Set Pieces - Relegation Form

Author: P.O.S. / Date: Thursday 9 July 2009

In Limbo between seasons, we offer a slightly different topic. Chapter one, of life as seen by a Bolton fan....

 

A novel, loosely based on the experiences of a Bolton Wanderers fan.

Chapter One.

“Don’t go down there mate, they’ll cut your head off and show it on the internet,” I tell Tom as he considers going off down a narrow and forbidding looking side street; we’ve been joined by about half a dozen other Wanderers fans looking for a pub and a good few of them laugh at my comment, it boosts my confidence. My name is Jamie Denham, I’m 24 years old and I’ve never seen us win away from home. It’s the 15th of September 2007 and we are in the middle of Birmingham; an absolute tip of a place, the white girders on top of St. Andrews can be seen looming above the buildings we walk past but that’s the only vaguely modern looking thing in the vicinity, because everywhere else is a mess and the gangs hanging around street corners eyeing our white-shirted micro-invasion don’t help either. The sun is beating down on us, the last remnants of what’s been in truth a poor summer and now to help spoil the autumn, Bolton Wanderers Football Club is five games into the season with just three points to their name and second bottom in the league.

No matter though, because today is the turning point, the rest of September doesn’t look too difficult to take some points from, and then we can get on with turning into the brand new, effervescent, fresh, attacking side that Little Sammy Lee is building. We loved our time under Sam Allardyce where we became more than we ever thought we could be but we’re both moving on; Allardyce to Newcastle United, while we are looking more success in Europe; led by the class of Anelka, supported by the skill and pace of Diouf, Wilhelmsson and Braaten, the quality of Nolan and Campo and kept secure by a mix of defenders, the tough and experienced Meite and O’Brien blended with the promising youth of Cid and Michalik, backed up by one of the best goalkeepers in Jaaskelainen. Well, that was the plan anyway.

We finally find a pub about ten minutes away from the stadium and it suits the scene perfectly because it’s horrible, like a converted old terraced house with grime covered windows and this gloomy, blackened interior. We decide to drink outside on the pavement in the sun. It’s my first pint of lager for six days after a long and frustrating week of work and it goes down in a matter of minutes, a special sweet taste all of its own not like any other pint I’ll have again today or at all until the next time I go a while without drinking. The seal breaker.

We cross a road next to a supermarket then walk to the away end where I get frisked by a security guard in front of the turnstiles. But they leave Tom alone, maybe it’s my recently shorn haircut which my stepfather refers to as the “tennis ball” that marks me out as someone to pay attention to, I’m flattered.

I take back what I had thought earlier, St. Andrews is just as much of a dump as the neighbourhood that surrounds it, an old stadium dressed up to look modern. We walk down an alleyway past the turnstiles which is sectioned off from the Birmingham fans by tall sheets of battered corrugated metal which some of them are kicking and hitting on the other side, I’m sure I even hear one of them trying to get a chant of “zulu, zulu” going but he fails and Tom runs towards the barrier shouting “Sharon! Sharon!” in a pretty accurate Ozzy Osbourne accent which cheeses them off, even more so when I and a few others join in, I have to laugh. We move inside into a bleak interior under the stands which looks like a warehouse and I head straight for the bar while Tom places his customary and surely doomed wager on at the bookies. Stadium beer is gash at the best of times, even worse when served in floppy plastic pots with the awkward curved rims that often prompt me to spill half of it down my hand and clothes.

The teams come out, line-up and kick off with little fanfare and the home team is serenaded from three sides of the ground by their club anthem “Keep Right On to the End of the Road” proud to be back in the Premiership and making a fair fist of it too. Wanderers don’t exactly exert their authority over Birmingham and it’s not long before there’s hardly any noise coming out of our end other than complaints and hisses of derision. I spend most of the half scanning around the ground looking at their supporters and taking the mick out of them with Tom.

I turn my attention back to the match just as a cross goes into our box and is headed home past Jaaskelainen; I drop back into my seat as the roar goes up and watch their fans celebrate across the way from us. As much as I don’t like goals going in against us it is strangely exciting watching the mass of arms and heads bouncing about in the opposition end. It’s nearly half time when they score and literally as soon as the ball bounces into the net the seats in the Wanderers section begin emptying rapidly, me and Tom join the masses and head downstairs shaking our heads and cursing to each other. Birmingham had offered very little yet we’ve gone and fallen apart yet again as soon as they put a decent move together. Once we get downstairs to the bar though we are greeted with a scene of utter chaos.

No wonder our section had seemed half empty, it looks as if half of Bolton has piled into the bar area and begun chanting and dancing about. We duck and dodge our way to the bar queue then join in with the festivities ourselves; despite the match still being in progress outside no-one seems to care, as virtually every Bolton song I’ve ever heard gets a rousing rendition – anything from “We’re all going on a European Tour” to “Who needs Cantona when we’ve got David Lee”. There’s a massed bunch of lads in a tight group in front of the bar bouncing up and down at this point jumping up as high as possible singing their hearts out, then someone launches a half-full plastic pint pot over the top of them and virtually everyone else follows suit. It looks like the front few rows of a music festival, dozens upon dozens of plastic pint pots whizzing back and forward over the group covering the lot of them in flat lager. A couple of lads slip over in the mass of puddles and grime on the deck but are simply picked up to rejoin the action; now there’s just a wall of noise in the place, Tom has pogoed into the middle of everything and I start filming on my phone just in time for “Walking down the Manny Road” to get an airing.

Three stewards in yellow coats appear on the scene and for some reason grab one of us to try and take him out of the group but he’s dragged back away from them with ease as the trio of very worried looking staff are surrounded by people chanting “Who are ya?!...” in their direction and they back off away from the scene. We aren’t causing any trouble anyway, we’ve just had enough of the 'entertainment' on show out on the pitch so we’ve come inside to make our own. The half time whistle must have gone by now because this place is absolutely rammed full from back to front, and yet still the group is in full voice, bordered by people filming the spectacle on their phones. On and on it goes, straight through the break and into the second half because the bar is being closed and cleared yet there’s still a cluster of people springing about in the middle while me and Tom stand to the side taking turns to film and drink. The place is an absolute mess with empty and crushed plastic pots covering the floor like a carpet and a few despondent bar staff standing nearby looking down at their absolutely inadequate brooms and shovels.

I’ve got a faint feeling of elation flowing through me by the time I emerge back into the stands, I’ve never seen anything like that at football before and still there’s a few fans lingering downstairs chanting, refusing to watch the game. I look up at the scoreboard and it shows fifty-five minutes, we’ve been down there for over half an hour oblivious to the football and clearly we haven’t missed much. If Sammy Lee had given them a bollocking during the interval then there’s no evidence of it as we sit there through the rest of the half becoming gradually more and more deflated after the excitement of half time and depressed by our lack of fight on the pitch. I look over at Tom next to me and he keeps burying his head into his hands exhaling loudly, it makes me laugh because he’s exaggerating it a bit but he’s got a point. There’s a brief moment of hope as Braaten breaks and heads for goal, but brief is most definitely the word as he gets snuffed out by a Birmingham defender within seconds. I stand up and lash my arm out towards the players. An old chap next to me grabs my arm and chuckles, “Hey lad, have a swig of that it’ll take your mind of this shower.” Then he prods a small hip flask into me. I laugh and thank him, taking a sip of what turns out to be whiskey which burns a path down my throat like napalm and I hand it back.

We both sit back down and endure the final throes, they even nearly add a second which is the final straw for Tom as he gets up and heads for the exit without a word; I follow him and with a couple of minutes left there’s a mass exodus away from the seats, down the stairwells, past the still devastated bar area and out towards the waiting coaches. We aren’t the first onboard by the time we sit ourselves down and we swap fleeting comments about the performance with some of the other passengers but no-one seems to care enough to get into a debate. I stare out of the window disinterestedly and realise I am actually a bit drunk.



To be continued......

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