisfying story. It ends with the louche layabout dramatist slowly rowing away from the burning embers of the theatre, in the company of his dea ex machina to the utter indifference of readers everywhere. I found this book in the lost property bin at work and I’m glad I didn’t buy it.

I’m really glad I did buy Mike Carter’s All Together Now though. In November 1981, Carter’s late father Pete, former union full time official and Communist Party veteran, organised the People’s March for Jobs, when thousands of unemployed workers marched from Liverpool to London, to highlight the conditions endured by those without work. Almost thirty-five years on, just before the Brexit referendum, Mike undertook the same journey, partly as a research project and partly as a way of slaying familial demons. He’d long been estranged from his late father and hadn’t been on the original march as he was a student. His father’s death had provided him with a treasure trove of memorabilia from the original march and this spurred him to do the hard yards and explore how society had changed in the intervening period. This book is an engaging blend of walking and talking, acting as a record of the journey he made over four weeks and 330 miles.

With his flat in Brighton and job in London, he wasn’t prepared for what he saw: the food banks, payday loan shops, bookies, pawnbrokers and sleeping bags in doorways. In common with the original marchers, he had done no training, but there were half-days and rest days, and plenty of people to talk to, many of them veterans of the original march, along the way. One of the first of them was Kim; an unemployed single parent back in the day, who the organisers initially blocked from taking part, saying it would be too hard on her three-year-old. She argued her corner and within a few days, she was the human face of the march; the Ellen Wilkinson of late 1981. Most of those Carter meets have fond memories of the march: of the spirit of togetherness it engendered, including a punk band from Birmingham called The Quads, who marched the whole route. When Carter speaks on the phone to their lead singer, Josh Jones, he discovers he’s now a priest in New Zealand.

The book includes a lot of conversations, not just those Carter has with others but those he has with himself, and us, as he analyses what he is seeing and expounds his ideas. As for the walking, he is increasingly keen on what he calls “desire paths;” shortcuts or long ways round, so as to avoid official paths or roads with heavy traffic. Desire paths are about people going where they please, regardless of others, much as his father had done, when he walked out to start a new life, with a new family, who were affluent and middle-class, four years before the march. Carter senior claimed his abandoning of his parental responsibilities was a rejection of bourgeois ideals, though to his kids it seemed then, as now, to be crass selfishness dressed up as revolutionary activity, which is why Mike wouldn’t forgive Pete, even less so when his mum died of cancer soon afterwards, as if killed by grief.

Over the years, there were attempts at reconciliation, but his dad always pushed him away. By the end Pete was living alone, on a canal barge, an alcoholic, suffering from lung cancer and virtually destitute, but still bull-headed, so much so that Carter lost it with him, reeling off the grievances he’d long held back. It was the last exchange they had, and it weighs heavily on Carter’s mind as he walks. Rather than berate his dad for wasting his life, he’s angry on his behalf at what England has become.

Almost everyone he talks to is a Brexiter, even young people, immigrants and those from cities that have benefited from EU funding. They should be angry with Westminster, not Brussels, but he understands their vicious need to blame the wrong targets.  It’s a depressing picture, backed up by extensive reading and research. But the rhythm of walking is therapeutic, and at the end, Carter is tentatively hopeful that the blight of neoliberalism will pass. No less important, he has made a fragile peace with his dad, which is something I applaud him for, because 35 years on, I can’t forgive Militant for what they did to my family. They ruined my former cousin John Hird’s life by indoctrinating him into what they call “The Organisation,” but is really a quasi-religious cult, built on power and focussed entirely on exploiting the weak and inadequate followers that are laughably known as Comrades.

The best analytical take down of the evil cult of Militant is Michael Crick’s wonderful book of the same name. Released initially in 1986, when the destruction of the remaining working class infrastructure of Liverpool by Taaffe, Hatton, Mulhearn, Fields and their muscle-headed pals, was at its peak, it forensically examines and destroys the credibility of every single aspect, both organisational and ideological, of the homophobic, institutionally racist, misogynist, workerist RSL cabal. The 2016 release with a dubiously argued codicil about Corbyn’s followers, who drew more ire from Militant than any other left grouping back in the day, seems an unnecessary rewrite of a document that is perfect from start to finish. I just wish a mentally ill failure of a person, currently residing in Vitoria Gasteiz, could bring himself to read this and realise he may have lost 40 years of his life to “The Organisation,” but he doesn’t need to waste the rest of it.

At Action Park

The Tyneside Amateur League is dying, but the Northern Alliance is flying. From Shankhouse to Shellac, we'll keep the TAL flying there.....

Years ago, during another one of those frequent outbreaks of internecine bloodletting you often get between Newcastle United’s directors and the supporters, the then chairman, a jug eared pixie called Gordon McKeague, announced that the legal dynasty of which he was a scion, regarded the club as “the family jewels.” There was a justified uproar at this preposterous patrician’s balderdash and some wise counsellor, though I know not who, made the sagacious point that shareholders and board members are not the moral owners of any football club; they are merely the blessed custodians for a particular period of time, inheriting this duty of care from their predecessors and bequeathing it to their successors. During the Ashley Years, this thought has been enough to maintain my seemingly unfounded optimism as regards the future of NUFC, despite the dismal football served up during the Benitez era.

If the concept of stewardship, whether benevolent or dictatorial, is true of football clubs, it should be equally correct when applied to football leagues. Sadly, in that case, my 5 year tenure as chair of the Tyneside Amateur League can only be seen as an unmitigated disaster, on account of the fact that Tuesday 9^th April saw an EGM where the remaining clubs voted overwhelmingly for the dissolution of this proud, august competition at the end of the current season, bringing to an end 70 successive seasons of competitive 11 a side football at the rootsiest of grassroots level, which will have seen 50 different teams crowned champions during that time. We weren’t the only ones at the bottom tier of competitive football struggling to continue; in recent years the Durham Alliance and Wearside Alliance have called it a day, leaving only the Crook and District League at that level under the auspices of the Durham FA. On our side of the river, the sprawling, disparate North Northumberland League still keeps a footballing flame burning in the shadow of Bamburgh Castle and out in the wilds past Hedgeley and on up to Duns, allowing for Border Reiving on a scale not seen since the accession of James VI to the English Crown. There is also the Newcastle Corinthian League; 3 divisions of 8 clubs, supposedly at TAL level, though I’ve never seen a game in that competition, not that I got to see many in ours this year, what with my Benfield commitments and that.

The plain facts are: we began season 2018/2019 with 13 clubs in the TAL. Fairly soon it was clear that a couple of the new teams were in trouble. Firstly Ellington Reserves and then Benfield Reserves threw in the towel, citing the usual issues of a lack of bodies on and off the pitch. At that point, concerns were raised by the management committee as to the viability of the league going forwards, especially as we were not seeing any credible actual or even potential applicants to pick up the slack, bearing in mind we normally expect to see a couple of teams moving upwards to the Northern Alliance at the end of each campaign. Things looked bleak enough with 11 teams, but the news that Wallsend Boys Club were moving their Development Team back to junior age football and that one of our longest-serving sides, Newcastle Medicals, had decided to throw in the towel as they just couldn’t find enough players or any volunteers at all to assist with off pitch matters. Tell us about it; Neville, Paul and I had run the TAL for 40, 10 and 5 years respectively, and every single one of us wanted to quit. It was a thankless task and there were absolutely no willing successors ready to step into our shoes. We tried to find more teams, new volunteers, drum up interest and so on, but it just didn’t happen.

A few years ago, accepted wisdom held that 11 a side leagues were in trouble because potential players preferred the chance to grandstand in relative comfort on a 4G 6-a-side court. That may have been the case, but what I’m seeing now is a whole generation who have chucked playing completely. On Mondays and Wednesdays when I don the gloves up the West Road and at the Lightfoot respectively, I’m surrounded by swathes of empty courts. Young’uns don’t even play the small sided game; if it doesn’t involve a computer terminal or hoisting weights, they don’t care. That’s fairly tragic on so many levels.

With a maximum of 9 teams huddling under the TAL umbrella for next season, we did the only rational thing; we contacted the brilliantly run Northern Alliance and asked them if they’d be interested in taking the league over. With the blessing of the Northumberland FA, they are. It is their intention to set up a fourth Alliance division of 16 teams, called the Development Division for 2019/2020, adopting such nomenclature mainly to accrue start-up funding from the FA. It is my belief that they are keen to take all of our remaining clubs; a couple are in with a good shout of a place in the main structure of Alliance D2, while all those who complete the application process are guaranteed a spot in the Development Division.  The 9 teams split into two distinct groups: Haltwhistle Jubilee, Morpeth, Swalwell, Red House Farm and West Jesmond are all the highest senior level, or only, team operating from that club. Haltwhistle will be Champions and would be elected to the Northern Alliance in any circumstance. The next 3 are all the senior sides of large junior clubs, with Swalwell and Red House Farm having previously been members of the Alliance. My personal opinion is that West Jesmond, who have achieved much to be proud of during their membership of the TAL, may prefer to apply to the Corinthian League. The other 4 teams: Ponteland United Reserves, Gosforth Bohemian Reserves, Chemfica Amateurs and Wideopen A are the reserve sides of clubs already in the Alliance. Pont really should change their name and join Haltwhistle in the Alliance proper, while Bohs and Chemfica may be torn between applying to the Corinthians or the Alliance Development. Wideopen were the only club to vote against dissolution, so it’s going to happen, regardless of where the clubs chose to play, or not, next season.

The final AGM will be on Friday 14^th June, but I won’t be there, as Tynemouth Bad Boys are away to High Stables at Beamish and East Stanley in the Midweek Cricket League the same night. I learned that at the pre-season meeting, which followed the TAL EGM at Blue Flames, showing perhaps that I’m more interested in administration than sport. The final hurrahs of the Tyneside Amateur League will be our cup finals, on Saturdays 27^th April, 4^th May and 11^th May at Benfield, kick off 2pm. On those dates you may see, in order, Haltwhistle versus Bohs to decide the 53^rd different winners of  the Tyneside Amateur Challenge Shield, West Jesmond looking for their  third victory in the Neville Cowey Cup, against Chemfica Amateurs and teams TBC, but possibly Morpeth v Swalwell, in the John Hampson Trophy. Only £2 in with a free buffet afterwards; please come along if you can. Remember, the football season doesn’t have to end when the Northern League does.

Obviously, with there being only 18 teams in the top tier of the Northern League, not only are there gaps in the fixture list, but the whole competition wraps up early. Last year Benfield had 17 games in April, which was frankly insane; the players were knackered, the pitches were churned up and the spectators were punch drunk to the point of boredom. It’s not been the case this year. The curtain comes down on the season on Easter Monday, when Benfield play West Auckland at Seaham in the League Cup final. Our last league game is also at Seaham, on Saturday 13^th April, meaning I’ve already been casting around for alternative entertainment to fill my Saturdays. Bearing in mind that The North East Premier League returns on Saturday 20^th April, if I count backwards from the end of May, my season could end like this -:

Saturday 25^th May: Trip to Scotch Juniors or

Whitburn v Tynemouth

Saturday 18^th May: Coundon and Leeholme v Wideopen, Alliance D2 or

Burnopfield v Tynemouth

Saturday 11^th May: John Hampson Cup final and

Tynemouth v South Northumberland

Saturday 4^th May: Neville Cowey Cup final and

Tynemouth v Felling

Saturday 27^th April: Tyneside Amateur Challenge Shield final and

Tynemouth 2nds v Boldon 2nds

Saturday 20^th April: New Fordley v Seaton Delaval , Alliance Premier or

Bedlington v Seaton Burn, Alliance D1 or

Blyth v Burradon, Alliance D2 or   

Rothbury v Seaton Sluice, Alliance D2 or

West Allotment Celtic v Durham City, Northern League D2 and

Tynemouth 2nds v Sacriston 2nds

There are several of these dates that are set in stone. For instance, the 3 TAL finals and the Coundon game, as it is the only game in the region that day, while the last Saturday in May is at the caprices of the eternally eccentric WSJFA. In total contrast, April 20^th boasts games at a whole raft of grounds I’ve not been to before, though one important point to factor in will be the fact I’m likely to be accompanied by my pal Davdi, a somewhat slightly eccentric Canadian workmate, who displays impeccable musical tastes, a fondness and appreciation of proper beer, as well as a sporting temperament that began as a fan of ice hockey but has spread to include other games, including football. Obviously, having been resident in Newcastle for the past 7 years almost, he’s been to SJP and seen his interest peak and then piqued by Newcastle United, so I was delighted when he read my book about Percy Main Amateurs, and expressed an interest in seeing a game of football, providing there were pints at the end of it.

Saturday April 6^th saw Benfield at a loose end, providing the perfect opportunity for an exploratory dive into the alluring rockpools of local football. I’d looked at the Northern League fixtures and only Hebburn versus Whickham really stood out as a decent game in close travelling distance, so I decided to have a delve into the Alliance. Any game you see in the Northern Alliance will be an afternoon well spent. If Benfield aren’t playing, I tend to look to this league for my football fix.  The one game that really stood out was Shankhouse against New Fordley, especially as their Action Park would be a new ground, though I’ve seen them at their previous home of Northburn several times before, including one memorable midweek encounter when the noise of a Zumba class taking place in the nearby community centre drowned out the frantic shouts of the players as Percy Main bested the home side 6-4.. Being honest though, the real reason for choosing this one is the fact the ground shares a name with Shellac’s debut album; At Action Park.

Rather like Shellac, both Davdi and I have both, independently, adopted an embittered, bleak and sardonic view of life. The necessity of such a Weltanschauung was brought home to me while awaiting a fashionably and predictably late Davdi, as I sat at the top of Northumberland Street, nursing an overpriced and flavourless Costa as a talentless Spanish language busker ploughed dismally through Guantanamero and La Bamba. At last he turned up, announcing he’d checked the route on Google, which is great as I can’t read maps and we’d never have found the place if I’d been forced into a leadership role. We climbed aboard a 43, engaged in linguistically restricted failed attempts at witty bavarderie with the Polish Myra Hindley lookalike at the wheel, then sat. In silence. Brooding.

On the way, we passed Benson Park, home of Gosforth Bohemians, Lockey Park, where Wide Open play and Seaton Burn welfare, before turning right and heading for Dudley, which boasts the Willie John Sams Centre, former home of Newcastle BT, and our destination. By 2.22pm we were among the 22 non-paying customers ready for Shankhouse against New Fordley, at Action Park.  Cold. Damp. Free. Cheap weak tea and coffee. Strong, passionate football, with more skill from the away side than the home. New Fordley won 2-0; a goal in each half. A low shot from distance, tucked right in the corner after 30 and a powerful thump on the hour that left the keeper motionless.  Game over, we caught the bus back to town. Somewhere near the Racecourse, Palace scored the goal that beat Newcastle.

By full time in that one, Davdi were in The Mean Eyed Cat enjoying some glorious Two By Two Pale Ale. By 6pm, we were in The Bodega, enjoying a raft of ales. By 8.30, I was in Bar Loco, supping Wylam and half dreaming about being on the bus home, having  somehow lost the £180 pair of specs I’d only picked up from the opticians that day. By 10.30, I was asleep, dreaming of where Davdi and I will go next. He’s noticed Percy Main host Wallington on April 20^th. Percy Main 2nds host Backworth 2nds as well…

The Warnock Report

Typical Newcastle United. Typical, typical Newcastle United. After signing off before the latest international break with the adrenaline rush of Ritchie’s last gasp stunner at Bournemouth, a fortnight’s inactivity was anticlimactically put to one side by a sluggish and soporific non-performance away to Arsenal, where the tactics and body language unambiguously betrayed an ingrained attitude of passive surrender against admittedly superior opponents. A no-risk game plan that involved heart hearted attempts at winning possession, pointless non-football when in possession and a general air of impatiently mooching around, waiting to get beaten. In the end, 2-0 was more than they deserved, but it’s another game ticked off the list of 38 trips to the dentist without anaesthetic that each season has become under Ashley. Only half a dozen dutiful encounters to go until the whole media and social media circus of will he? won’t he stay? kicks into overdrive. Two cheers for Benitez and his on-pitch derring-do eh?

However, there are few reasons to beat one’s breasts in anguish just yet, as both Huddersfield and Fulham have been consigned to the second tier, leaving a single relegation spot to be avoided by the half dozen sides involved in the dance of doom. At the time of writing, Newcastle United stand 7 points clear of third bottom Cardiff City, with the added safety blanket of a goal difference of -11 compared to -33 for The Bluebirds. Really, it would take an effort of Pardewesque or Carverian proportions for NUFC to seize demotion from the jaws of safety at this point of the season. That said, last season’s heroic home wins over Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester United were topped by the tragicomic floundering of a 1-0 reverse to the doomed Baggies, so don’t rule out custard pies, banana skins and pratfalls against Palace, Southampton or Fulham away. What would really grate about such results is that would still be enough to keep Newcastle up, but losing the first two of that list would probably help seal the fate of Cardiff City, who appear to be getting measured up for their relegation suit of sackcloth and ashes.

I’ve no affection for Cardiff, either as a place or a football club. The only time I’ve actually been there was for 2005’s humiliating semi-final loss to Manchester United at the Millennium Dome, or whatever it’s called. Great day that was, eh? As regards Cardiff City, having missed their visit to SJP in the 84 promotion season as I was at Uni, the first time I recall seeing them on Tyneside was the 5-1 massacre on a Friday night in February of 2010, when their ageing Soul Crew toughies enacted an unseasonal, pre-match, pugilistic Eisteddfod in various licensed premises from Whitley Bay to Gateshead.  The only other time I saw them was the day of the abortive anti Ashley 60 minute walk-out at SJP in May 2014, when True Faith traduced the supporter base by imposing their own plans to head off on 69 minutes, announcing the charge  about a day before and effectively destroying any unity. That day, I’d been at Killingworth, watching them lose the Northern Alliance title to Blyth Town, before catching a fast X63 into town and having my own walk-in protest on 75 minutes that involved seeing a 1-0 lead turned into a 3-0 victory. So why, on the basis of these cursory interactions, do I want Cardiff City to stay up? In short, for the sake of Neil Warnock…

If the answer is the man universally referred to as Colin Wanker, the superb anagram of his name, then the question may be as inadequate as the binary balderdash on the 2016 referendum ballot paper. You don’t need to be told, of course, Our Colin is 100% prime cut Brexit gammon extraordinaire. This is the man who combines the personality and demeanour of Tony Hancock crossed with Benito Mussolini, whose undiluted dour Yorkshire miserablism is topped up with the sort of rampant, paranoid egomania that wouldn’t be out of place in the armoury of any method actor seeking to portray both Ted Bundy and Donald Trump transplanted to Sir Geoffrey’s home village of Fitzwilliam. All of this topped off with the kind of theatricality Sarah Bernhardt would have been proud of.

I first became aware of Colin in the spring of 1987, when I heard him interviewed on a midweek sports programme, which must have been on Radio 2 in those days, celebrating Scarborough’s ascension into the Football League. Ironically, my location at that time was Harrow, where the local Conference side Wealdstone had done the double of league and FA Trophy the year before, which showed appalling timing as it was 12 months too early for automatic promotion. Instead, the notorious ticket tout Stan Flashman’s Barnet, eternally managed by genial Barry Fry, were the hopes of the south, but their progress stalled, allowing Warnock’s Scarborough to take the title and a place in the Football League at the expense of Lincoln City.  

Back then, Colin was a jovial ingénue; a lower league scuffer whose 350 game career had taken him to a series of basement division outposts in the north and east, as well as a short sojourn with Aldershot, who subsequently trained as a chiropodist, but kept his hand in by looking after the fortunes of Burton Albion and Gainsborough Trinity before enacting a minor revolution on Seamer Road. That said, I doubt the doyens of the long-derelict McCain Stadium were prepared for Wolves fans swallow-diving through the roof of the main stand on their debut in Division 4. After a season and a half of getting the smallest club in the league to punch above its weight, Warnock was offered the Notts County job. Despite the presence of shadowy hoodlum Derek Pavis in the Chairman’s Office, it wasn’t the poison chalice the job is now. In fact, Colin oversaw successive promotions for The Magpies (1862 version), bringing them into the top flight for the last pre Premier League season of 1991/1992. Sadly, this was a step too far and County took a tumble twelve months later. They’d brayed Newcastle 2-0 at SJP and 3-0 at Meadow Lane on their way to the top flight, but endured a 2-0 home loss and a 4-0 thumping on Tyneside, when Andy Cole scored his first goal in black and white stripes, as Keegan’s NUFC stormed to the title in 92/93.  By then, Warnock had been relieved of his duties and took a short term role as “consultant” with Torquay United, doing just enough to keep them in the Football League on the last day of the season.

Despite his avowed Yorkshire roots, Warnock owns property in Cornwall, where he intends to retire. He traces his affection for the land of clotted cream and piracy to the short time he spent at Torquay, in neighbouring Devon. He obviously didn’t enjoy working down there though, as he gleefully accepted the Huddersfield Town job in summer 1993. In two seasons with The Terriers, he oversaw the move from Leeds Road to the new McAlpine Stadium and promotion to the Championship after a play-off win over Bristol Rovers. Surprisingly though, he quit literally days after this and took up the reins at Plymouth Argyle. At the first time of asking, he led the Pilgrims out of the bottom division, and then consolidated the next year, before being relieved of his duties in summer 1997. The next two years were forgettable from his perspective; the first saw him pilot Oldham Athletic to League 1, before repeating the feat with Bury the season after.

In late 1999, Warnock appeared to have run his course. Just turned 50, he’d seemingly posted his best achievements and was now phoning it in, taking over sinecures and basket cases to top up the pension fund and property portfolio, until he took the job that not only thrust him into the public eye, but gave him his longest stint in the hot seat; almost 8 years at his beloved Sheffield United, with half of it spent in front of the FA, explaining his remarks about referees in post-match interviews. It was, for the most part, a perfect fit of man and machine; an angry little bollox in the dug-out, swearing incessantly at linesmen, while a muscular team of wannabe kickboxers levelled anything and anyone above ankle height.

Let’s be honest about this, putting his mannered 100% Blade persona to one side for a moment, it can’t be denied that Warnock did a brilliant job at Bramall Lane, especially as Sheffield United were a financial basket case on the verge of oblivion when he took over. It wouldn’t be right to say he was an overnight sensation, but he steadied the ship and, come 2002/2003, he managed a triple tragedy, losing in the semi-finals of both the League Cup and FA Cup, as well as getting to the play-off final for a place in Premier League, only to be crushed 3-0 by Wolves. He did finally steer United into the top flight in 2006, though they suffered a preventable relegation after a single season, having lost at home to Wigan Athletic on the last day. This was much to the chagrin of United celebrity superfan Sean Bean who “confronted” Warnock in his office, using “vile language” in front of Colin’s missus and bairns. Bean denied this version of events, calling Warnock a “bitter hypocrite,” which may have been the straw that broke the Colin’s back as he tendered his resignation a few days later.

The Wigan game may have been cataclysmic, but the most notorious contest of King Colin’s reign was the infamous game against West Brom in March 2002. The result, on paper, was a thorough thumping, with The Baggies triumphing 3-0 in what became known as The Battle of Bramall Lane. This was not the result after 90 minutes, but the score when the referee abandoned the game after 83 minutes as The Blades were left with only 6 players on the pitch, following the dismissals of Simon Tracy, George Santos, and Patrick Suffo and the subsequent injuries suffered by Michael Brown and Robert Ullathorne. Were these real injuries or just convenient excuses? Who knows for certain, though The Blades were lucky Keith Curle hadn’t also seen red for unleashing a flurry of blows at West Brom’s Andy Johnson, unseen by the officials. Warnock was at his pompous best post match; combining belligerence with injured innocence and barefaced cheek, by suggesting the game should be replayed. It wasn’t.

Following a few months recharging his batteries down Mousehole way, having been interviewed but passed over for the Leicester City job, Colin found himself back in the game in October 2007. Slightly strangely, him and Simon Jordan are bosom pals, so when the bronzed Carphone Warehouse Adonis came calling, the inveterate Northerner found himself grafting in t’smoke. He kept Palace up, and then got them to the play-off semi-finals the year after, before being holed beneath the waterline in early 2010 when Jordan pulled the plug, the Glaziers went into administration and 10 points were deducted. Warnock, that great battler, walked timidly away from what he had claimed would be his last job in football, as now he’d turned 60, he couldn’t face the fight.  Perhaps it was the Croydon air that disagreed with him, for days later he’d stepped into the breach on the Hammersmith and City line, by talking the QPR job. In the usual style, he kept them up the first year and promoted them the season after, as Champions mind you, in 2011. Equally predictably, things got tough in the top flight and he was let go with the Rs propping up the table in early 2012.

Similar to his post Plymouth wanderings, Colin became a slightly peripatetic serial failure after that: an ill-fated spell at Leeds (can there be any other sort?) from February 2012 to April 2013, another Cornish furlough, followed by a return to Palace in August 14 and the sack in December of that year, then a year back at Loftus Road, before ticking off another Yorkshire club with a few months at Rotherham in early 2016, where he successfully kept them up and then walked away with a job well done.

So, what was left for the man who had played 330 games for 9 different clubs in a 12 year playing career and taken 16 managerial jobs at 14  clubs over 35 years and was about to turn 68 on his next birthday? Fairly obviously, he took a position at the 24^th different club he’s been involved with; Cardiff City, where a familiar pattern unfolded; stabilisation in the first year, promotion in the second (his 8^th different team to have achieved this; a record) and now a tooth and nail relegation dogfight, with seemingly all the forces of the professional game lined up against him.  When you see the decisions they suffered against Chelsea the other week, you have to have a degree of sympathy with the cantankerous old sod. Mind, last minute home losses don’t sit well with Colin; when Wolves got a 95^th minute penalty to win the Championship title, I thought he was going to level Nuno Espirito Santo for his “excessive” celebrations. Perhaps it’s just as well Kenedy arsed up that last second spot kick back in August, even if a successful conversion would have meant safety for Newcastle by now.

Whether Cardiff stay up or, more likely, go down, I would imagine Warnock will finally take a step backwards, spending his cash on the family rather than FA fines for abusing officials. He’s undeniably a nasty, irritating and touchy little sociopath, but the game will be poorer without him.