On Tuesday 25th March,
Huddersfield Town drew 2-2 with Middlesbrough, to leave the teams in 16th and
15th positions respectively in The Championship, as we must now call it. The
crowd that night was, improbably enough, 11,999; two men who weren’t in
attendance were David Peace, author of such football themed literature as the
exploration of Brian Clough’s ill-starred tenure at Elland Road, The
Damned United and the passionate and detailed account of Bill Shankly’s
life at Anfield and subsequent retirement, Red or Dead and writer Harry
Pearson, still a regular columnist for When Saturday Comes, but
particularly feted for his wonderful
book The
Far Corner; subtitled “a mazy dribble through north east football.”
Despite regular trips back to his
native West Yorkshire, David Peace has been mainly resident in Tokyo since
1994; consequently, his part of the interview was conducted via email. In
contrast, Harry Pearson lives in the scenic Northumberland National Park, but
tends not to watch Boro these days, preferring to visit either Carlisle’s
Brunton Park or various local non-league games for his football fix. I took the
opportunity to meet up with him at Ryton and Crawcrook Albion’s Kingsley Park
ground when my team Heaton Stannington visited for a Northern League Division 2
fixture on Saturday 29th March. While my side relished the task, by
winning 4-0, I asked Harry the same questions David had answered the day
before.
Ian Cusack (IC): What level of interest did
you have in the Huddersfield versus Boro game? Had you made a prediction to
yourself in advance? Did you follow it on-line, via broadcast media or just
check the score at full time? How did you reflect on this result and what it
means to your club?
David Peace (DP): Well, it kicked off before
5 in the morning here in Tokyo, but I was up then, anyway, as my son was
watching the United-City game. And so yes, I was also following the Town game
on the live text update from the BBC website. To be honest, though, I wouldn’t
have got up specially to do that. And, as always, I’d thought we were going to
lose, especially after the Blackburn and Blackpool results. However, when we
were winning at half-time, I was obviously then disappointed with the
draw. But while bitter experience as
taught me never ever to believe Town are safe until the last whistle of the
last game, it just feels like this season is already over and so I’m already
hoping for better things next season. Again.
Harry Pearson (HP): Being
completely honest, my interest level was limited. I was out that night and the
bloke sitting next to me had an iPhone. When I saw he was checking the
Premiership scores I asked him about Boro. After that he insisted on updating
me every five minutes – which annoyed everybody at the dinner table, including
me. Normally I’d have 5Live on (I have to have something to yell at while I’m
doing the washing up – and Alan Green is hard to beat if you want irritating)
or I’d look at the BBC website. If I’d made any prediction it would be that
Boro would continue the rich vein of not scoring they’ve struck recently. I was
oddly disappointed they found the net. Failure has an allure. As to what it
means: not much really. Fans are already talking about next season, which in
March is not a good sign.
IC: I know I’m testing your memory here, but
how would your answer have differed if I’d asked you the previous question 30
years ago, when Boro and Huddersfield were both in Division 2 in 1983/1984 season?
That was also a 2-2 draw, interestingly enough….
DP: I’ve a lot more interest now than I had
then; from about 1982 until 1987, I was much, much more interested in music
than football and had pretty much stopped going to any games. It wasn’t until I
moved to Manchester, and was living near Maine Road, that I started going regularly
to any football again and then, after seeing a lot of games at City, including
them beating Town 10-bleeding-1, going back to Town again.
HP: Probably about the same, really.
When Punk happened I got really into bands and in those days music/football
seemed an either/or thing. I was living in Maida Vale, then. One of my
flatmates was an incredible glamorous German girl, so I spent most of my time
hanging around Soho with her and various members of The Stray Cats, The Cure or
whichever other hipster in eyeliner had fallen under her spell that week. For
some reason I found it hard to pay attention to Joe Bolton under such
circumstances.
IC: Does your answer say more about how you
or how the game has changed over the past 3 decades?
DP: I think more about me, and my own
circumstances, to be honest.
HP: More about me, I think. The
game is the game, as Omar Little from” The Wire” might say, and our reaction to
it changes with age and circumstance. At the moment I feel deeply disillusioned
with the upper levels of the professional game, but as a man in his fifties
that applies to quite a lot of other things, too.
IC: As supporters of provincial, second tier
teams, though both with proud histories, you can view the upper echelons of the
game dispassionately and, in David’s case, from a great geographical distance.
How do you view the current state of English domestic football? Are you
optimistic or pessimistic about the future of the game, at all levels?
DP: Not to sound like I’m sitting on the
fence, or being contradictory, but a bit of both, Ian. On the one hand, and as
everyone reading this knows only too well, the sheer all-pervasive dominance of
the Premier and Champions Leagues, and the almost unimaginable sums of money
involved, and then the sense of exclusion for everyone else, particularly on
local levels, and especially for kids, either as players or supporters, means
you can’t help but feel pessimistic if all you can hope and pray for is some
foreign multimillionaire to come and pluck your own club out of the wilderness.
But all that said, thankfully many, many folk don’t give up; over eleven
thousand still watched the Town-Boro game on Tuesday night; then there is the
work that people like Robert Gillan do setting up the Glenbuck Football
Academy; the example of FC United; and as you well know Ian, there is still a thriving
(and it seems to me) still growing fanzine culture. And so when the money runs
out, and it all comes crashing down, which it will do, then the grassroots will
still be there and will be ready to save the day and the game.
HP: I've started to feel about
football like I do about music - I've got my memories and I can let the young
folk worry about what's going on nowadays, albeit while shouting "This
sounds just like the Buzzcocks" occasionally. Top level football is now so
divorced from the rest of the game they are more or less separate entities. One
thing I have discovered is that I regard football as a live event. I can't be
arsed to watch it on TV. It's all the stuff that surrounds football that I like
- the smell, the PA playing “Sex on the Beach” in February, the angry men with
bad hair howling abuse - rather than the actual game. I'd rather go and stand
in the paddock at Carlisle on a rainy afternoon, than sit and watch Barcelona
in the comfort of my sitting room.
IC: We have a World Cup this summer; I’m
supporting Iran as DPRK didn’t make it this time round. Do you see it as a
potential feast of all that is great about the game, a gross, consumerist
fiasco or something in between? How do you feel about England? Will you support
them? How do you think they’ll perform?
DP: Again, mixed feelings, Ian. And also about England. I’ve only seen them
three times, in their group games in Japan in 2002, and I’ve no interest in
ever going to an England game again. But I still end up watching every game
they play on the telly. And will do again this summer. Then again, I can’t see
them hanging about in Brazil for too long. Japan might well do better.
HP: I always enjoy the World Cup.
It has elements of a soap opera, and Fifa's insistence on commercializing it
has turned it into a sporting equivalent of “Dynasty” (Ronaldo is Joan Collins,
obviously). I support England, though in pretty much the same embittered way I
support Boro. My hope is always for success, or totally humiliation.
IC: To conclude, since you both missed the
obvious highlight of this season’s football calendar at Huddersfield, to make
up for it; if you could attend 1 game, anywhere in the world, what would it be?
Why would you pick that one?
DP: Town’s first home game of next season and
I plan to be there. It’s like church on Easter Sunday, or the Durham Miners’
Gala. Dare to dream, Ian, dare to dream.
HP: Roma v Juventus in Rome. I've
not been to a football in Italy since the mid-eighties and I recall those trips
with great affection, especially as a man came round the curva selling brandy and
coffee from a tray; imagine that in England! Also, Andrea Pirlo is one of my
all-time favourite players, the Italian fans are indecently good looking and
Roman life is a big performance that I like watching.
With that, the full time whistle
blew and The Stan remained in 5th spot, just outside the promotion
places. A cursory glance at the full times in Ryton’s clubhouse told us
Huddersfield had drawn at Reading and Boro had drawn at Reading. With a warm
handshake, Harry was away for the number 10 bus, with a copy of Stand
6 to read during the journey and
I was away too, with the warm feeling a thumping away win always gives you.
Sometimes, it is a beautiful game.
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