MATCH 10: How Unfortunate: Carshalton Athletic vs. Horsham

Carshalton Athletic 3 Horsham 1 (Isthmian League Premier Division)
Colston Avenue, 12 October 2020

Sometimes, football fans tell me they're only interested in the present and not the past, and I never quite believe them. Most people don't spend as much time watching highlights of old games as I do - I'll watch almost anything, going back to the earliest days of film (although the codification of football is more contemporaneous with the development of photography). But every fan wants their club to generate memories: the greatest are the ones that feel best in the moment, winning matches or even trophies, but so much of the game's texture, and emotional appeal, comes from the accumulation of moments that are joyous, sad, funny or infuriating, or even stultifying, and you can learn so much about how supporters relate to it by the recollections that stick with them most.

A melancholic person at heart, who loves that line in Half Man Half Biscuit's Depressed Beyond Tablets about how "all the results of my lifetime are a string of nil-nils", I'm attracted to the disappointing and the dismal, and I find myself talking about Norwich City's lows as much as, if not more than their highs. (Do your own joke about their proportions.) Now enough time has passed, friends and I often look back and laugh at 2008-2009, when Norwich were relegated to the third division for the first time in fifty years after a disastrous season in which they signed seventeen players on loan, meaning that we frequently turned up at matches with no idea who half the squad even were, watching a team that looked like they were having exactly the same experience.

On train trips to games in more recent, better times, we could make each other laugh just by mentioning one of these loanees, almost competing to drag up the most forgotten names. The one that stayed most with me was Omar Koroma, who joined Portsmouth from Gambian club Banjul Hawks in July 2008 and came to Norwich for the 2008-09 season soon after. Manager Glenn Roeder told fans he could sign better players on loan than permanently, calling Koroma "a lovely mover" who was "exciting and full of enthusiasm". I only went to a handful of games that year, but saw one of Koroma's few starts, at Southampton in September 2008, who also went down at the end of the season. It had one of St. Mary's' lowest-ever crowds, but as Southampton were so cash-strapped, barely anyone was on the turnstiles and so I missed the first fifteen minutes, waiting outside in the pouring rain. Koroma was substituted soon after Dejan Stefanović was sent off and David McGoldrick made it 2-0 from a penalty, and he went back to Portsmouth after a serious ankle injury a couple of months later. He never played a Football League match again, trialling with Brøndby and then spending time with Forest Green Rovers, Wealdstone and Dulwich Hamlet, playing in Iceland and Kazakhstan before returning to London and ending up at Carshalton Athletic.

Carshalton were high on my list of clubs to visit this season. This was partly because I thought it would be fun to see Koroma when I'm unable to see the Norwich players with whom I've built up relationships (or the new signings, with whom I would have liked to) and barely know any of those I do see. It was also because Carshalton are the nearest club to Wallington, where my parents grew up - I spent a lot of time around there as a child but haven't been back in a decade, since the last of my grandparents died. I've always liked the way football provides a reason to visit places I otherwise wouldn't, and have seen a lot of England this way - this year, it's London's outermost suburbs and its small satellite towns, and Carshalton sits on the hinterland of those categories.

For some reason, Carshalton often play home matches on Monday nights, making them easy to cross off my list. (There's very little else to do socially besides football right now, after all.) I decided to spend an afternoon wandering around the local area, getting the train to Wallington and walking down the high street for the first time since the mid-1990s. My main memory of it was buying the Playfair Football Annual in WH Smith in 1993: the first time I owned any sort of football directory, feeding my interest in records of the game's recent and longer-term history. I did that with my grandmother, who died in 2012, aged 97; my walk took me past her old house on Croydon Road and to Beddington Park, behind Wallington Grammar School where my dad took his O-Levels. I have a photo of my grandmother at the park in 1928, but no memories of visiting with her: the thing that's stayed with me is my youthful trips to the Science Museum or the Natural History Museum, although it wasn't until this week that I really appreciated how the area was much more an outer district of London than a town in its own right.

My favourite football novel isn't really about football at all (and nor, you might say, are these blogs, most of the time). In his semi-autobiographical work The Unfortunates (1969), famously presented as a set of unbound chapters in a box to be read in any order, B. S. Johnson uses a trip to Nottingham to cover a game as a springboard for a stream of consciousness, thinking about a friend who died of cancer, whom he closely associated with the city. I did the same for my grandmother, remembering childhood afternoons feeding the ducks at Carshalton Ponds, or sat talking under the war memorial, or playing board games and listening to the radio with her in her little kitchen. (For some reason, I have an especially strong memory of listening to Liverpool's FA Cup semi-final against Portsmouth in 1992, in which she had no interest.)

She certainly never mentioned the prospect of going to see Carshalton Athletic with me, any more than my father ever raised the possibility of watching Horley Town, so I didn't have any memories attached to the club. Their ground being on Colston Avenue reminded me of the one political moment I've enjoyed since December: the people of Bristol tearing down the long hated statue of slave trader Edward Colston and throwing into the sea during the Black Lives Matter protests. Carshalton officially call it The War Memorial Sports Ground - people in that part of the country are far keener to remember the world wars than the Empire, for reasons I've explored elsewhere - and on entering, the first thing I saw was a Carshalton Athletic team photo from 1914, the year the First World War started, and my grandmother was born.

Next, I looked out for Omar Koroma, the only current Carshalton player I knew. Luckily he was starting. On my way, I thought back to 90 Minutes, my favourite football magazine as a teen, and their 'My Sad Mate' feature - another stupid thing that had stayed with me, especially the Bristol Rovers fan who had gone to QPR to see striker Devon White, who had recently left for Loftus Road, only to find that White wasn't playing. It took him some time to get into the game, but gradually he became the focal point of the Robins' attack, and I found out that he'd already scored four goals this season. He came alive in the second half, with his team already 2-0 up as Horsham managed to score two virtually identical own goals from Carshalton corners. I had my camera ready as Koroma broke through on goal and clattered into Horsham's keeper; I was just about to text a snide comment to my friend Chris when Koroma struck a low shot underneath the goalkeeper after a lovely Carshalton move.

 

A few Norwich fans on Twitter were delighted that I'd seen Koroma score; the Carshalton supporters around me were annoyed that he was substituted soon after. Writing this, I looked up the report from that last time I'd watched him, and saw I'd remembered it wrong: Koroma, just 18 years old, had a lively match and made a few chances, enough so that he'd started Norwich's next match, at home to Derby County. Perhaps he impressed less: Norwich lost 2-1 with Koroma on the wing for an hour, before he was taken off and not seen again. (The game was later part of an investigation into match-fixing.) So perhaps I owed Koroma an apology, and probably my father as well: I used to make fun of him for talking in Cockney rhyming slang, thinking Wallington and Carshalton were firmly in Surrey, but on returning, they felt far more like Greater London, as Ian Nairn pointed out in his reflections on nearby Mitcham in his book on the county. Leaving the ground and seeing the 1913-14 photo again, I thought about how football is about generating memories, whether they be converted into terrace chants, nostalgic pub chats or pieces of writing; either way, that connection with its numerous, endless narratives is what keeps me coming back.

MATCH 6: Being Here is Everything: Leatherhead vs. Horsham

 Leatherhead 1 Horsham 1 (Isthmian League Premier Division)
Fetcham Grove, 19 September 2020

In usual times, live football provides me with two important things: a sense of structure, and guaranteed sociality. Usually, I don't have to think much about either, as a season has such a cast-iron routine. But when Norwich announced that 1,000 fans would be allowed into Carrow Road for their Championship match against Preston North End - surprisingly, given that they'd suspended the planned return last week following new government advice - I didn't consider for a moment the possibility of applying to be part of this trial run. Only one in 25 season ticket holders would be allowed to enter the stadium, and the prospect of sitting there, surrounded by empty seats with little atmosphere, being shepherded around a one-way system by people in masks, inspired nothing but sadness. Really, I'd rather wait until it's closer to normal.

I decided instead to press on with my non-League odyssey, despite finding no-one to join me this Saturday. I wondered if going solo would make me feel unbearably lonely, as I've felt so much since lockdown began in March - and paradoxically more so since things have begun to open up but people have been reluctant to meet in large groups or go anywhere indoors, with most cultural life on hold. But I decided that going to a game might be preferable to watching the Norwich-Preston stream on iFollow, and having no company would be liberating in terms of which I chose to visit, without having to worry about what might work for someone else.

Lately, I've developed a two-tier answer to "How are you?". On the surface, I'm fine - getting washed and dressed every day, going to my studio and writing a lot, finding ways of seeing friends, playing and watching football. Underneath, I'm anxious and depressed, convinced I've lost plenty of work and worried about the short and long-term future, mourning the political project that died in December and horrified at how forty years of neoliberalism and austerity have led the UK to one of the world's worst Covid-19 death tolls, and almost certainly to more lockdowns, with normal life not returning any time soon. I returned to the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, designed to measure your feelings in the past week. One question struck me: 'I look forward with enjoyment to things:' with the options 'As much as I ever did', 'Rather less than I used to', 'Definitely less than I used to' and 'Not at all'.

 

Choosing 'Definitely less', I thought about football. I don't always look forward to Norwich games by any means - Rotherham at home on a Tuesday night in January in a season that's already petering out, for example, sparks little enthusiasm but I'll still go. Even then, after all, I'll get to see friends I've shared my experiences with for years, standing in the spot at Carrow Road that I've made my own, singing the songs I've learned over decades of devotion to the club. Being able to go to non-League football is nice, and gives me something to do in a life that currently feels like playing a computer game on demo mode, but of course I look forward to going alone to an unfamiliar team less than I do going to Norwich, with the incredible highs and lows that come with following a fairly competitive team for thirty years.

Looking at potential fixtures on The London Football Guide, helpfully sent by people reading this blog, I wondered which might provide the most interesting new experience. I decided on Leatherhead vs. Horsham for several reasons. Firstly, I went to sixth form college in Horsham in the late 1990s, but never joined my friends to watch the local club. Looking back, I wonder if that was my depression speaking: something told me I wouldn't enjoy it, despite me laughing at the chants that my classmates relayed to me from Queen Street. Secondly, I knew a little of Leatherhead's history, or at least their most famous match - their FA Cup fourth round match in January 1975, when they went 2-0 up at Leicester thanks to goals by Peter McGillicuddy and Chris Kelly, known as "the Leatherhead Lip" for his tendency to talk up the team, but tired in the second half and lost 3-2. Thirdly, it would allow another thing that I like about football in usual times, and that was the opportunity to see a new part of the country - I realised I could combine the match with a trip to Box Hill, feeling that spending time alone with nature would be a better way to spend my morning than alone at home, killing time before a game.

I took a train out of London for the first time since March (besides my recent trip to Horley), and was soon glad I had. It was a perfect day for a hike up the hill, and I was rewarded with a beautiful view from the summit, as well as the relaxing sights of the River Mole and the forest. As I stared out over Surrey, I wondered if my preference for old football - and especially that of the 1970s - over the contemporary was itself a symptom of depression. Some of my feelings are nostalgic, for sure: I love the rough tackles and the ramshackle terraces, but it's probably better for players and supporters that football is safer now. My aesthetic preference for muddy pitches runs counter to the fact that the standard is far higher now than fifty years ago, partly because of improvements to groundkeeping, but this is one example of how factors that made football more unpredictable have been weeded out in the quest to make it presentable and profitable.

 

Watching the Leatherhead vs. Leicester City footage, there is no advertising on the players' shirts, with just simple hoardings on the touchlines, rather than the logos for gambling companies or multinational corporations plastered all over today's ludicrously expensive kits that change every summer and the distracting electronic boards that assault the eye from every part of the ground. Shocks like the one Leatherhead so nearly achieved are rarer now, and the FA Cup has been devalued because bigger clubs prioritise the more lucrative Premier League and Champions League, which themselves turn up far fewer surprise winners than in the past due to the concentration of wealth and talent among a smaller number of sides. I don't think it's just depression that makes me feel like football has been hollowed out, and one of the most appealing parts of the Labour manifesto in 2019 was its focus on returning clubs to their communities, partly by dealing with exploitative ticket prices.

Having not visited a new town for a long time - probably not since that desperate December afternoon getting out the vote in Rye - I took a walk through Leatherhead. It was small, but had a few interesting features, notably Kingston House, where John Wesley preached his final sermon,and Cradlers House, dating back to the 14th century. One of the things getting to me most about the current situation is how few surprises it generates, with social circles limited to six people at a time, so with that said, seeing this brilliantly dramatic Brutalist pumping station near the ground was memorably unexpected.

On entering, I sat in the main stand and read the programme. The Tanners' glory days were in the 1970s - they made the FA Cup second round in 1975-76, 1976-77 and 1978-79, and the FA Trophy final in 1978. Fetcham Grove felt old-fashioned in a way I've rarely seen in England since the renovation and replacement of stadia after the Taylor Report, and it appealed to my nostalgic, melancholic side. (You can see the 1970s ground in this Super-8 footage of the FA Trophy semi-final first leg from 1978, shot from the main stand.) The regulars were glad to be back for Leatherhead's first competitive match of the season, making jokes together, and one of the coaching staff greeting two boys on the touchline with a smile. It was nice to be there, and it felt even better just after kick-off, when Tanners midfielder Misha Djemaili smashed in a 30-yard shot that would have graced any stadium.

From there the game settled down, with Leatherhead the better side but creating little. I began to feel distracted, constantly looking at my phone, unsure of what I wanted from it. On Twitter, I saw people fretting about the likelihood of another lockdown, updates from Norwich that provoked no feeling (despite an exciting-sounding 2-2 draw) and the online Labour conference, at which the party signalled their willingness to dump the transformative aspects of the 2019 manifesto in favour of ingratiating themselves with 'forces, family, flag'. (My friends were especially angry that Tom Watson, one of the most egregious wreckers of the Corbyn era and the one I came to despise the most, had taken up an advisory role with Betfair and Paddy Power; that reminded me that this time last year, I missed a Norwich match to go to The World Transformed, now unavoidably being held online when my comrades and I desperately need the joys of physical organising.)

Trying to keep my mind from wandering, I paid attention to the Horsham fans behind the goal. Despite having some prior connection with them, I couldn't feel they were mine as I have with Horley Town: I commuted from Horley to Horsham as a teenager, and still have several close friends from the town, but decided to stay with the home fans and cheer accordingly. I thought back to the jokey Horsham FC website that my friend Robin showed me in the computer room at Collyer's back in 1999, entitled 'Southwater Donkey Sanctuary' with profiles of the players, giving their nicknames and other details. They had a joke at the time that their right-back was schizophrenic, and fans would sing "There's only two Martin Lemprieres"; it's hard to imagine anyone doing that now, and I think it's for the best. The main remnant of the late 1990s was the Hornets' most popular song, "Give me lard in my heart, keep me Horsham", closing with "No surrender to the low fat spread" and hearing it again after twenty years genuinely gave me a cheer.

Horsham came back into the match in the second half, despite Leatherhead bringing on club legend Jerry Nnamani for his 400th appearance and hitting the post through striker Great Evans. Still, my mind drifted, as it often does during my worst depressive episodes; I was looking at my phone again when Horsham put in a cross and midfielder Jack Brivio headed in a well-deserved equaliser, and at full-time, a draw seemed like a fair result. I trundled back to Leatherhead station, satisfied in my solitude, glad that I'd dragged myself out of bed and out of London: I knew it wouldn't fix my problems, let alone those of the wider world, but I felt a good deal better for my jaunt to Box Hill - and to Fetcham Grove.