I turn 48 in less than 3 months’ time, which probably makes you wonder just why I’m attempting to impersonate a goalkeeper here today. The fact is I still enjoy a game of 11 a side every Saturday morning, as my playing career, such as it is, is being painfully elongated and unnecessarily prolonged in Division 4 of the North East over 40s League with the shambolic outfit known as Heaton Winstons. We’ve just completed another bloody awful season. So why on earth do I still do it? Basically, I love football; from Winstons to my Assistant Secretarial duties at Percy Main in the Northern Alliance to every Newcastle United home game that’s not on a Saturday (The Main must come first), to random and indeed unnecessary acts of groundhopping around the very base of the non-league pyramid on Tyneside, my life is, to an almost ridiculous degree, governed by the beautiful game.
Frankly, I will make no apology for that; it is my DNA I suppose. This is why I’m so honoured to have been asked to take part in this game. Despite an inflexible Marxist ideological standpoint, that would ordinarily require me to state, without equivocation, that charitable donations are a sop to Capitalism, I am deeply appreciative of the fact I’m here today, trying to raise money for the Sir Bobby Robson Foundation, especially in relation to the work they do at the Freeman Hospital, which is literally around the corner from where I live in High Heaton, though the connection I feel for the place is more emotional than geographical.
Through visiting the Freeman, I first became aware of the Sir Bobby Robson Foundation in the summer of 2009. On May 1st that year my late father, Eddy Cusack, was sadly diagnosed with cancer and spent his last months in the Freeman, dying the day after Sir Bobby, on 1st August. Every day for the time it took my dad to die, I visited him, passing the Sir Bobby Robson Foundation entrance as I made my way to and from the ward Dad was on. It left an indelible impression; every Saturday morning that Winstons played a home game at Paddy Freeman’s playing fields opposite the hospital, my heart lurched at the memory of two men I respected so much, who died within a day of each other. Having lost a loved one to the terrible illness that is Cancer, I know just how imperative it is we raise money to research in to cures for it. Never mind politics, this is personal.
My dad was a year younger than the great man and, like him, a lifelong Newcastle United fan. The old fella’s 40th birthday celebrations involved the 4-3 cup game against Forest on March 9th 1974 (he wasn’t on the pitch, but family lore says my Uncle Brian was, dressed in a long leather car coat that made him look like a trainee body double for Rodney Bewes in The Likely Lads), though Eddy attended games infrequently after Joe Harvey was sacked in 1975. It was his way of protesting at the unfair way Joe Harvey was treated, though Dad was delighted when Sir Bobby came home to take the helm at SJP in September 1999; I remember the joy he felt when attending an unremarkable 2-2 draw with Ipswich for his 69th birthday in March 2003, taking my son Ben, who was aged only 7 at the time. Though none of us were to know it, this was to be my dad’s last Newcastle game in the flesh. The terrible thing about relegation in 2009 was that the last competitive game during Sir Bobby and Eddy’s lives was the awful 1-0 loss at Villa Park that sealed the club’s fate. How they would both rejoice at next season’s return to Europe with Pardew’s stylish side.
Dad’s disgust at Joe Harvey’s treatment was mirrored by how he saw the removal from post of Sir Bobby in 2004. I think it was from that point I became utterly disillusioned with Newcastle United and disengaged from them for almost 7 years as I pursued my love of non-league football. Through my involvement with the Northern League, I got to meet Sir Bobby once, at Tow Law in July 1999 at the launch of Martin and Denise Howarth’s estimable Northern League Club. Northern League Chairman Mike Amos had invited the usual collection of zealots and social inadequates who make up a large proportion of the groundhopping fraternity for a midweek launch of this project at Ironworks Road. On a sunny Wednesday afternoon, member number 1 was unveiled as Langley Park’s foremost son. Sir Bobby gave a brilliant, impassioned speech about the north east, football and local pride that drew warm, spontaneous applause.
In the bar afterwards, he said his farewells, commenting how he’d love to spend more time back in the north east but effectively regarded Ipswich as his home. Cheekily I responded that he shouldn’t count his chickens or assume he was in retirement just yet, as the pitiful job Ruud Gullit was making of things; there was every chance he’d be in the Newcastle hot seat before the autumn. At this, Sir Bobby, clasped his hand on my left shoulder (I can still almost feel the downward pressure of his palm), stared in to the middle distance and smilingly said “you never know what’s around the corner kid.” Three months later, a suicide note of a team selection on a rainy Tyneside night saw Sir Bobby’s wish and my prediction come true.
Perhaps the only other link I have to Sir Bobby takes us back to where we came in; the deeply talentless Heaton Winstons FC. Having struggled past Deneside Catholic Club in the first round of the Villa Real Cup (they only had 9 men) in September 2007, we found ourselves drawn away to Langley Park Ram’s Head. They were 2 divisions above us and we expected a chasing. However, on the day we acquitted ourselves fairly well, losing 4-2; I’ll hold my hands up for the third. I should have come for the cross instead of standing rooted to my line. Our manager bellowed “what the hell were you doing? Admiring the scenery?”
Seemingly the decrepit ground, with a potholed pitch, dismantled dugouts, broken railings and a tumbledown set of changers, had nothing to recommend it, other than an unimpeded view of Diggerland, west Durham’s primary hands-on adventure park. However, I knew (we all did) this was the former home of Langley Park, the team where it all began for Sir Bobby. You had to take in the view; to drink deeply from the ambience.
I was honoured to play on that pitch, same as I’m honoured to play on this one. I may not be any good, but I love the game and I’ll do my best to keep a clean sheet, but that matters little compared to the act of raising some money for Sir Bobby’s Foundation. It isn’t much, but it’s the best I can do.
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