Thursday Jan 7, 2010
Check out a lambs.co.uk exclusive
The "Behind the away dugout" article from the programme for the postponed Kettering game on New Years Day
It's traditional at this time of year for columnists to serve up their predictions for the 12 months ahead, or their analysis of the 12 months just gone.
It's supposedly intended to give their readers something to argue about as they munch the last of their cold turkey sandwiches and stale mince pies, but anyone who's ever worked in the business knows that it's for a wholly different reason.
It's easy words for newspapers (or indeed, football club matchday programmes) which want early copy, printers who have early deadlines; everyone, except the hardworking journalist who usually has two, if not three, matches to cover over the festive season and has no second XI to field for the less-interesting games, has packed up for the Christmas holidays.
But apart from pinpointing the evening of May 21 2009 (Tamworth 1 Hinckley 0, securing the Blue Square North championship, in case you'd forgotten) as my TFC highlight of the year and predicting that Tamworth will stay in Blue Square Premier for next season, I'm not going to do that.
Rather, here's another reflection on why I love non-league football - something that watchers of the Premier League, with its desperate desire for instant success, its ruthless dismissal of managers behind their back after just a few months, will never understand.
Recently, I travelled down to London and had to go by train via Banbury, somewhere I haven't visited since Tamworth were regular visitors in our Southern League days in the late-1980s.
Banbury United who, to dig out a cliche, have had more ups and downs than a Blackpool roller-coaster, live next to Banbury railway station. Turn right off the main road before the station, follow the path down the side of the station car park and you come to what is now known as the Spencer Stadium. With its' corrugated iron stand roof, ancient floodlight towers and rutted car park, it is the archetypal non-league football ground.
It's been there since 1934 and the original changing rooms were old railway coaches, which were only removed in 1966. The club joined the Southern League in 1965 but by the late-1970s (stop me if you've heard this before...) its financial state was so dire that United were virtually bankrupt.
The main stand was attacked by vandals and there was so little money for repairs that it had to be condemned in 1985 and was demolished in 1990. In the meantime, though, loyal supporters boarded it up and painted on it a mural depicting fans standing in ‘the shed' complete with club scarves and replica shirts.
I visited more than once during those years and although I was unable to go inside the ground while I waited for my train earlier this month, I could still picture the old painted stand in my mind.
The club are in a far better position now, with a shiny new stand now and at the time of writing, sitting handily-placed in sixth position in the Premier Division of the Southern League.
Yet how that memory sums the indomitable never-say-die spirit of non-league fans, whether it be those blessed with over-excitable boards of directors or those, like Grays Athletic fans recently, who happily travel from one end of the country to the other, only to see a game called off at the last minute due to the weather.
I wish them all, including my loyal readers if I have any after the past four months, a very happy 2010.
