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29 August 2008
That call that no man can avoid forever
CHRIS LAKEY, EDP SPORT
It's the call we dread. The one that summons offspring to the family home to face a difficult question that we always knew would have to be answered one day.
We all have to endure it, few are exempt.
“Hello, it's mum here. Would you mind clearing a few of your things out of the loft? Only we're insulating it again soon and we can't move for your stuff.”
It's the emphasis on “your things, your stuff” that hits home hard, particularly, if I may say, for men of a certain age. Men who remember the jumpers for goalposts days when football was played by men wearing boots, not slippers; when they actually tried to floor an opponent on purpose, rather than watch them fall to the floor without any apparent assistance; the days when matches in midwinter were sometimes able to go ahead thanks to either an awful lot of straw being laid to prevent frost or agreement on a simple question: “Should we play on snow or not”.
What's this got to do with my mum's loft? It's the evidence. Life as a football fan is all there in the matchday programmes that we stash away, keep for another season in a convenient corner (for reference purposes) and then, around a year after, put in the loft.
This goes on for some time until real life takes over: work, women - probably not much else in truth - tends to interfere with the collecting of your proof that you were there the day you beat Reading 7-1 and you swear that guy from Wisbech was playing.
“I'll just pop up the loft and have a look.”
Eventually you cut the ties and leave home - and leave the programmes behind. Until you get the call. It might be after a few years, it might be after a decade or two. Or three. It depends on a lot of factors - did you move into a flat? Were you with someone or on your own? Big house, small house, shared, squatted - it goes on. But, one day, you will get the call.
The return is anticipated with a nervous tension: will the school reports be brought up again? “Can't spell, can't write, spouts some rubbish at times.” That's not the school report, that's an email I received a week ago, but there was a familiar ring to it.
Fortunately, parents often want to keep school reports; they appear to have the same attraction as old school photographs and your old exercise books. I don't care if I never see any of them again, so no worries on that score.
My Holy Grail was hidden somewhere behind an old suitcase (why are there ALWAYS lots of suitcases in lofts?), the box containing the jigsaw puzzles, another with some old board games and toys (Kerplunk, Mousetrap and Scalextric sort of summing up the school days) and lots and lots of old LPs (or as my 10-year-old nephew William asked, “are they what CDs used to be?”).
Open your box of programmes up at your peril, and certainly with a flask of tea and a plate of sandwiches close at hand: it's about to steal many hours of your life.
It's imperative you attempt you attempt to remember something from each game. Not easy when you pick up Cambridge Utd v Carlisle from 1982. What sort of memories are those two teams going to inspire? Or the Texaco Cup six-match programme for '74-75 - a tournament featuring West Brom, Birmingham, Peterborough and Norwich?
It isn't going to happen.
Then you pick up Posh v Ipswich, FA Cup, 1972. Two-nil to Ipswich, I believe. Thoroughly exciting.
The Arsenal matches from '78 and '79 when you nipped down after a day at college, had bacon butties at your mate's house in Finsbury Park and got a good vantage point on the old North Bank in good time.
Bizarrely, there were quite a few Norwich and Manchester United programmes from the '70s - I have no idea why, because I had never been to Norwich until I was in my early 20s, and visiting Old Trafford was, at the age of 15, simply a dream.
The call to the loft presents many questions as you match the development of your life from teen to adult through your footballing experiences. The programmes tell a story. England match programmes, for instance, are rare in the collection because no one liked the national football team much in the '70s, and living in Wisbech meant getting to Wembley was such an arduous task that it just wasn't worth it. Then there was French homework.
Each match is a reminder of friends you were with - your mates, the blokes you met every week from somewhere out in darkest Stamford direction but never knew what their real names were. And then, when the sequence is broken, when programmes appear to have gone missing, when there are gaps when you have no evidence for three, four, five matches, you realise you're identifying girlfriends you've loved and left. Or been dumped by.
And that's when your collection dwindles to the point where it's forgotten. Marriage, living overseas, work. Commitments that change your life forever.
And then you get the call - and suddenly it's as vidid as the day you stuck four past Palace; when Cantona scored a corker; when Arsenal still played at Highbury and when Chelsea were just average.
Anyone want to buy a 77 Cup final programme?
HOW CITY NEED A FINISHER LIKE EARNSHAW
No surprise that Robert Earnshaw is scoring goals for fun at Nottingham Forest - anyone who saw him play for Norwich will know that there's gold in his boots.
Earnie was superb for City in the Championship and hadn't been too shabby for West Brom in the top flight either - it's just that Bryan Robson didn't play him often enough. And if you are played in fits and starts it isn't going to happen.
Earnshaw scored two goals for a really rubbish Derby side last season, but was never really given a decent run in the team.
He's gone to a club where he's wanted; he'll be played regularly and he will score goals. Few things are more certain in the division this season.
How Glenn Roeder could do with someone like Earnshaw right now. Getting a target man in his squad will help because to anyone who's seen City this season, it stands out like a sore thumb that the team is short of an option, and that isn't helping the strikers.
Roeder made an interesting comment after City's 2-2 draw at Cardiff, where the point was secured by two goals by Arturo Lupoli, the second of which was a superb header. It was, he said, a dying art.
If he can get a good target man with the ability to head the ball he will make up a shortfall that has plagued the City team possibly since Iwan Roberts left. There are players who head the ball in the opposition penalty area, but there aren't too many in the squad who do it well.
Target men don't grow on trees, and they therefore aren't cheap. Which is why it was unfortunate that Rosenborg sport director Erik Hoftun said this week that while the timing was wrong to sell Steffen Iversen, the bid from Carrow Road was actually short of what they'd want anyway.
Check that - it was Mr Hoftun who said City hadn't offered enough. It wasn't a guess, speculation or imaginative make-believe on anyone else's part (which now saves me sending an email reply to the bloke who claimed I was taking a punt to stir up trouble).
City might need to go that extra yard this time - Messrs Cureton, Lupoli and Koroma need help.
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