How Late It Was, How Late

It’s been another slow week in the fortunes of Newcastle United, other than the heart-breaking news that soon to be departing full-back Danny Simpson has been shitcanned by his former squeeze Tulisa, though I’m not clear whether the reasons for this final fissure have anything to do with his choice of footwear. The lady in question, Ms Contostavlos, who was apparently a member of N-Dubz, whatever that may be, has of late endured some unpleasant business with the Metropolitan Police. As the matter is sub judice, we’ll draw a veil over recent events and seek not to comment on matters about which we know nothing. How such an approach would be appreciated by those of us who understand that the transfer window remains closed, other than for currently free agents or those whose employment is about to expire and who are entering in to pre contract agreements, until July 1^st.

Such facts butter no parsnips with the easily panicked Twitterati who responded to a non-story about Yohan Cabaye heading to Manchester United with the kind of embarrassing, emotional cry-arsing on Friday last that had them bewailing our imminent relegation by bed time. There are two ways to look at this factually bereft screed of baseless innuendo; if you’re one of the YPSM Francophobes who drink down the Corridor of Hate, in The Forth perhaps, you’ll be delighted to see the back of Cabaye, even if he hasn’t been sold (remember irritating details such as facts spoil a good Twitter rant). However, if you’re normal, sane adult, you’ll understand that the only way newspapers can sell copy in the close season, is by filling their pages with sensational guff that has only a passing acquaintance with reality. This is why The Chronicle has actually been of some interest of late; their extracts from Craig Bellamy’s autobiography, paranoid little workie-ticket he may be, were deeply amusing, especially in his outing of Shearer as a 1 dimensional, self-obsessed paper tiger.

Frankly though, the only real football stories in Newcastle this weekend involved the international 4 nations Futsal tournament at Sport Central at Northumbria University, in a competition sponsored by the Football Association. As tickets were only £3, I decided it would be rude not to investigate what is basically a glorified version of the games of 5-a-side you can see any night of the week at any sports centre in the country. In the building where NUST hosted some of their public meetings, no doubt in a second floor broom cupboard at 3 o’clock in the morning to maximise attendance and any consequent, potential dissent, England, Malaysia, Poland and the USA came together to spread the word about the indoor version of the game in front of 409 hysterical fans on Friday. The tournament had started on Thursday with Poland beating Malaysia 5-2 and the USA defeating England 2-1, but I reasoned that 2 days of this sort of thing in a row might be pushing it.

After negotiating airport levels of security, with besuited, earphoned security personnel doing bag and body searches (24 hours later, a yellow polo shirted Showsec goon made an ostentatious show of confiscating  a room temperature can of Diet Irn Bru from out of my satchel, as I effected entry to the Camera Obscura gig across the campus), gaggles of ill-informed and unprepared students earning San Miguel money for later that night by attempting to punt an “ official souvenir brochure” were unable to direct me to a functioning hot drinks machine, the men’s bogs or even the seating area. However, I managed to establish a working relationship with these things under my own steam and was soon sat in a large, well equipped school gymnasium, with around 50 others as some unhelpfully loud landfill techno that is more often associated with step aerobics classes on Tuesday afternoons, heralded the arrival of Malaysia and America. Somewhat predictably, I kept up my resolute lack of engagement with acceptable codes of public behaviour by remaining seated during The Star Spangled Banner, but springing to my feet for Negaraku, the anthem of Malaysia -:

Negaraku,

Tanah tumpahnya darahku,

Rakyat hidup, bersatu dan maju,

Rahmat bahagia, Tuhan kurniakan,

Raja kita, Selamat bertakhta!

Rahmat bahagia, Tuhan kurniakan,

Raja kita, Selamat bertakhta!

(The land where my blood has spilt

The people living united and progressive

May God bestow blessing and happiness

May our King have a successful reign!

May God bestow blessing and happiness,

May our King have a successful reign.)

It inspired the Malaysian side, backed enthusiastically by a knot of international students cheerfully waving their country’s flag, which contained several participants (I hesitate to use the word players) who appeared never to have kicked a football before, to a resounding 8-1 loss at the hands of The Great Satan, who kicked on from a 2-0 half time lead and could easily have doubled their score, having hit the post on 6 occasions. It’s not a cheap jibe at the Malaysian team, but an observation based on the fact that several of them appeared to shoot quizzical glances at the 2 referees when decisions were given against them, as if they didn’t know the laws. The FA website explains Futsal thus -:

Futsal is an exciting, fast-paced small sided football game that is widely played across the world and is officially recognised by both UEFA and FIFA.  The nature of the game places a large emphasis on technical skill and ability in situations of high pressure, and is subsequently an excellent breeding ground for football competencies that can be translated into the 11-a-side format of the game.  Futsal is a five-a-side game, normally played on a flat indoor pitch with hockey sized goals and a size 4 ball with a reduced bounce.  It is played to touchlines and all players are free to enter the penalty area and play the ball over head-height.  Games are 20 minutes per half, played to a stopping clock (similar to basketball) with time-outs permitted. There are a number of differences to our traditional version of small sided football, but the dominant elements are the absence of rebound boards and amendments in the laws that encourage and foster skilful, creative play above the physical contact that tends to be a feature of English five-a-side.

That last point is a particularly moot one, as sliding tackles are allowed. However, get them wrong and you’re in bother, as 6 fouls in a game means the opposition gets a penalty and another penalty for each subsequent foul. God knows how that would go down at Pitz, where I’ve seen games abandoned after descending in to the kind of free-form pugilism normally associated with taxi ranks in the Bigg Market on Christmas Eve, even if the most notable instance of someone losing their head in a game of 5 a side I’ve ever witnessed involved a self-elected, uberfan and cultural gauleiter attempting to kick a Radio Newcastle broadcaster six feet in the air as his side were getting trounced at the JJB. It was a couple of years ago; perhaps he’s moved on from then…

The main problem I had with these Futsal games was the organisers’ insistence on bombarding us with loud, piped music during all stoppages, including the time out each team can call in each half, that was accompanied by The Clash’s I Fought The Law; quite what Joe Strummer, whose only known comment on football was to state his sense of national pride when hearing about English club fans trashing ferries and European pavement cafes in the 80s, would have made of this I really don’t know. It was like being at a Middlesbrough home game, save for the lack of face paint, foam hands, curly wigs and swathes of empty red seats.  However, in defence of the piped music, it was marginally less irritating than the fingernails down a blackboard squeak of trainer soles on the polished wooden floor that really began to hurt my fillings after a while. Simultaneously, the most idiotic rule was that the roll-on, roll-off subs (squads of 15 with 5 allowed on the pitch at any one time) had to wear bibs when on the side line; many of the poor buggers spent more time trying to put them on or take them off than actually playing!

Star player for the States in this more than comprehensive victory was gangly, cumbersome Jamaican-born, Baltimore Blast (I do my research you know) front man Machel Millwood, who scored 5 and missed twice as many far simpler chances; the fact he was wearing shirt number 23 ought to be of interest to Newcastle United fans.  His best goal was during an ill-advised Malaysian attempt to get back in to the game, by taking off their keeper and putting an outfield player in a keeper top. Predictably, play broke down and Millwood rolled the ball in to an empty net from well within his own half.

The second game between the hosts and Poland was considerably better attended, with the overwhelming majority of the audience being either youngsters from local football clubs (Killingworth and Prudhoe youth teams were the ballboys and mascots) or adults involved in the coaching and development of Futsal. While Newcastle has no team involved in the national league, both Carlisle and Middlesbrough, the latter no doubt inspired by former Garforth Town manager, PE teacher, British Futsal pioneer, Juninho’s bag man and inveterate self-publicist Simon Clifford, who introduced the game to this country at the turn of the millennium, are experiencing a rapid growth in both local interest and players. The rest of the crowd was made up of about 50 Poland fans, as the game has always been popular in Central and Eastern Europe (while I lived in Slovakia, brief highlights of the national league would be shown on TV sports programmes) during the harsh winters as the outdoor game is a non-starter with 6 inches of snow on the ground from November to March. The Poles had plenty to shout about, which they did both vociferously and enthusiastically, as their team battered England and cruised to a 2-0 lead, before conceding a late free kick to make the final score 2-1, much to the delight of their supporters.

Poland and the USA played each other for the honour of winning the tournament on Sunday afternoon, with America coming out on top 4-2, while the wooden spoon event between England and Malaysia ending 2-2, but it was such a lovely sunny day I didn’t bother attending, preferring a walk down by the sea side. I must say though that I’m glad I made the effort to see the game played live, but I don’t think I’ll be in a hurry to see it again anytime soon; 5-a-side isn’t a great spectator sport, however you dress it up. Scottish Junior Football on the other hand, is always worth making the effort to get along to, regardless of the quality of the play.

Back about 15 years ago when I was doing my MA, I fell in love with the work of two writers whose entire body of work I devoured over the summer of 1998. Firstly, there was Charles Bukowski which probably says more about the state of my head at the time than my literary tastes. As Bukowski died in 1994, he hasn’t produced much more in the way of a body of work since then, apart from Black Sparrow Press churning out an annual volume of his “previously uncollected poems.” I’ve given many of these posthumous publications a swerve as Bukowski’s approach to writing poetry was to drink two bottles of wine and type a whole load of free association doggerel and banal non-sequiturs before collapsing pissed and calling the resulting squiggles on the page a collection of poems. Other than completists, Ph.D researchers and those with little or any critical faculties, I’d wonder just why anyone would buy these rectangles of hopelessness. The lack of consistency in the quality of his writing is a regular and repeated failing of the Bukowski canon; basically, he struggles with plot in other words. While his short stories tend to be taut, compelling and effective, only the autobiographical novels (Post Office, Factotum and Ham on Rye in particular) work, as his levels of concentration and attention to detail dip markedly in the other of his longer works, especially the dire Pulp and dull Hollywood.

The other writer who arrested my attention, mainly because of his Kafkaesque, labyrinthine plots and assured mastery of the nuances of dialogue and argot, was James Kelman and I’m ashamed to say having adored and proselytised his first four novels and first four collections of short stories, I’ve read nothing by him since then, which neatly consists of another four novels and another four collections of short stories; it really must be time for me to reconnect with this astonishing writer.

While the dystopian nightmare of How Late It Was, How Late and the brutal, uncompromising depiction of the centrality of gambling to working class life in A Chancer are seen as his early masterpieces, my particular favourites were the gentler, more character driven The Bus Conductor Hines and A Disaffection. While How Late It Was, How Late may have grabbed the headlines and The Busconductor Hines may have been more seminal, it is A Disaffection, quietly, which is James Kelman’s best early book. The protagonist is Patrick Doyle, a single, bored English teacher. Each day he gently pines for a married colleague, clashes with his racist brother and fires frustrated polemic at his sixth-formers. Aware that he has succumbed to the rottenness of the system, disgusted by his employment as tool of the British state, he rebels in a most peculiar manner: by trying to fashion some old pipes into a musical instrument on which he can play the song of his sorrow. It is a symbol both of hope and the ridiculous.

Doyle stumbles through the novel’s barren plains, searching for something, anything that will help salve his pain, but makes no progress beyond endless cups of tea and stubbed out cigarettes. The characters in every Kelman novel are incarcerated not only in a socio-economic hell, but in their very existence. As such, Kelman becomes a novelist-philosopher in the tradition of Camus and Kafka, an experimentalist as redoubtable as Joyce or Beckett, and a writer who mines for the dignity in his characters even deeper than Steinbeck can. It is in A Disaffection that his vision is most complete: sad, human and vital. This book is a deep, slow, moving feast, in which Kelman captures the tremors and tempo of consciousness itself, immersing the reader in the yearning, futility and drained moments of hope in each hour of Patrick’s world.

 Returning to the book last month, I was reminded of one of Patrick Doyle’s ultimately futile attempts to find solace in the real world, by attending a Scottish Junior game on a freezing cold December Saturday. Doyle, wrapped up in his own personal world of grief and despair, misses the only goal as Yoker Athletic defeat Glasgow Perthshire. Last weekend, a similar level of despair to Patrick’s could be discerned among the Shire’s support as they lost on penalties to Glenafton Athletic in the final of the West of Scotland Cup played at Pollok.

In searching for a game this weekend, my choices in the West Region were limited to another trip to Pollok for Hurlford United against multi title and cup winning Auchinleck Talbot in the Evening Times Cup final, Shotts Bon Accord v Irvine Meadow XI, but I was there last season, or already relegated Kello Rovers against Yoker in the West Region Super League First Division. There really wasn’t a choice…

If you look up Kello on a map, you’ll probably be directed to the East Durham no-horse pit village of Kelloe, as Kello Rovers play in the seething metropolis of Kirkconnel in Dumfriesshire. Their freakish location makes them liable for a return to the Central District First Division, rather than the Ayrshire District League, despite being within 3 miles of Ayrshire and excuses them, in the main, from the onerous task of playing midweek fixtures. The West Region of the Juniors considers asking teams to travel 60 miles on a school night to be beyond the pale; compare this with the 300 mile round trip that Whitehaven have to make to play Alnwick in the Northern League. Indeed.

There are 2 great things about Kirkconnel; firstly Kello Rovers play there and secondly there’s a direct train from Newcastle, which was the one that took me home from Barrhead when I went to see Arthurlie play Irvine Meadow XI two years ago. As a result, I was able to get the train up via Carlisle, leaving at 9.26 and arriving at 12.23, watch the game, have a potter around and leave on the 17.23 direct train, getting g in to Newcastle at 20.15, allowing me ample time to get to Northumbria University for the Camera Obscura gig. Incidentally, if you’re reading this week’s blog in the hope of finding a review of either the gig or their new album Desire Lines, then I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed. This week is football; call back next week for a musical overview of events. Sorry for making you plough through nearly 3,000 words to find that out, but there you go….

I’m glad I got to see Kello Rovers play at home, as I’ll never, ever return to Kirkconnel in my life as there is absolutely nothing to see. Every single shop was closed and, bar the village’s only pub, the only building of interest was the superbly maintained public toilet where I had cause to pause on a couple of occasions. It was certainly the yin to the malodorous, stained, concrete block of a men’s bog at Nithsdale Park, resplendent with surprising PIRA graffiti considering the number of Newco shirts on display among those watching, that appeared to rival the one in Trainspotting. In short there was nothing to do pre match and because I wasn’t bevvying, the best idea was to find a shaded spot near the memorial to miners who died in accents at the local Fauldhouse pit (1864-1968) and read; I managed to complete The Crossing, the second volume of Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy during my day out, but if you’re reading this week’s blog in the hope of finding a review then I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed. This week is football; call back next week for a critical overview of my recent reading. Sorry for making you plough through more than 3,000 words to find that out, but there you go….

Despite noticing a huge gap in the wall behind one goal, where the pile of bricks hinted at a recent vehicular mishap, I was a professional and made my way to the turnstile, where I contemplated handing over the West Region Scottish Junior Football Association complimentary ticket I’d been given up at Pollok last weekend as I was there on journalistic business, but instead I gladly parted company with a fiver and then, having made my way round the concrete terracing behind one gaol, I parted with a further £1.60 for ice cold cans of Diet Irn Bru from the well-stocked catering outlet that shares the pavilion with the dressing rooms. This set-up and the outside latrines reminded my other Seaton Delaval amateurs lately, though with a nod to North Shields with a licensed Portakabin, brilliantly named The Rovers’ Return at the side of it.

Perhaps reluctant to wave farewell to the season, Yoker emerged in their bright orange strips a good 5 minutes after Kello, in faded black and white, had lined up. The game eventually kicked off about 6 minutes late and on a hard, bumpy, uneven surface, the relegated home side tried their best to liven up the crowd of about 80, including perhaps half a dozen from Yoker and a similar number of groundhoppers. The first half an hour was an even contest, but Yoker pounced twice in five minutes, firstly via an impressive diving header and secondly via a tap in after a woefully scuffed shot turned out to be a more than inviting cross.

Thus, 2-0 at half time and so I made my way behind the unterraced bottom goal, where the wall was missing and in to the shade over the covered enclosure (packed dirt rather than concreted in the manner of Bathgate Thistle’s Creamery Park) for the second period. Yoker made it 3-0 after a penalty was awarded for obvious and unnecessary holding and then 4-0 with a beautiful curling effort in to the top corner.

As the clocked ticked down to injury time, I began to contemplate the end of a season which began on a day like today, gloriously sunny and warm, though at my very closest football ground, when Heaton Stannington defeated Ashington in a pre-season friendly on July 7^th. It had been 11 long months with only 2 Saturdays when I’d not seen a game of football; August 11^th saw me at the hurling and May 11^th was the inaugural UCU IBL conference. Just as I almost fell in to a reverie, the referee woke everyone up with two penalties awarded to Kello. The first appeared the softest award I’d seen all season, apparently for a foul, but the second was a clear trip. Both were converted and the second had the distinction of emulating Cisse’s winner against Anji, by being the very last kick of the game. I’d not seen it before this season and now I’ve seen it twice in 3 months; canny.

So, at full time, I took a slow walk up to the station, lay down on a bench and read a bit more, being kept awake by the automated station announcements about the need for security and watching one’s belongings that rent the air every 15 minutes. I really wouldn’t like to be stuck in Kirkconnel in the winter; a glorious day and a good book were the ideal accompaniments to an interesting game that made for a fitting way to end the 2012/2013 season.

Roll on North Shields v Blyth Spartans on July 6^th…