Wembley Stadium
Seeing as this blog is at serious risk of suggesting my entire cultural existence consists of music and books I thought it about time to add something else into the mix. Granted a football match hardly suggests much of an expansion of the palette, but from small acorns…
Did I mention that actually pretty much my entire cultural life over the past five years has been music, football and books? Oh how I long for the days of cinema once a week; restaurant once a week; theatre twice a year!
Anyway, to set the scene, I am Welsh and I support Wrexham. This is an act of such contrariness and so bewildering to most who call themselves football fans that it simply doesn’t compute and is generally followed at best by an assumption that it is my home town (it is not) or by a polite but disinterested query as to either which division they’re in or whether such and such is still their manager. Inevitably, such and such either never was or left a long time ago. The golden age as we like to call it now. The days of mid (league) table mediocrity as opposed to the current days of mid-BSP mediocrity.
For “football fans” read – “people who know nothing about football but do support a team that is either in the Premiership or ought to be because of their huge support”. The latter point is never, repeat never, seen as a suggestion that there are a lot of very stupid people about!
So, how does a Wrexham fan end up at a Cardiff City game? The answer, as ever in my case, is spontaneous stupidity!
I was on my way to Leicester for an eye appointment when the fatal text comes in. Friend in queue. Do I want a ticket or not?
After a quick query to establish that there was nothing available for the five year old (I figured he would complain about if excluded despite his last trip to a large stadium ending in tears and tonsillitis) I check back with base and am greeted with a reluctant “yes” you can go.
My own reluctance was minimal but it turns out that this was because I misread the text mentioning the number 22 as being the price and not the date! That tells you something about how much I perhaps think ought to be paid to see Cardiff City but also a little about my life and expectations as a Wrexham fan and a lot about why I was on a train to Leicester for a day of eye tests!
So, having foolishly said yes, and, having had my purchase confirmed I then set about acquiring a train ticket. A flight down was the immediate thought. Any immediate moral concerns about flying with BA, for whom my sister works, immediately allayed by there being no flights anyway as a strike was scheduled for that Saturday. Of course, by the time the train tickets had been purchased the strike had been delayed two days and… ho hum.
Oddly this was to be the second tine I’d seen Cardiff in a matter of weeks having taken up the kind offer of a free ticket when in Cardiff for, yes, you guessed, eye tests. A theme emerges!
On that first showing (against Sheffield United) I was not so pathetically grateful to be reminded of what actual football looked like – what takes place in the BSP is a cross between football and water boarding – that I could overlook their rather obvious flaws of only having two players in a midfield four and lacking in pace where it mattered.
Still, it wasn’t enough to put me off a trip to Wembley. I’d never been to the old one; couldn’t foresee the circumstances in which my son and I might end up there beyond looking out the window in the last five minutes of the train journey just before you arrive in Euston; quite fancied adding it to my relatively small list of stadiums attended (twenty seven i think since you ask) and could find just sufficient motivation in the fact that it would be a history making moment if a Welsh team made the Premier League and, if not, I had quite a soft spot for Blackpool and their rather endearing manager Ian Holloway.
It would also be quite nice to see Dave Jones back in the highest division as it happens but, truth be told, my sympathies probably did lie a little with the Seasiders as did the football fans instinct that certain scenarios have if not an inevitability then a romantic attraction that outweighs all logic.
Anyway… having travelled on far too many occasions from Manchester to Cardiff with an excess of people wearing red; swigging beer at half past nine in the morning and with no apparent clue as to how loud they were, I braced myself on a lovely Saturday morning in May for a quiet bus journey into Manchester totally expecting it to be the calm before a tangerine storm at Piccadilly Station. How wrong can you be? Whilst I heard several estimates that two thirds of Blackpool were in London they sure as hell weren’t on my route. Thank goodness for that. I spent a pleasant couple of hours listening to a podcast and wondering how it was that the rather loud young ladies opposite me could seem the most tangerine thing in the train carriage despite a family of four sitting diagonally opposite them all clad in Blackpool shirts!
Of course that all changed upon arrival at Euston. Suddenly the big match atmosphere hit and, if I hadn’t already bought and planned my journey from start to end, I could have easily figured out where next from the hordes (the correct term I believe) of blue and orange heading down into the tube station. At least that’s what I thought.
When I got off the tube to complete my journey overground to Wembley they had, er, all gone! A few minutes nervousness and lack of confidence set in until I glimpsed that stupid looking archway and, ah, here we are. Oh, just a little early. Two hours before kick off and lunch consumed; sun burning my eyes and my skin and every other bugger in blue or tangerine other than me.
Actually I love this. Whilst there was no greater feeling than seeing my own team lift a trophy in the Millennium Stadium the pre and indeed post match ritual is made a damn sight more pleasant through knowing that you’re neutral. One side could be utterly humiliated and I could make empathetic grunts and just get the hell out.
So, forty five minutes before the friends with the tickets arrive and time to amble around; soak up the atmosphere; take some photos but wait… Wembley has a very clear and effective external PA system i.e. a disembodied Estuary English voice repeating Orwellian messages at you every five, or was it ten, minutes. Did they really just say no rucksacks in the ground? You f••••••s! No-one told me that. I travelled down with an M&S lunch; bottled water; a magazine and a book: a fleecy top (I’m Welsh. It always rains. We just know!); a phone charger including a three pin plug and, yes, all in a rucksack.
A quick text to the ticket man. Hey, stop worrying. No, I don’t do that. I walk around the ground. Lots of people with very large flags; inflatables; stockings on their head and… two other people with rucksacks. Both look decidedly nervous as that PA announcer does his bit again. Oh well, what can I do?
Now, what’s that about the drinks? No bottles allowed in the ground? Fair enough. Water downed in one. Large bottle of water downed in one in fact. Hang on, no bins! Sigh! Still, another amble around the exterior of the stadium in order to kill time; find a toilet and admire the people with orange stockings on the their heads; the people with orange shirts that, in that lovely parochial manner beloved of only the truest football fans, manage to travel all the day down to London for their biggest game for years only to proclaim “F*** you Preston North End!”. Fantastic.
Still more time to bake in the sun having consumed all the water I had and attempting to read the admittedly fantastic value for money programme in sunlight more blinding than, er, a very bright thing.
When I am finally joined by the ticket holder and family of course rucksacks are no issue at all beyond a quick search and I am somewhat miffed to see bottles of water being emptied into plastic cups and promptly handed back to entrants. A little communication goes a long way and I have moved from neutral to slightly hostile as far as the new Wembley is concerned.
A beer quells this thought and upon first taking my seat in a virtually empty stadium it must be said all seems well with the world. The stadium itself is quite imposing once you’re inside and much less open than it appears on television. Given the shape of the roof I have no idea why they haven’t actually made it into a fully retracting roof but it’s a blazing hot sunny day so who cares. Still, I remain amazed at how anyone can build a so-called state of the art stadium that holds up to 90,000 people and yet they still manage to give you around the same leg room as I can get in what I still call with some affection the Yale Stand at Wrexham i.e. not enough for anyone over five foot tall!
Anyway, the stadium fills; the room diminishes and the tension rises. I sense it but I’m not part of it. There’s a part of me that’s disappointed with that and a part of me that’s relieved. Conversation ceases; jokes lessen and we’re off.
Having brought you this far I shan’t bore you with a full match report. There are plenty of those all over the net. Here’s one to give you a flavour.
Suffice to say, yes, the first half was a classic of its kind and, to be fair, the atmosphere was excellent. Contrary to the many match reports though I didn’t think then, and I maintain this view on reflection, that it was actually that great. Eventful yes, but that isn’t always the same as great. The first half I saw was dominated for around 20 to 25 minutes by a Blackpool team attacking with confidence and dominating for one spell that was as good as you’ll see anywhere. I appreciate this view isn’t going to be accepted by those who kindly purchased my ticket or indeed many others but, in reality, Cardiff taking the lead, or in fact scoring at all in a five goal first half, was entirely against the run of play, albeit that it made for a certain atmosphere of incredulity along the lines of “what the hell’s going to happen next!”.
I have seen the second half portrayed almost unanimously as more tense but just as open with Cardiff hitting the woodwork twice. So unanimous was that view it undoubtedly won’t be popular to contradict it but as I saw it the fifth goal right before half time completely destroyed the atmosphere. If the sides had come out level in the second half then the atmosphere would have been maintained and the second half might possibly have lived up to the first. Unfortunately, what turned out to be the winning goal took the wind out of the sails of the Cardiff fans who then had 15 minutes to contemplate defeat. The second half resumed to near silence and that was maintained comparatively speaking for pretty much all of the second half albeit with small pockets of resistance. From a neutral perspective it was little wonder the match was riven with tension and endless mistakes in the second half.
To be fair Cardiff didn’t really turn up and the final 3-2 win for Blackpool was both inevitable and, sad to say, just (woodwork notwithstanding).
Of course the big disadvantage of being a neutral travelling solo is that there was little opportunity to celebrate or commiserate at the final whistle. Not even a chance to see Blackpool lift the meaningless trophy. Was there one? I never did find out. No, for us it was a quick silent trudge outside; some muttered thanks and then we all go our separate ways. Cardiff fans to Cardiff. Neutral back oop North via an earlier train than expected (I had built in the possibility of extra time and penalties) and a surprisingly successful attempt to watch all of the Champions League Final on my iPhone on 3G. Still managed to miss the bloody goal though!
In doing so I had time to reflect upon the fact that no Virgin train really has wi-fi does it? Even if, as I did, you upgrade to First Class for £15 and the opportunity to sit just slightly further away from pissed middle aged women who think of themselves as better than all the plebs in the rest of the train whilst concluding what looks like a day of being pissed and shopping with getting more pissed and annoying people. Money doesn’t make you an oaf but it certainly affords you the opportunity to be a more uninhibited and offensive oaf than one generally finds in the rest of a train. I’ve seen trains full of Scottish football fans still drunk after another defeat and with no clue as to how they were on a train or indeed where they were going. They were still less offensive than these six!
There is also time to watch more football; contemplate just how much the sunburn is going to hurt overnight; feel sorry for Cardiff who potentially face a bleak financial future, and, read my programme properly. It’s a tiring journey at the end of a very long day but, overall, worthwhile I think. Easier for me as a neutral to go home and enjoy it for what it was, a great day out, than for those fans who invested so much more than their money and their time. It’s damn hard being a football fan on occasions. For me, this wasn’t one of them, but it was a good day out and, as a Welsh man, I can only hope Cardiff City come again.
