A bold prediction, a bolder win

In the wake of an underwhelming draw against Colchester – a useful point to keep us within sight of the playoffs, but a little disappointing nonetheless – my mind of course went back to last Saturday’s still-unbelievable performance against Chelsea. I've thought about it many times in the course of this week, rewatching the goals countless times both for the thrill and to reassure myself it really happened. But it did. And I was there!

When I think back to last Saturday there’s one particular image that sticks in my mind. It isn’t Halliday’s wonderful goal that took us into the lead, or even Yeates’s stunning added-time clincher; it isn’t the sea of claret and amber jumping up and down in the stands (though this was both humbling and spine-tingling); it isn’t even Parkinson, standing with his arms raised in the middle of the pitch in front of ecstatic fans after the final whistle had blown, perhaps not truly believing himself what had just happened. It was this: as the Chelsea fans made a quick exit, shocked and bruised, and the crowds began to thin, some in the home stands remained, and you suddenly noticed they were fumbling in pockets for concealed City scarfs and unzipping fleeces to reveal City home strips. In amongst the sea of blue seats, all around the ground, were specks of claret and amber, City fans who had begged, bought and borrowed tickets so that they could be at this once-in-a-decade fixture. It felt for a moment like the final scene of Spartacus, as though each fan, from his hiding place, was now proudly proclaiming “I am City!” “I am City!”

Oh, how tortuous it must have been to stay quiet throughout those dazzling ninety minutes. From my own, safe seat amidst the vast crowd of 6000 Bantams, we had gone crazy from the very first corner (for this, back at the beginning of the match, had felt like an achievement) to the glorious sound of the final whistle. When the first goal went in we were overjoyed, for it was something we had thought we could only hope for: Chelsea were not going to do a Swansea on us; whatever happened next we could hold our heads high. Unlike many teams that have visited Stamford Bridge, we were not going to leave goal-less. Here we were, a League 1 side, giving, for a few minutes, at least, the Premiership leaders a bit of work to do. We bounced and sang and screamed and waved and looked forward to the TV highlights. And then the unexpected happened. This time, we went wild. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the stand had collapsed under our weight as we leapt up and down. Strangers hugged one another, and we laughed at the ridiculousness of it all. There was going to be a moment, however brief, when we could say we were drawing with Chelsea.

And then, the unimaginable happened. We took the lead. My heart raced so much it was hurting, and I momentarily worried I might have a heart attack. Suddenly we were beating Chelsea. I thought of the Arsenal match, but this was better – that had been a single goal, then an agonizing equaliser, a nailbiting period of extra time then penalties. But this was Chelsea; this was their home ground; and we were actually ahead. As the huge ground buzzed with increasingly frenetic chanting and ribbing of a now obviously fuming Mourinho (“Can we play you/can we play you/can we play you every week?”) I found myself doing something I’m pretty sure is a) futile and b) wrong, but I did it anyway – I prayed. Raised a Catholic, the line “Ask and it shall be given unto you” fleeted across my mind. Is that blasphemy, I wondered? Was it really a bad thing to just long for us to keep the lead?

The teams take to the pitch at the start of the game; we hope we can save face with at least one goal.

Real anguish spread through the away crowd when seven minutes of added time was announced. Surely they would equalise now? Surely this team, almost entirely unbeaten at home, would never let this happen? Surely a replay at Valley Parade was the best we could hope for? The chanting reached frenzied levels as we all desperately willed the time away, waiting for the magic whistle to seal a mind-boggling win too unexpected to be the stuff of dreams, but, in the end, it wasn’t the whistle that sealed it, but another goal. And then, finally, the whistle blew, and, for me at least, we had reached a new level beyond that even of Arsenal and Villa and that wonderful season that took us twice to Wembley. Here, in a ground I had never had a need to visit before, we had just beaten a team that Swansea, the team that beat us so emphatically in the League Cup, had fallen to a week earlier. For a moment, in statistical terms, we were elevated to a status alongside the likes of Barcelona. Behind me, an older gentleman in a flat cap who looked so delightfully Yorkshire hugged me. He had real tears streaming down his cheeks.

The 6000 fans and the many more scattered so movingly around the ground stayed for a good half hour afterwards as the players paid tribute to their astounding support. Later that evening, in my adopted hometown (I am a reluctant Londoner) I had the bizarre experience of being stopped several times in the street and on the tube to be embraced or have my hand shaken by complete strangers who wished to thank me for the fact we had just beaten the nemesis that is Chelsea. Arsenal and Tottenham fans and even a man of Polish origin who was just a casual onlooker wanted to talk to us about the game and buy us drinks.

I admit that in all the excitement I lost my sense of decorum somewhat: the day before I had been interviewed for the City website outside a deserted and freezing Stamford Bridge and, when asked for the score, I had said “Well, we beat Arsenal, so I’m going to say one-nil to us.” The interviewer can be heard sniggering slightly as he replies “A bold prediction there”, and at the time I thought "thank heavens I didn't say 3-2", which was the result that for some reason had popped into my head. In the small hours, falling into bed, I sent my last tweet of the night: “Is 4-2 bold enough for you? Suck on that!!!”

Once again, the amazing passion and dedication of the fans has been richly rewarded; once again we are giant killers; once again I am so incredibly proud of my hometown and my club. We are, now and always, the best team in the world: we are Bradford City.

Fans applaud the third goal in disbelief as City take the lead.

The Lonely Life of the League 2 Football Supporter

With Bradford City comfortably (in the end) remaining in League 1 to fight another season, I thought I'd finally post this, which recently reached the final of the National Poetry Slam. It sounds better when read aloud, particularly the fifth and ninth verses!

The Lonely Life of a League Two Football Supporter

Saturday. Another faceless town
Of pound shops and graffiti. Yet again
Supporters in their hundreds have come down
To brave the air of menace, and the rain.

Claret and amber-clad they left at dawn
With Ginsters to sustain them on their way,
Longing for victory over rivals sworn,
Clinging to memories of glory days.

Four defeats in a row now, and one draw,
Yet something tells them this time they will win it…
If they can only maybe try to score,
Avoiding own goals in the ninetieth minute.

Clustered on concrete terraces they stand
Anticipating triumph and success,
Rubbing together icy, wind-chapped hands,
Expectant of three points, and nothing less.

The home announcer, genuinely sincere,
Welcomes the Visitors who’ve travelled down
From darkest Yorkshire. In response you hear
A loud, lone cry of “WANKER!!” from the crowd.

First up the home team’s mascot ambles by –
A man dressed as an unconvincing bee
Or giant bird with haunted, cartoon eyes,
Dancing to Queen enthusiastically

Then suddenly it’s starting, as the teams
Run on, each one accompanied by cheers,
Pretending this match is the stuff of dreams –
In a flat-pack stadium straight out of IKEA.

Then… ninety uneventful minutes pass,
With several near misses and one goal
That’s quickly ruled offside, until at last,
In extra time, a penalty! The whole

Place hushes (all except a single cry
Of “Wanker!” from the terraces again
I don’t know who it was aimed at, or why).
The striker, self-assured, prepares, and then…

Hits the post. The final whistle sounds.
The hangdog players slowly trudge away.
Stoic spectators shuffle from the ground,
Their sights already set on who they’ll play

Next week. A single point is better than
Nothing, but ultimately not enough
To reach the play-offs, and fulfil the plan
Of reaching League One – where things will be tough.

Yes, oh that it has come to this – the dream
We strive for is the Third Division. We
Twelve years ago a Premiership Team
Fantasize about Brentford and Bury.

Next Saturday a home game could expand
Our chances of that mouth-watering prize.
But until then we’ve got still got a game in hand
With Bristol – who last time ran out of pies.

A Match To Forget

We’re Bradford City and we have the best fans in football. Remember? All the papers said so. I have believed this for the first few games of this season. The support has been overwhelming; we have packed out away stand after away stand, and the noise and atmosphere at Valley Parade has been unbelievable.

On Saturday, though, things were different. Much has already been written about it, accusations made on Facebook and insults thrown on Twitter. Well, I was there, on the far right hand side of the away stand next to the Crewe fans, and for the first time in a couple of years, I felt uncomfortable, then sad, and, finally, even a little afraid. It all started wonderfully. Arriving early at the station we wondered where one might go for a pre-match pint. As we walked past the Royal Hotel a raucous chorus of “Nahki Wells, Nahki Wells, NAHKI NAHKI WE-ELLS” spilled out. We went in to find the pub jammed with sweaty City fans, all getting along, and a (slightly bemused?) DJ playing “I Just Can’t Get Enough”, “Stephen Darby Baby” and various other City “classics”. I was even chatted up at the bar by a handsome chap who sung “You Can Leave Your Hat On” at me as I took my jumper off.

So we arrived at the ground in high spirits, high on camaraderie and feeling quite welcome in this bleak, damp town.

Minutes in, things were very different. Our stand was packed out and getting fuller by the minute. There wasn’t a lot of room, and by the time the match had started people were standing in the aisles, unable to find spare seats. To our right was a far less busy Crewe stand, whose occupants seemed intent on causing trouble. In particular, one group of lads (they must have been in their mid to late teens) began the usual juvenile goading, throwing out the usual unimaginative taunts, liberally scattered with unnecessary obscenities. The trouble was, a not insignificant group around us decided to give as good as it got. So ensued a rather depressing scenario of youths shouting: “you’re all f***ing c****” at a group of men in their 40s who shouted ““you’re all f***ing c****” back. Eventually, though, Crewe crossed the line. Unable to believe it, I strained to hear if I’d imagined that I’d just heard “Bradford City’s Burning Down”, but already several of our fans were tearing towards them in pure range, two of them making it over the barrier onto the pitch before being tackled to the ground by the stewards. More people went up, possibly to try and mediate, and the body language suggested the conversation was more than a little heated. The game, underwhelming, continued really as a backdrop to all of this.

The police and stewards seemingly did nothing, bar threatening to throw out one of the City fans who had tried to get over to the Crewe stand. I chatted to him later while we were in the scrum to get out to the toilets at half time. He was apologising to one of the community support officers, who seemed nice but out of her depth. She’d “had a word” with them, she said, telling us they were too young to know about the fire. I suggested they should show them the video footage and it might make them think twice. She said that sadly it probably wouldn’t. Either way, though, they had been allowed to stay. The guy explained his cousin had died in the fire, and that he had just lost it when he’d heard the chant. I’m not surprised.

The second half was, if anything, even worse. It felt as though the little gang of Crewe fans responsible for the chant were vitriolic at still being there. As for our own fans, a small group around me seemed far more intent on shouting abuse and causing trouble than watching the match, and the whole experience was depressing and intimidating. I have been in football crowds since I was a kid so I’m used to some of the colourful language that gets used at a missed chance or a stupid decision by a linesman, but I have never heard the “c” word used so often in so short a space of time. I was one of three women surrounded by what can only be described as a herd of men – two baying mobs of half wits hurling abuse at one another while a game of football continued unnoticed and placid stewards chatted over cups of tea. I was aware of groups around my trying to lighten the mood with chants like “Does your mother know you’re here?” directed at the youth in the other stand, but they were drowned out. At one point 30-or-so young men from the other stand aimed a chant directly at the two young girls in front of me: “Get your tits out/get your tits out/GET YOUR TITS OUT FOR THE LADS”, closely followed by “She’s got Chlamydia...” I usually rather enjoy the novelty of being a woman at football – we’re still enough a minority that there aren’t queues for the toilets, enough of a novelty that men tend to be quite chivalrous (whilst still maintaining a casual chauvinism) yet accepted enough that we can still swear with the best of them and not be frowned upon. And yet on Saturday I felt I didn’t belong. I felt almost threatened. I saw Crewe fans get away with the most horrific and hateful behaviour then watched as many of my own returned to the school playground in retaliation, and I felt sad. At the end of an underwhelming (if in places unlucky) 0-0 draw my heart sank as people around me shouted senseless insults at players who last year took us twice to Wembley then up into a higher league. I stood stationary as we all tried to get out of the single exit at the back of the stand for the long trudge home, pushed up against each others’ armpits in a mesh of people that was tedious but, had it been any worse, would have been frightening.

I am so very proud to be a City fan, so proud of what we’ve achieved, so proud that we take more fans to away games than some clubs can lure to home fixtures. But Saturday is an experience I’d like to forget. I’m heartened that Crewe has said it will take steps to identify the culprits who so cruelly and viciously made fun of the fire and in doing so laughed at the dead – that is surely the very definition of hate speech. I hope they will be banned and I hope someone sits them down and explains to them the gravity of what they have done and the amount of hurt they have caused. But I was dismayed, too, by the behaviour of many of those around me, which slipped far below the standards for which we were justifiably praised so much last year. We are so much better than that: we are Bradford City, and we have the best fans in the world. We don't deserve to lose that accolade. CTID.

We Are Going Up!

It's difficult to write about last weekend. It's difficult because a chest infection, piggybacked by the gloom that comes with being ill, has left me staring at photos of my ecstatic self and wondering how on earth I could ever experience such joyous emotion. But even for the well and sane it's probably difficult because, after years in the wilderness, words simply cannot convey quite what this season means to Bradford City supporters, and this was a joy that, in my wildest dreams, I didn't expect to experience quite so soon. After all, we'd already had an astonishing season, and to expect promotion to cap it all off seemed to border on greedy.

The crowds that turned out to cheer on the open top bus tour said it all; the thousands that travelled down to London for the second time in a season despite the cost said it all; the ecstatic chants as half the stadium emptied itself of Northampton Town fans said it all: "We're Super City and we're going UP!" (And in parenthesis, every supporter added under his breath "FINALLY.")

I don't need to preach to the converted about the past few years, suffice to say that this time last year we'd just breathed a sigh of relief at having stayed in the bottom tier of the football league (along, incidentally, with this year's other finalists, Northampton.) This time last year that fight with Crawley and bleak defeat after bleak defeat cast a shawdow over our season. City fans were praised for their loyalty, because at the end of last season, loyalty was pretty much all we had.

City in garish pink away strip, ahead of a defeat by struggling Barnet (sadly now relegated) at gloomy Underhill

Fast-forward 12 months and suddenly we were not only at Wembley, but we were there for the second time that year, significantly richer and with League one painfully within our grasp. And we hadn't half gone for drama along the way.

A week before our last visit to Wembley I stood on a freezing platform at Norbury following a gloomy and unexpected 2-0 loss at Wimbledon. This was the sort of away game to which we'd become accustomed over the years: a walk down a residential road to the away "entrance", a side gate that led into what looked like a field, a track leading eventally to a shed with a corrugated iron roof where fans clustered on an old-fashioned terrace, devoid of any sort of bar or indeed toilets that belonged in the 21st century. And we'd lost 2-0 and played badly. One grumpy fan voiced his frustrations vociforously, liberally peppered with swearwords: "I don't care what anybody says. This ****ing cup has ruined our ****ing season." Nobody said anything, so he continued, angry with the world at large, "it's ****ing disgraceful, we were ****ing shite. We deserve to be in this ****ing league. This season has all been about that ****ing cup." Everyone seemed to politely ignore him, and few I spoke to would have agreed - the cup run was stunning, whatever happened the next weekend - but inside me, at least, a little bit of me thought "what a shame it had to be one or the other."

Away entrance, AFC Wimbledon

Well, it turned out it didn't. I was wrong, and I happily - joyfully - admit to my misplaced pessimism, because we did it. Admittedly we did it by the skin of our teeth, with 1996 fresh in the minds of those of us ancient enough to remember it, but, when it mattered, we did it, and we did it in style. After the awful, tear-inducing defeat against (the excellent) Swansea, our players seemed to emerge battered and bruised and faltering. The chat forums muttered, then gnashed their teeth and bemoaned the end of the season. Every draw and defeat led to cries of "well, that's it then", the occasional victory to murmurings of "maybe, just maybe," that were quickly shot down by cries of "nope, that's just wishful thinking", then... we won at York. We won well. In the last few games of the season we produced a run of stunning wins whilst those around us crucially stumbled. On the second to last match, where a win one way or the other would decide whether Bradford City and Exeter would secure the final playoff place, we beat Burton; Exeter lost. We were through to the playoffs.

So. Plain sailing from now on? Of course not. This was Bradford City, the team that came back in an epic second leg semi-final playoff in 1996 to eventally win the final; the team that had to beat Liverpool to stay in the Premiership...and did; the team that took Arsenal to penalties and won. And so, true to form, we were the team that let Burton walk all over us in the first playoff, while fans watched through their fingers, hearts physically dropping as they tried to control tears. As the Southern Supporters gathered in the pub for the second leg it seemed merely a formality: an act of loyalty, raising a toast to our beloved club that had given us the best season for over a decade, taken us to Wembley, and would surely finally leave League 2 behind this time next season.

And then...

...we were brilliant. We played more tightly as a team than at any time since the second Villa match. We thrived on set pieces and lightning speed and clever passes. Wells was brilliant - twice - and my personal favourite James Hanson scored an outstanding and crucial goal as cries of "He used to work at the Co-Op!" echoed round the stadium from the exhuberant but vastly ounumbered City fans. We were ecstatic. In the pub, we went crazy, as a nice Latvian family smiled confused smiles and tried to eat their lunch. We'd done it. Again. We were going to Wembley.

We never expected to be here, but we have now been here, twice. City fan after City fan posted variations on "City fan walks into a bar at Wembley. Barman says "The usual, sir?"" Actually, walking from Wembley Park tube we found that most bars had been set aside for Northampton Fans. We eventally settled on the ironically named "Quality Inn", a pre-fab 1960s monstrosity that would have looked drab in communist Russia, but that still charged an eye-watering £4 a pint (welcome to London, folks). On this occasion, I, at least, found that Wembley Way wasn't buzzing in the way it had been in the cup final. City fans were cautious. We were on the edge. We had got this far by the skin of our teeth and a defeat now would be so agonising, so sad, so absolutely, truly awful, even though we knew that really this season was already better than we could ever have hoped for. So we took our seats, we wrung our hands, and we held our breath. Some of us (sorry Dad, I'm a bad Catholic) prayed.

Pre-match nerves - not quite daring to dream...

And then...

We were amazing. We annihilated Northampton, a side which, despite what some of the arrogant comments on the various City fan pages would have us believe, had finished higher than we had, not through pure luck, but through merit. But we were wonderful. We played as though this were a mere training exercise at which we were well-polished, and the opposition might as well not have been there. The ball flicked effortlessly across the pitch, leaving no opportunities to Northampton's players to intercept it, and into the goal once, twice, then three times in the first 30 minutes. It was as though all those unexpected, stupendous victories had merged into one: here were the players that had delivered us from Watford, Wigan, Arsenal, Villa, then Burton, then finally here, when it mattered the most, making up for our last Wembley appearance before the whistle even signalled the end of the first half. At half time we were 3-0 up, and I danced with Lenny in Club Wembley and bought an overpriced hot dog in celebration. My friend and ally throughout the season (THANK YOU, ADAM), a diehard Hull supporter, said we didn't deserve to be in League 2 because we were playing like a Championship side.

Lovely Lenny. And Beer

And we continued to do this in the second half, defending like demons, though without any further goals, because, nice though 5-0 would have been, we didn't need them. We had done it. The Bradford half of the stadium erupted, and I kissed my dad and hugged my friend, and I wept.

I wept for reasons that don't make sense if you're not a football fan. I wept for reasons far beyond football that I've tried to express on my blog before, but probably not quite managed to do so eloquently enough that they seem sincere, though I promise you they are. So many things were tied up in that victory. So many emotions built up over so many years spilled out. My wonderful team, that I had followed for so long, my club, with its long history, both joyful and tragic, tied up so inseperably with my beautiful and besmirched city, was finally becoming something again. Your team is everything. Your team is much more than the 90 minute game played on the pitch, it is a bonding experience between generations, part of the family, part of who you are and where you've come from. Your team is a part of you, a part so deep that when times are hard, you hurt. You physically ache.

Thirteen years ago, riding high, we never expected to be down here, floundering season after season in League 2; at the end of the last season we were relieved to be here, clinging on. At the start of this season we were realistic, hoping for but not expecting a playoff place. Now, at the end of the season, yet again, we never expected to be here, at Wembley, twice, and now here, in League One. Finally.

Richer, stronger, prouder, we are Bradford City. And the only way is up, baby! Thank you, Bantams, Phil Parkinson, fellow fans, for what has been, truly, the greatest season of my life...so far. CTID xxxxx


Post-match celebration, with empty Northampton seats behind

11th May 1985

On this day in 1985 56 Bradford City fans who went to a football match and never came home. May they rest in peace.

11th May 1985

On Saturdays they came and went
From Cullingworth and Heckmondwike.
After defeat or victory
A pint or two at the Corn Dolly
Would set the world to rights.

On Saturdays they flooded in
To Midland Road or to the Kop
And were united for two hours
In unremitting Yorkshire showers
Whether they won or lost.

That Saturday they went with dads
And brothers, sisters, partners, friends.
Young parents took their little lads,
Proudly claret and amber clad,
To applaud the season’s end

That Saturday supporters cheered
As onto the pitch their heroes came,
And even when they saw the smoke
They thought that it was one big joke...
Until they saw the flames.

That Saturday supporters screamed
As fire encroached at breakneck speed.
They ran to find their exits blocked -
The gates were chained and the doors were locked
And they died there in their seats.

That Saturday they came and went
Via houses that they didn’t know
Queuing to use the phone to say
“It’s alright, Love. I got away.
I will be coming home.”

That Saturday at the BRI
The lucky ones patiently queued
With blistered hands fixed to their hair –
The falling asphalt stuck them there
Acting like superglue

That Saturday we sat at home
Listening to John Helm’s commentary.
And in his voice the fear grew
And in that moment, then, we knew
This was a tragedy

On Monday kids returned to school
And sat down next to empty chairs
Remembering Friday’s kickabout –
The last of its kind – as they filed out
To the special assembly and prayers

A silence falls throughout the crowd
The final Saturday each year,
As we sit secure in the Carlsberg Stand
Remembering those fallen fans
And wipe away our tears.

(From "Love and Death and That", 2012)

The Day We Went To Wembley

My earliest memory of real football-induced despair came in the wake of Southgate’s heart-wrenching missed penalty in 1996. There must have been earlier moments closer to home, but that’s the one I remember – that huge pitch, and Southgate cutting a desolate figure, the physical sinking of my entire body when I realised it was all over, that we had come so close only to miss out by a whisker. Years later a friend of mine reassured me he felt the same, and couldn’t see how anyone had the energy to fight and riot in the streets after that. The whole experience was utterly draining.

Last Sunday was a bit like that, and yet also very different.

The build-up had been immense. Wembley did not just seem out of reach for a team like us – except perhaps for play-offs or the likes of the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy – it was simply inconceivable. There was Wigan, then, unbelievebly, Arsenal, then a two-leg that we assumed would be the end of a great run...then there was Hanson's goal. And then there was Wembley. So followed the scramble for tickets, growing media coverage to which we are unaccustomed as the day grew nearer, a blessing from the Dalai Lama, travel plans and texts and phone calls and then the Saturday build-up – pub crawling the well-heeled West End streets, complete with Bantams regalia, as we tried to make the time go quicker. London was suddenly full of Bradford supporters as fans gradually filtered in on coaches and trains and cars bedecked with claret and amber. Crossing the road in Marble Arch a taxi driver hooted to us and shouted “good luck” out of the window; an elderly man in the pub confided that he was an Arsenal fan, but that he wanted us to win “so we can feel less bad about you beating us”; in a restaurant that evening a family of three generations down from Swansea avidly discussed their hopes for the next day and we shared our experiences of what has, for both our teams, been a rocky ten years. We were so thrilled to be there and agreed this was the perfect final: this was beyond our wildest dreams.

And then, finally, it was Sunday. At each tube stop more and more City supporters crammed into the train, outnumbering and already outsinging the Swansea fans who were keeping a low profile in their less eye-catching colours. When we arrived, and came through the station barriers we looked ahead to the Wembley arch and then down to Wembley Way, which was a teeming mass of claret and amber. My dad, rarely speechless, could manage to say only “bloody hell!”

Everything before the match was excellent. Wembley is a slick operation – very little queuing for security, toilets or beer – the only thing with any significant wait was buying a programme, while the stallholder pointlessly moved merchandise around the counter, seemingly oblivious to the huge line in front of him. Eventually, beers drunk and looking like Michelin men with 5 layers to keep out the (almost unbearable) cold, we went out into the huge stadium. Again we were both speechless and starstruck – Wembley Stadium is both stunning and enormous, and the lower and upper tiers on our side were packed with City colours. When the announcer asked us to welcome the first of the finalists, Bradford City, and our team came out, the noise was immense. I cried. I was already very proud of my club, and also of my city, and now, the eyes of the world’s media were on us, and they would be proud of us too.

Unfortunately, I don’t think they would have been proud of the performance itself that day. If the whole cup run had been reliant on the standard of play exhibited in this much-coveted final match we wouldn’t have got past the first round. My dad and I muttered in surprise when the team was announced – Curtis Good, who in my opinion has done nothing at all all season (and who we’ve now sent back to Newcastle so he can do nothing for them) was in the line-up, which looked like it was going for the defensive, along with stalwarts Wells and Hanson and other scorers from previous legs, but no Reid, no Ravenhill – in my opinion, not enough speed.

And it all went downhill from there. Width of a Post’s Jason Mckeown, as always, summed it up better than I can when he said that we wanted this cup win so badly, but knew this was unlikely, so at the very least wanted to “have a go”. But we didn’t have a go. We did nothing. We looked outplayed to an embarrassing degree, barely touching the ball, and when we did seeming to panic and quickly give it back to the opposition, as if apologetic that we’d taken it from them in the first place. We looked a bit like sixth formers who suddenly found themselves up against Manchester United. We crumbled.

But the most devastating moment for me was not so much the humiliation of those 94 minutes (which was pretty crushing) but that fact that Duke’s red card not only happened at all, but happened in the 56th minute. Seconds before this we had risen to our feet and begun a minute’s applause in memory of those killed in the fire, those fans who were not there and whose absence was felt perhaps more acutely then than on normal match days, even by people like myself to young to remember it, but knowing many who did. I wasn’t really concentrating on what was happening on the pitch, and suddenly realised some altercation was going on as Duke, to his great credit, walked away without disputing anything. An angry spectator behind us bellowed “Sit DOWN” to the rest of us; tutting and confusion abounded. Wells, who had sadly made little contribution to the game, was substituted with McLaughlin, who probably never expected to make his Wembley debut that day. My heart ached for Duke, who must have felt terrible despite knowing, I hope, that were it not for his outstanding contribution over the last few months we wouldn’t be there at all. Meanwhile, my mum watched at home and confirmed later that no mention at all was made of the fire or why we were clapping on the TV coverage. For the second time that day I cried.

Things went from bad to very bad, with more goals and still nothing even resembling attempts from us until the 80th minute. It felt as though we were not trying. We looked massively outplayed, but, worse, we looked resigned to this. In my dad’s words, it was a cowardly performance. We seemed to shrug and say “well, it was good while it lasted” – we didn’t try to attack and our defence was lacking to a fatal degree. In a league game all this would be absolutely unforgivable. Against this backdrop, the fans’ behaviour, in the later stage of the match particularly, seems even more spectacular. Half way through the second half we stood, as one. We waved our flags like crazy and we sang and chanted and shouted and cheered at the tops of our voices until after the final whistle had blown. The vast majority of fans stayed to watch the team collect their medals before leaving, not in a crowd of despair but as a still-partying mass – a friend of mine said they seemed so joyful that one of the London Underground staff had to ask who had won, because it wasn’t evident from looking at us.

So in many ways it was an immense experience, but a painful one nonetheless. After the highs of beating Arsenal, then Aston Villa, then holding them enough in that final leg to push us on to Wembley against all our expectations, to lose 5-0 so decidedly was a genuine shock and a big disappointment. We had come to expect the unexpected, and even the sensible, logical parts of our minds were telling ourselves to at least expect a goal or two, and to leave dignified with our heads held high as the inevitable yet valiant losers. There wasn’t anything valiant, really, about that last game, and the next day there were, inevitably, sneering remarks about how it proved we didn't deserve to be there. But this isn't true: we did. And we deserved better on that last day. At the same time I am exceptionally proud that the press overwhelmingly hailed our fans as the best in Britain, praising our own sensational performance in contrast to that of the players we were there to support. As a kid growing up in the 80s and 90s, to see football fans commended is almost as big an achievement as those games that got us there – football supporters, a group of people vilified in the 80s, often treated with suspicion and even contempt by the media, the police and the government, were that day held up as a shining example of sportsmanship, of loyalty and of solidarity. For that we should be immensely proud. That aspect alone has done wonders, I think, for the city, for the game, and has, I hope, laid to rest some of the ghosts of the past.

We’d do well to remember this now that normality is back with a vengeance, reality hitting with a big bump at the realisation that we’re twelfth, and that a draw with the likes of Dagenham and Redbridge simply won’t do. The chat forums are already buzzing with criticisms and discontent. On the League 2 terraces, listening to some of the obscenities shouted at Parkinson on Saturday (despite the eventual 2-0 victory) at York, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Sunday at Wembley never happened.

I for one am immensely proud of my club and my city and, not least, of Phil Parkinson, who I would defend to the hilt as his future seemingly hangs in the balance. To see him go would not only be a mistake, it would be shameful. Last year that fight with Crawley left us facing the real possibility of relegation if points were docked. Today we are a few points off the play-offs, and although we are unlikely to make it we certainly don’t have relegation concerns on our hands, and what's more we have millions of pounds to play with for a real promotion push next season. And, for the first time in my life, I’ve been to Wembley, and I went there not to watch England or Manchester United, but to watch my home team. Bradford City, Phil Parkinson, thank you for (so far) the best season of my life: I salute you.

Annual Barnet Pilgrimage

This will probably only be of interest to about 5 of you, 2 of whom will probably disagree with me. For the rest of you, there's a picture of a man dressed as a giant bee at the end.

A man with a walking stick held the door open for us as we entered the Red Lion pub in Barnet. “You’ll get some good southern hospitality in here,” he said, beaming proudly. I didn’t have the heart to tell him we’d only come from Camden.

I love Barnet. It’s my nearest fixture and I go every year. It’s one of the most welcoming clubs I visit, with friendly staff, proper cups of tea, and a lively if slightly trippy mascot, the inimitable, giant-eyed Super Bee Mr Bumble. We always bring an impressive crowd that regularly out-sings the home fans, and we usually leave with three points. But today was, sadly, one of my less enjoyable trips to Underhill.

Given that you're only likely to have got this far down the page if you're a City fan I'll dispense with the scoreline and say that, rather than a match report or my usual observations of vaguely humorous occurrences and oddities, I’d like to mount a bit of a defence for City here, because by the second half there was the inevitable abuse from the fans and the various social media pages were buzzing with criticisms and accusations. I’m sure many will disagree with this analysis, and I’m sure there are things I’ve missed, but still I make no apology. As is perhaps fairly obvious from the final result, City did not play at their best, but they were by no means hopeless, either, and those who were not there discredit themselves in slamming judgement so readily. Early on, my friend and I were discussing how polished we looked, passing seamlessly, gelling as a team, seizing chances and keeping possession. From the start it looked as though City would dominate – in only the second minute Hanson (inexplicably singled out for blame once again by many) made an attempt to score. It went wide, but it seemed to bode well. Sure enough, Darby, Jones and Hanson all took shots within minutes of each other. None was really in any danger of going in, but at least they were trying. Where there were inarguably mistakes and misjudged chances, and the loss of 3 points is of course a real blow, the stats themselves do not suggest we were markedly the poorer side.

This may sound silly, but I remember a couple of years ago bemoaning what had become City’s tedious style. We seemed to be constantly playing for draws, defending and not attacking, and sometimes not even defending that well. We never took any risks. We were both boring and ineffective – dull to watch and low down the league. Today the shots were not going in and fans were understandably frustrated, but players were constantly trying to score, and often from well outside the box. A couple of years ago they simply wouldn’t have tried at all - I remember games when the stats showed maybe one or two attempts on target. It would only have taken a small error of judgement on Barnet’s side and we could easily have been level, or even in the lead. It also does a great disservice to Barnet’s defence to suggest that our own strikers were somehow letting us down. Graham Stack made a couple of great saves, and others greatly limited our opportunities to score from closer in.

In the second half, things went downhill. You could almost feel the disillusion in the air. You felt that perhaps City had given up, whereas Barnet must have had one heck of a pep talk in the dressing room. Spurred on, perhaps, by their first goal, their second didn’t really come as a surprise. City carelessly seemed to pass the ball to the wrong team – or, more often, kick it hopefully to nowhere-in-particular – on a few occasions, and our defence seemed lacklustre. Wells has been criticised, and I agree he seemed to be having a bad day. Duke too was perhaps disappointing, but again, to blame Duke alone (“Duke is a terrible keeper” – how short are your memories??) is doing both a disservice to Barnet and letting the rest of our defence off the hook. After a promising first few minutes only Darby really stood out for me today – perhaps because of where I was standing – as being full of energy and outrunning Barnet. As the match wore on I felt that, had it been a film, it would have been the perfect example of pathetic fallacy – it gradually got darker and noticably colder, until some City fans started to bail out, others got vociforously angry, and the remainder simply looked crestfallen.

So yes, I agree that 2-0 is almost heart-wrenchingly disappointing, but let’s not forget the context: we have been spoilt, and our expectations raised, by some absolutely stunning performance against the likes of Watford and, of course, Arsenal. We are painfully but achievably close to an automatic promotion spot. Conversely, the squad must be exhausted, having been plagued by illness and injury and played two games most weeks recently rather than one. As our expectation goes up, their ability to meet it understandably goes down. As Barnet begins its inevitable annual phoenix-like ascent from the ashes we’ve got another tough week ahead with the Villa game looming. City look as though they are badly in need of a rest, perhaps an injection of new life but, most importantly, a bit of faith. Good luck for next week, chaps, and CTID.

Wow. Wow. Wow.

It was the fixture dreams are made of: Arsenal. We haven't seen the likes of this since we were in the Premier League, and in those days we were fighting a constant battle to stay up, with potential financial ruin soon knocking at our door. What followed is all too well-known to every City fan - relegation, then again, then again; the constant threat of crippling financial problems; wilderness years being beaten over and over by the likes of Accrington Stanley and Dagenham; in-fighting, ugly backroom battles and even an on-the-pitch brawl that could have cost us dearly.

And then we beat Wigan.

And then we drew Arsenal.

...

And then - We. Beat. Arsenal.

This hasn't sunk in, and I don't think it ever will. Several writers have given their take on this on the marvellous Width of a Post far better than I could, but I'll try, briefly, to give you my own. Firstly I would, of course, have loved to go up to Valley Parade, but living in London this proved too dfficult: evening matches mean at least a day off work - an afternoon to get there and a morning to get back - and at this time of year it just wasn't practical. Well, I told myself, there's something exciting about watching your team live on the telly. It doesn't happen too often to "teams like us". I persuaded my local, the King and Queen (a fabulous proper London boozer serving proper beer and that deserves a great big plug, not least for the pain I think I inflicted on the ears of its regulars on Tuesday night) to show it, and they were happy to, the landlord being a West Ham fan with no desire for the Gunners to do well. I called in a favour from my mate from Hull, who I've watched a couple of times recently, gathered together a Daggers mate and an Everton mate, a reluctant husband and a non-plussed brother-in-law and, lastly, my dad, who had been ordered in no uncertain terms to come and watch it with me rather than inflicting the experience on my mother (who has been known to go to matches, but tends to take her knitting along.)

That day I awoke and was immediately excited, the way kids are when they awake on Christmas morning and immediately reach for the stocking. We made it onto Radio 4 - a predictable little piece implying we were plucky underdogs, but wasn't it exciting for the club? Mark Lawn spoke briefly, and well, about our huge fanbase, commenting that our season tickets were cheap and showing the club (I thought) in a really good light. My excitement grew during the day until my boss finally suggested I just leave early, and we passed the time eating excellent burgers in Byron and comparing score predictions. We arrived at the pub in ebullient moods, convinced our team would put on a great show, that we would lose maybe 2-0, or even 2-1 if we were lucky; we would not be shown up, and it would be a great night.

And it was... because in the 16th minute, Thompson scored!

I can't quite describe the feeling at that moment, though it was quite unreal - I remember leaping up onto the seat and squealing, unaware that (as I was in a London pub) nobody except my assembled motley crew was really joining in. From that moment, my hands were shaking and I couldn't stop them. I simply couldn't believe this was happening. Nor could I believe that, for the rest of the first half, they failed even to equalize. I have seen City play very well on many occasions, but this was spectacular. Our defence was almost faultless; Duke was a star; at the other end Hanson and Wells made going 2-0 up look like a real possibility. We were beating Arsenal. And suddenly, from being a fun evening where I could feel proud and patriotic about my club, it most definitely became about winning - as time ticked away and we got further and further into the second half, we all realised that losing now would be devastating. Losing now would actually hurt. The equalizer, when it came, nearly made me weep - with only two minutes left, a part of me thought they just didn't deserve it! I think my hands were clasped in prayer throughout the entirety of extra time, assuming a heart-breaking, last-minute defeat was inevitable. But it didn't happen.

Then penalties.

We're good at penalties, but they are without a doubt the most stressful thing for a football fan to watch. I still remember Gareth Southgate missing in 1996. I remember feeling totally dejected, utterly bereft.

COME ON CITY!!!

I have no idea if I wound up the rest of the pub, because I shut out everything around me. I remember holding my friend's hand very tightly (sorry, Adam!) and being glad I didn't have a heart condition as I went through unadulterated joy followed by crushing disappointment, then heart-leaping joy again as both teams made those last few moments as agonising as possible. My dad asked later if I'd noticed that at this point most of the pub seemed to be on my side, but I could hear nothing but my own heart beating, see nothing but the screen. And then...

We beat Arsenal.

We. Beat. Arsenal.

For a moment I almost couldn't breathe. All the pent-up tension fell away and I was almost light-headed. I leapt at my friend (um, sorry again), throwing my arms and legs around him so he lifted me into the air. The one bloke in the pub with an Arsenal shirt on glared at me. I thought I was going to burst into tears. My dad, a Yorkshireman not easily parted from his money, was already at the bar buying champagne.

Because we. Beat. Arsenal.

I barely slept that night. I awoke at 3am and actually checked the BBC website to make sure it had really happened. The next day, to my irritation, most headlines and reams of twitter feeds berated Wenger and focussed on how shameful it was to lose to Bradford City, you know, that League 2 team? God bless Wenger for not saying that, but praising our defence in particular. We played well. Arsenal put out a good team - their combined wage bill that night was around £1m; ours was just £7,000. Even better, we'd drawn the biggest crowd in over 50 years, and the upcoming fixtures are set to settle our debts. We also set a new record for penalty shoot-outs - we have won the last nine, the longest uninterrupted run in the history of English football. The following day, buying a pizza in ICCO, a young man who it turned out was an Arsenal fan pointed to my scarf and said "Well done. You guys were just really good."

I've supported Bradford through good times and occasional terrific times, and more recently through very, very bad times. Words cannot sum up my emotions on Tuesday night, so prone to hyperbole are we over lesser things. But I watched my dad as he grinned and poured champagne for everyone around him - the dad who introduced me to this beautiful game, who has stood with me in pouring rain, in icy winds, on cold stone terraces and in shiny new stands in the north, south, east and west of England, cheering on my lovely, lovely Bantams even when all seemed lost, sometimes leaping with delight, sometimes crying with disappointment. He looked deliriously happy, and so was I. My beloved team, and with it my beloved city, could hold its head up high, and for once everyone knew who we were for all the right reasons. Bradford City are back on the map, and, I hope, this is the start of great, great things.

Because we. Beat. Arsenal.

Cities Til I Die

There is nothing, and I mean NOTHING, more enjoyable than live football. Sure, there's the short-lived thrill-cum-body-jolting terror that you get from riding the latest implausibly high/sheer-dropping rollercoaster, the fuzzy pleasure of chilled out, chatty night with close friends, the shivers down your spine brought on by watching your favourite band at a live gig or a great film at the IMAX. But for the perfect combination of cameraderie, of hopes raised then dashed, of joy, pain and suspense, live football has it all.

I've tried and failed to put this across to an old friend, who is more of a rugby man who has recently developed a mild obession with American football (a sport which another of my friends described as "a truly American sport, where grown men dress up as cars and crash into each other") but for whom the appeal of "soccer" remains a mystery. He thinks it's too slow, that the frequency of goals is too limited to create excitement. I think he probably thinks football fans are all yobs, too, but is too polite (or wise, perhaps) to suggest this to me.

I think he's missing out, but the law of sod would ensure that, were I ever to take him along, it would be to a dour 0-0 draw in some mouth-watering fixture against team from a town he'd never heard of. It would no doubt rain, and they'd probably run out of pies.

In fact, the infrequency of goals is one of the very reasons a match can be so tantalising. A small mistake can make or break a match: just ask Robert Green. 1-0 is a notoriously dangerous position for a team to be in - I've seen many a team lose from being 1-0 up. A single goal can mean 3 points. A single goal against Liverpool kept us in the Premier League all those years ago. And it may seem hard to believe, but one of the best displays of football I've ever seen was watching Bradford City hold Swindon to a goal-less draw - Swindon went up at the end of that season. 0-0 was an achievement.

Yesterday was a little surreal for me. I went to Watford to support City - very much mirroring my last trip there almost a year ago, not least because it was freezing cold. But this time it wasn't Bradford City, but Hull City, in a trip that formed Part 2 of a mate's birthday - a mate who is an avid Hull fan, fellow ale drinker and all round ace bloke. The outing proved something of a headf***. There I was standing amidst a crowd of Northerners swathed in amber singing "I'm City Til I Die" having to remind myself that it was a different City, whilst still dearly willing them to do well. Much like Bradford, Hull's supporters filled the stands and made a heck of a lot more noise than the Watford fans, who for the most part sat sedately looking, at best, non-plussed, rarely rising to their feet and only showing a hint of emotion in the form of mild annoyance in the second half - I can't even remember why now. Even when Watford finally scored - and scored unexpectedly - they exhibited merely satisfaction and - as my companion put it - applauded politely. It was as if they'd intended to go to the theatre for a spot of Beckett, or something equally uneventful, and taken a wrong turning somewhere around Vicarage Road. I remember this from last year, when I thought perhaps they were just being respectful to their flailing League 2 opponents as they scored their fourth goal and kept largely quiet, while a hoard of Bradford fans regaled them with a tuneful rendition of "Four- Oooooone and you still don't sing..." But today was no different. The uninspiring surroundings doing nothing to lift their mood Watford's mascot - a hornet that looked more like an emaciated panda - started banging a drum, presumably to stir up some sort of passion, or at the very least interest. Rather than having the desired effect, this was a gift to the Hull fans, now 1-0 up, who led a rousing chorus of "If you can't bang a woman bang a drum" (the tune has been in my head ever since.)

Concerned at the ease with which I was shouting "Come on City" and meaning it (after all, I've done it all my life) I turned to the BBC website to see that not only were the Other City drawing against ten men, we had had 20 - yes, 20 - shots at goal and not netted a single one. Consequently, I missed Hull's second, brilliant goal as I was too busy ogling in disbelief at my iphone screen. It was therefore a great relief when Bradford finally won, after several more futile attempts, at the eleventh hour, not least because I would have felt pangs of disloyalty had they lost while I cheered on someone else's team with a genuine intensity and desire that they win.

And this, to me, is what live football was all about. For the fairly long period in which Hull were a shaky 1-0 up and victory was by no means certain I found myself clasping my hands every time the ball went anywhere near the vicinity of either goal, saying a sort of reflex-action prayer (Hello, Catholic roots) that it would/wouldn't go in. My friend's unadulterated joy when it did - twice - was worth every penny of the (somewhat overpriced) ticket. In the second half when I was willing on two Cities at once I actually jumped in my seat when I saw we'd finally beaten Torquay (a club about which I have mixed feelings as a result of past experiences.)
Football is a shared experience. It brings people together. I regret that I don't go more often (though a trip to watch Scunthorpe at Leighton Orient is on the cards for next week - I know how to live.) I had an awesome day on Saturday, and my friend's constant thanks for my accompanying him were unnecessary. Well done, Hull, and thank you for a lovely day. And Bradford... Tuesday is looming...

Watford's uninspiring stadium

Handbags at Dusk

I'm a bit slow here in commenting in what has been described in the various media as a "terrible brawl", "unbelievable scenes" and "Bradford's night of shame", but I'll give it a go anyway. I listened - slightly incredulously, it must be said - to the unfolding, ugly events on Tuesday following yet another disheartening if somewhat inevitable draw. The following morning I awoke feeling metaphorically as battered and bruised as Claude Davis and Andrew Davies as I realised we'd made it onto the Today Programme, but for all the wrong reasons.

If you've not seen what happened on Tuesday night (and you actually care, or you're one of the people that finds it eyebrow-raisingly amusing, as I think the Today presenters did), you can see it here. The gist of it seemed to be that Crawley "started it", and our various players leapt in - heroically or stupidly - to defend their teammates. Certainly it looks that way, and I know from watching them (and friends who support teams in the same league concur)that they are not a "nice" team. And it wasn't a "nice" game, either - dislikable and thuggish or not, how could it be with one team vying from promotion and the other fighting for its very survival? But the problem is, it doesn't really matter who "started it". This is a professional (just about) football match, and these are grown-up adults (theoretically). It isn't the Year Six playground or the carpark of the Crown and Anchor after last orders. Throwing punches and generally having a great big barney just isn't on, and more to the point, it has potentially catastrophic consequences. For a start, we are now three players down: Davies is out for five matches and Luke Oliver ("Big Luke Oliver" to Pulse listeners, as though there's a Little Luke Oliver somewhere, sulking that he never gets a mention) and Jon McLaughlin are banned for the next 3. This is potentially disasterous: McLaughlin (though our record would suggest otherwise) has proved a saviour at times - many of our narrow victories and skin-of-the-teeth draws were thanks to his dexterity, and his absence could prove fatal; Oliver, too, has been an asset this year and at the very least brings the benefit of height and well-placed headers to the side. I'm not massively bothered about Davies, which is just as well as rumour has it he won't be seen in a City shirt again.

Worse, though, are the further penalties that could come our way. A financial punishment would be very difficult for a club already in dire straits to bear, and one is likely - Newcastle and Sunderland were fined £40,000 and £20,000 respectably for much less earlier this year, and the FA are going to want to look consistent. But a points deduction would be far more deadly. Bradford City is current teetering a dangerous 5 points from the bottom of the table. Any points deduction would make relegation almost inevitable. Davies, Oliver and McLaughlin never for a moment stopped to think, as they leapt into the fray, fists flying, on Tuesday night, that they could be inadvertantly signing the club's death warrant.

But this isn't just about the club. I am not just being sentimental when I say that, at the thought of us dropping in disgrace from the football league, potentially never to be seen again, my childhood flashes before my eyes, adulthood hot on its heels. I have worn a City shirt for as long as I can remember; my family has always supported them. My cousin was present on that terrible day when fire took the lives of 56 people, including some of his friends, and I have run charity races for the Burns Unit in their memory. I have cheered and screamed til I was hoarse. I have actually cried in frustration at times. I have watched us rise to the dreamy heights of the Premiership, have watched us play the likes of Chelsea and, of course, beat the likes of Liverpool, waving my "Bye Bye Wombles" poster and experiencing an unfettered joy that those who don't follow a team cannot understand. I have watched the heartbreaking slide back down again, season by season, league by league, waiting for a Phoenix-like resurrection that never came.

I have watched the footage from Tuesday night, and begun to prematurely mourn. This is not just about a club. This is about a city, too. Years ago, when we dropped to League One, my dad said that it was sad that a city the size of Bradford did not have even a Championship team. The thought of us possibly not having a professional team at all seems inconceivable. My city has had a hard time, unfairly so. It is associated with riots and racism and the EDL, unemployment and poverty. It recetly came bottom in a study on wellbeing, and in 2010 was "voted" Britain's worst tourist city, being branded as "dangerous, ugly and boring." This is what people hear day in, day out: Bill Bryson once said our role in life was to "make everywhere else look better." If you say you're from Bradford, there is often an awkward pause, followed by the inevitable and slightly pleading "I hear they do good curries?"

I simply do not know this side of my city. I live in London now, and I have lived in many places, and Bradford is warm-hearted, friendly, concerned. People talk to you in shops. People smile at you. We are a city with a wealth of culture and history: the Brontes were born in Bradford, not in Haworth; we can boast Priestly and Hockney; we have a nationally acclaimed film festival, and our Media Museum was one of the most visited attractions outside of London last year; Titus Salt brought philanthropy to a whole new level at a time when factory workers in comparable towns were living in appalling squalor. Oh and while we're on the subject, yes, as it happens, we DO also have awesome curries.

Soon, though, we may not have a football team. The Bradford Bulls might not last much longer either.

So although you may laugh at this and other football tantrums, although you may swamp the chat forums with LOLs, OMGs and WTFs, once all the analysis is over, fines have been paid and bottoms well and truly smacked, I have just two words for the players who were involved and those they have left holding the fort: Grow up! And focus. Bradford needs you - Bradford sure as hell needs all the help it can get right now: after all, it just elected George Galloway as MP. So please don't let me down.

Be More British: Support a Rubbish Team

This was originally written for a blog for international students, but I fear it will be too long, so am putting it here to make myself feel better:

It’s a well-known fact that we Brits are obsessed with football (which is interesting, given that, when it comes to our performances in recent international tournaments, we actually don’t seem to be very good at it.) I have travelled extensively and on more than one occasion, on saying I come from England, I have been met with smiles and enthusiastic cries of “Manchester United!” Many people across the world have adopted a UK team as their own – in my experience usually Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool or Chelsea.
If you really want to blend in with the locals, then, you may find yourself embracing a team you can then vaguely follow – perhaps one of the above, probably London-based if you’re studying here. But if you really want to assimilate then may I suggest a bolder move: support a rubbish team.

Every year at our International Orientation I extol the virtues of my beloved Bradford City to my (bemused) students. I start by explaining that we – a club still riding high on the back of our FA cup victory in 1911 – are in League 2, and they smile politely, nodding enthusiastically and thinking: League 2. Hmm. Presumably that’s the second division, so you’re not far off the top; that sounds pretty good. I then explain that we have a Premiership, then a Championship, then League One, then League Two. I watch them count, then realise that this means my team is in fact in Division Four, and so probably not that good after all. I then tell them that we are skulking in the bottom half of that table, and as such are at risk of dropping out of the league altogether, at which point their expressions can only be described as pity.

For many Brits, Saturday afternoon means only one thing: football. Across the country, men and women of all ages pack out football grounds, and most of them do not support Manchester United or Arsenal. You may think you’ve felt elation after yet another 3-0 win, but you won’t have experienced the euphoria that comes with a last-minute extra-time goal resulting in three points after an extended run of dismal losses. You may think that you will dazzle with your knowledge of John Terry’s misdemeanours and Chelsea’s seemingly constant search for a new manager, but you will win a place in more British hearts if you too have shared the pain of a long, dejected train journey home following two hours standing in the rain in, say, Rotherham, ending in a 1-0 defeat. Your friends may have been to Liverpool, noted for the Beatles and its vibrant history, or Manchester, with its museums, nightlife and impressive pop back catalogue, but support a team like mine and you could find yourself in such glamorous locations as Torquay, the home of Fawlty Towers, Burton, noted for being where Marmite is produced, or Crawley, famous for...um… being quite near Gatwick airport. You could wow your fellow classmates with tales of your trips to Swindon and Southend, Accrington and Aldershot. Instead of clubs who regale themselves with tough nicknames like the Lions (Millwall) or the Tigers (Hull City), designed presumably to intimidate their opponents, you’ll be playing teams that are perfectly happy to be known as the Shrimps (Morecambe) or the Cobblers (Northampton), only effective against those with a phobia of small marine life or shoemakers. My own team are the Bantams: a bantam is a small chicken.

Much as I would love to inspire you to join me and become ardent Bradford City supporters, this is probably a little impractical, not to say expensive, if you’re London-based (I speak from experience.) Fortuitously, though, there are several London clubs floundering in the same division as us who would be thrilled by your support. To start you off and help you decide which one might be for you, here are a few facts:

Barnet: based in North London and known somewhat unimaginatively as the Bees, their mascot is called Mr Bumble, who appears at home games as a man in a giant and slightly creepy bee costume. Their current ground (though not for much longer…) is called Underhill, and is on a slope – when my team was losing at the end of the first half a few years ago I heard someone wryly say “it’ll sort out in the second half: we’ll be playing downhill.”

Dagenham and Redbridge: The result of a relatively recent merger between two local teams, my best friend rather unencouragingly says of the “Daggers”, his team: “this is proper football: people get hurt.” Dagenham unexpectedly went up to the first division last year after winning a play-off against Rotherham, and promptly came down again at the end of the season after losing most of their games. They are now near the bottom of League Two, which means they are below us, despite beating us in their last game.

AFC Wimbledon: You may have heard of Wimbledon, but possibly not this Wimbledon. For reasons best known to those involved in the decision, but a mystery to everyone else, the club relocated to Milton Keynes in 2002, a town almost 60 miles away in a completely different county. Unsurprisingly, their fans were not thrilled about this, what with being largely based in Wimbledon and not Buckinghamshire. So they founded a new club and pinched the name (the club that had moved became the MK Dons) and, 10 years on, they are back in the football league. And, um, currently doing better than we are...

So, I hope that has inspired you to seek out a more authentic – and far cheaper (usually £15-£25 on the gate) – football experience. Be warned, though, football supporters can take it all very seriously: when one of our fans asked on a chat forum for advice as to whether he should attend a match on Valentine’s Day or take his wife out instead, another simply replied: “Mate: you can always change your wife, but you can’t change your team.”

Defeat at the Hands of Bristol's Pirate Kings

"Proper Cornish" fare in Proper Bristol

Almost a week ago now I faithfully promised two friends and fellow City fans that, in their absence at the Bristol Rovers game, I would post a match report on here. I didn't, partly because life got in the way, and partly because actually the performance was more than a little lacklustre, with none of the heroics we saw at Swindon early in the season, and none of the flare that increased our confidence so much before Christmas.

The game, at the somewhat underwhelming Memorial Stadium on the edge of Bristol, was a test for even the hardest of City fans. Despite bright sunshine the biting wind swept through the seated area, leaving even those of us with the most Northern genes too numb with cold even to shiver, and the terrace was only marginally better. Unprepared for the 500-odd visitors, the queue for the snack bar lasted for the entirety of half time, and by the time you finally got to the counter they'd run out of pies (I have no evidence that Mark Lawn was at the front of the queue, either.) The one benefit of being a woman at football, of course, is that there is never a queue for the toilets, but here there was no hot water either, nor any paper.

Comfort aside, the activity on the pitch did little to raise the mood, either. A Rovers goal in the 6th minute seemed to signal that they had started as they meant to go on, and City looked a combination of desperate and ill-prepared. A partly unfamiliar squad can't have helped, with some bigger names having left in the previous weeks, and with Syers back after a long absence from injury then suspension, they just didn't seem to gel. There was none of the seamless passing that looked so hopeful earlier on in the season, little risk-taking, and the players seemed to be largely relying on good luck, which was notable by its absence when both Atkinson then Fagan made sterling efforts to score, but without success.

The second half opened much like the first, with a second Bristol Rovers goal two minutes in, after which all seemed to be lost. But whatever they'd been told, or whatever rocket had been put up their arses in the dressing room at half time, had clearly had an impact: we started to attack more as well as defend; suddenly players had others to pass to, rather than kicking the ball into a general scrum and hoping for the best; Kyle Reid came on and added a flash of brilliance from that moment on. Then, in the 65th minute, Kozluk was controversially sent off for a second offence. With only ten men, you would almost forgive them for giving up, but this blow was almost instantly followed by a fantastic Syers goal, reminding us all why we'd missed him so badly. From that point, we positively sparkled. An equalizer looked almost certain, with Reid running everyone ragged, and two successive attempts at goal from Hanson. We felt sure that we would do to Bristol Rovers what Morcambe and then Burton had so cruelly done to us.

Perhaps that's why I felt such crushing disappointment when the whistle blew and this hadn't happened. If the second half was anything to go by we should be feeling a new wave of optimism, but the fact is that as a result of that game we dropped down to 20th in the league, still perilously close to relegation and an increasingly unattainable distance from the play-offs. Even the normal exhuberance and passion of the City fans present was notably muted, and mutterings of discontent on the forums and an progressively bleak atmosphere, tinged with the violent negativity and viciousness that the likes of Boy From Brazil so beautifully tried to counteract, makes this one of the most depressing seasons I can remember. The excitement of early cup wins is becoming a distant memory, and my City experience is more and more one of overwhelming disenchantment.

I was amused, then, by this bit of light relief: a group of Bristol fans inexplicably dressed as reindeer and looking puzzlingly bleak as they left the ground, given they'd just earned three points. Not all the loonies have been locked up yet.

The Best Cake in the World...Ever!

Of all the cakes you will see throughout your lifetime, I'm pretty confident I can guarantee you will never see one as fine as this. The friend who made it for me wanted to combine the two things I love, namely Space Invaders and Bradford City FC. I'm not sure what this says about me, though looking back at recent blog posts I can't deny that she got it spot on. I'm particularly impressed that she managed to get the shades of claret and amber so perfect.

Girl Writes About Football Again

I've not blogged about football for a long time. Admittedly this is probably something of a relief to most of you, but the truth is that, after several years languishing at the bottom of the football league, with the genuine prospect of dropping out of it altogether a constant threat, I've lost the ability to try and make such posts funny. To a non-City fan there probably are endless areas for potential humour: when Ian Holloway resigned recently, a friend of mine suggested we might like to employ him, since we hadn't had a new manager in over three weeks. Instead though we hung on to one Phil Parkinson, of whom another friend and Hull fan (thus in a position to comment on his appointment) remarked "Don't worry, maybe he does well for teams whose names start with the first three letters of the alphabet. Except Charlton."

For the first few weeks, the various negative sentiments expressed in newspaper articles and social networking fansites seemed well-founded: Parkinson favours dull football. The team that very nearly beat Leeds in their Carling Cup draw (we were winning for a while) and came out with 2 goals and several more attempts to show for it, followed up with a huge 4-2 defeat against Barnet, slunk back into defensive play only after his appointment, with a run of draws and losses against a series of mediocre teams, and only a smattering of goals to show for them. This culminated in a loss against Hereford - one of the lowest-scoring teams in the division for several years - not as the result of a fluke, or a mistake, or a bad referee decision (which, to be fair, can go some way to explain Macclesfield), but conceding not one but two goals and scoring not a single one ourselves. On top of this, our top scorer from last season - David Syers - was out with an injury and not due back for a couple of months.

And then, yesteray, we went to Swindon. I wasn't expecting a lot to come out of this. I was prepared for the long, despondent train journey home in gloomy silence, while my husband told me it was "only a game", the slating of James "He Used To Work At The Co-op" Hanson on the Facebook group afterwards, no matter how much effort he'd put in. I last saw Swindon play against Fulham, at Craven Cottage, in the FA Cup, on a freezing cold December day when every other London game was postponed due to frozen pitches. Although they lost as expected, it was by no means a foregone conclusion. They were not bad, and I'm constantly surprised that they're in League 2.

The atmosphere was as expected: an amusing smattering of casual racism in the form of ice-cream jokes ("I'LL HAVE TWO 99s WITH A FLAKE!") directed at histrionic Swindon manager Paolo Di Canio, accompanied by choruses of "Fuck off Di Canio / Fuck off Di Canio" to a popular opera tune I can't remember the name of, on account of being far too common for that sort of thing (they didn't get any further than that, having presumably had difficulty in finding a rhyme for "Di Canio".) The rest of our crowd amused themselves making "wanker" gestures at the opposing fans, who responded in kind, whilst security staff looked on with a sort of grim resignation.

The performance, though, I'm happy to say, was not as expected. In short: City. Were. Brilliant. If ever defensive play were needed, it was against a team like this: Swindon had 3 shots on target (beautifully saved by Duke - I feel bad now for having so little faith in him) and 8 off target. The match stats don't do justice to those 94 minutes at all - 33% possession doesn't sound impressive, and a measley 2 attempts at goal sounds positively rubbish. But we were down to 10 men less than half way through the second half, with Davies questionably dismissed for a foul that, from where we were sitting and, reading the reviews, from where everyone else was sitting too, didn't look too bad. This I think skewed the stats, and we abandoned the attacking play I'd been so pleased to see early in the first half and herorically defended our goal against an increasingly desperate Swindon onslaught. The lovely James Hanson was left up front all on his own and must have been exhausted by the end of it all; Luke O'Brien replaced the injured Threlfall, and Luke Oliver brought the benefit of height (he's 6ft 7!) to the side to pull off some crucial headers, getting the ball safely out of the way on several occasions. When the inevitable 4 minutes of extra time were annouced (it's ALWAYS 4 minutes!) even the most vociferous, neanderthal of the away fans held their breath, fully expecting a last-minute defeat. Hands were clasped seemingly in prayer (mine included - I have no reason to believe God doesn't like football). When the final whistle blew, you'd think from the cheers we'd won 6-0.

So the train journey home was celebratory. We got an all-important point and edged our way ahead of our nearest rivals, a single win away from moving a place or two up the table and further away from relegation, and I got to natter to a very nice chap on the Facebook page later - me, the token girl, as usual, with 5 blokes "liking" my comments on the day's match (the gist of which were just "we were proper good") probably purely because of this. OK, so I still haven't managed to make this a funny post, but it is, at least, a very happy one.

Girl Writes About Football And Stuff

I'd love to be able to write something witty and incisive about Bradford City. There's a great drama somewhere here, a bit like those films that were so popular in the 90s: windswept fans sporting retro shirts immortalising the glory days of 100 years ago, huddled together on makeshift terraces suffering bitter disappointment week after week, coach journey after coach journey endured in disillusioned resignation to the almost inevitable drop out of the football league. The lead character: my dad, 70 that day, ever the optimist in a world of shattered dreams set against a background of eternal Northern drizzle and branches of Gregg's. And then suddenly, a mere week after an almost unbearable defeat at home at the hands of those football giants that are Morecambe, comes this: a win. And not just a win. Not a last-minute, skin-of-our-teeth, one-lucky-goal-in-extra-time win. Not this time. This was a proper win, a two-goal win. And we even scored them both ourselves. Strangers embraced strangers, united in claret and amber, relief and elation. Tom Adeyemi legged it up the slope to the away stand and gave his mum a hug. Somewhere on the other side of the pitch, Peter Taylor drew a sigh of relief and lived to fight another battle (against Cheltenham, as it turns out. Big-time stuff, this.)

I'd love to give you a blow-by-blow account of every nail-biting minute, the three yellow cards that seemed a little over-zealous in what had the generally friendly air of an after-school kickabout; Zesh Rehman and Luke O'Brien, inexplicably on the bench a week ago, darting around the pitch with flashes of nifty footwork, like Darcy Bussell on speed; the fleeting but promising return of the lovely James "He Used To Work At The Co-Op" Hanson showing us what we've been missing and reminding me why I secretly wish he was my kid brother; Luke Oliver being something other than shit; two fabulous goals, the first one seemingly coming from nowhere, the second from a bloke who if I'm honest I'd pretty much forgotten played for us; a few heart-stopping saves (and one very nearly Rob Green moment) from Jon McLaughlin; their fruitless but valiant attempts to at the very least equalize, which would have given us one point and kept us where we were, at the arse-end of the table, which made for a breath-holding last 20 minutes; the coveted three points and the queues in the pub afterwards.

I'd love to tell you all that, but, well, for some reason I have a feeling you're not really that interested, and anyway, Jason Mckeown does it better. In context, this wasn't quite the David vs Goliath battle I'm making it out to be. This isn't Weatherall-Scores-Against-Liverpool-And-Secures-Premiership-Glory all over again. This is City clawing its way to two places above relegation by beating the titans that are Barnet, a club that almost dropped out of the league last season and which has been immortalised on this blog more than once for playing on a slope and having a giant bee for a mascot at which we ritually hurl abuse every year before losing 2-1 despite scoring two of the goals. In fact on Saturday the most exciting moment for many of the Barnet fans present was when Mr Bumble did a lap of honour to show off the cup he'd won against such strong contenders as Leo the Lion, Spork the Tiger,the Scunny Bunny and Sammy the Shrimp in a football mascots charity race that week. He signed quite a few autographs on the way round. (As an aside, why is Crystal Palace's mascot called Pete the Eagle? Pete? Why the lack of alliteration? Why Pete?)

I'd love to tell you all that. But then I saw this in the match programme, and frankly, nothing I could write could compete. I've independently verified that it's not a spoof, so if you're interested you should get yourself a season-tickets so you can secure yourself that valuable discount:


"Oi Churchill! Can you arrange the scattering of my ashes at Underhill? Can you get me a hearse with amber and black plumes?"

"Ohhhhh YES!"

Have a good week :-)

More serious stuff

I've blogged more times than most of you probably feel is absolutely necessary about Bradford City, and many times about the fire, so this is more of a quick plug for next year's Bupa 10K. OK, it's early, but I wanted to get a page up and running in advance. It's here

I am going to take myself away, drink a lot of tea and try to think of something amusing to write about. It's been too long...

The Only Way Is Up

It is a truth universally acknowledged - or hypothesised by me, anyway - that when things are all running smoothly and you feel you can handle anything Life throws at you, Life muscles in and bites you on the arse, slaps you round the face, then kicks you headlong into the gutter before sniggering and sauntering away.

So I've temporarily locked life away in a tamper-proof box and am resorting to late-night blogging and, of course, football until I can be arsed to go and open the lid again.

So forget all this World Cup mallarky; that's old news. The real thing kicks off in a matter of days, and I shall soon be pootling off to Torquay to watch for myself. Oh yes, it doesn't get any better than that.

And my self-worth did peep round the doorway and toy with the idea of maybe moving back in for a while when, having sent a letter months ago to Bradford's fanzine with this very suggestion, I read this on City's website today. In case you care (I have it on authority that at least one of you does...) they are bringing back the strip worn in 1911, the year the Mighty Bantams won the FA Cup. The replica strip is going to be worn at cup matches this season, to commemorate the days when we were, um, good. Admittedly it's hard not to dwell on the fact that the reason the anniversary is so important is that we've done pretty much bugger all since, but all the same...

What would make it an even better commemoration, though, would be if "Speirs" could be printed on the back of the fans' shirts. Jimmy Speirs scored the winning goal that day. He was killed in 1917, at the Battle of Passhendale.

I received an email the other day from an old friend who'd joined the army straight from school. The email said "I'm now a banker, which is a sell-out, but it's better that being shot at." It sure is, and on reading it I felt flooded with almost physical relief that he was safe and well. I'm soppy like that; I'm an idealist; I'm naive; I'm basically an idiot.

And I am City to the core.

And I don't understand why, 100 years on from the victory of which we're so proud, we're still sending men to remote parts of the world to shoot the crap out of each other and blow one another up.

Oh well, here's to this season - and the only way is up.

Bind Us Together

Hmm, so ending the first day of the working week with those immortal words of one Stephen Patrick Morrissey - "In my life/why do I give valuable time/to people who don't care if I live or die?" - running through my head is not a positive sign of things to come. (The answer, by the way, is normally "because you get paid for it.") And now I'm sitting brooding in a corner, Tears for Fears providing appropriate mood music, pouring hot water onto a mango teabag and wondering how many times I can do this before it stops tasting of mango. (Not that it especially tasted of mango in the first place...)

I could of course go for a deep and meaningful walk, secretly wondering if anybody will bother to come and look for me, but they won't; and anyway, it's pissing it down; and I've already been running tonight; and my tea would get cold.

So...

I'm going to think of ways to work Bradford City into my impending AKC exam instead.

And everywhere I look opportunities present themselves!

OK, so I probably won't get very far working it into an essay on Heresy. I can't think of even the most tenuous link that might do anything other than bemuse the examiners. But that's OK - I have my fun cut out of me already there trying to think up some cow definitions for Apollinarianism and Arianism. Oh yes. You'll see it here first.

And then, as I pretended to read Durkheim, elaborated little analogies started to form in my mind. Durkheim, you see, was the bloke who said that rituals were "designed to elicit, maintain and reproduce certain mental states among participating groups" (that's a quote, that!) Can you apply this to the (unswervingly optimistic) fanbase at Valley Parade? Damn right you can.

Oh and before you point out that this is not some new discovery, OK, OK, I know it isn't. My book - yes I'm reading a BOOK for this exam. Get me! - even uses football as an example of "the sacred in secular society". But to put me in a little perspective: I have an English degree. I'm qualified merely to read Durkheim and compliment him on his flowing sentence structure. Except I can't even do that, because he didn't even write in English. I'm the person who pointedly read "The Communist Manifesto" on the exercise bike in Fitness First, not because I understood it, but because I delighted in the irony of this little tableau. I know enough about sociology to snigger when F describes his A Level Sociology lessons as "Here's a picture of Marx. Now colour it in." But that's about it.

I do know, though, that Bradford has an unusually high turnout for a beleagured (by which I mean "rubbish") club, packing out a stadium of Premiership proportions every other week, and taking coachloads of supporters down to the most Godforsaken areas of Britain on the Saturdays in between. What binds them together?

I'm sure studies have been done - and when I have time I shall look for them - that look at class, and adversity, and all of those sorts of things, and the turbulent history of Bradford as a City as well as a Club probably does a lot to bring them together under that one corrugated iron roof in the name of football just as much as the tantalising power of the sport itself. But my book (same book - I'm only reading one. Oh come on, I'm not THAT keen!) gives some examples of events that have become "sacred", amongst them the death of Diana and September 11th. At Bradford, it was 11th May 1985, and it was the Bradford Fire.

56 people lost their lives in horrific circumstances when a stand caught fire and burned to a cinder in a mere 4 minutes. Now I'm normally cheerful (um, OK, that's pushing it. Shall we say "aiming at humour"?) on this blog, but it needs saying: people remember Hillsborough (and rightly so), and Heysel (at which 39 died); people forget about Bradford. Unless you're a fire safety officer (my husband watched the video of the disaster in Fire Safety Training) it isn't necessarily something you'd know about. But whole families were erased in an instant.The youngest to die was a boy of 11; the eldest a man of 86. Now, after every match, if you pop round the back of the stadium to have a peek at the simple, understated memorial you will not be alone. People pay their respects there week after week, and flowers are still left there. Silences are held each year; church services commemorate the dead on the anniversary. The club, despite its own financial problems, raises thousands every year for the burns unit at Bradford Royal Infirmary. And in the area directly around the stadium you don't generally find the undercurrent of racial resentment that can at times plague other parts of the city. In Manningham, local shopkeepers and residents, mainly of Asian origin, flocked to help, taking victims into their homes, making tea, letting people use their phones.

So yes, football does bind people together and instil a sense of community through its very power. But so does tragedy. I intend to write about both, if I get the chance, but in the meantime, I probably ought to stop sulking and be grateful for what I have. May God bless the victims of the Bradford City fire, and, of course, may God bless Bradford City.