By Paul Nicholson
February 14 – “Barrow’s Holker Street ground is no more. It is now the Furness Building Society Stadium, Wilkie Road. But on emerging through the turnstiles on to the terraces, it is difficult to see what substantive changes the Furness Building Society have actually made, beyond financing a new mundane rectangular administrative block at one end of the ground, from which the teams later came out,” writes Steve Leach, author of Conference Season, published by Bennion Kearney this month.
“In the remainder of the ground, you really felt you could have been back in the 1950s. There was the original main stand, painted in blue and white, on one side. There was a covered area, similarly painted, on the other. Elsewhere there was open terracing (with barriers) which looked like absolutely nothing had been modified for at least half a century. The gents’ toilets consisted solely of a long channel at ground level, in a dilapidated shed.
“In a sense, the ground is a historic relic, a veritable unreconstructed delight.”
Unreconstructed football relics might be an apt description of a core of English football fans in England who yearn for the old days of football supporting. Fans who want to feel the heart and soul of the game. A game that means a bit more than the modern definitions of unpronounceable players and club owners’ names, mega-sponsorship contracts and youngsters turning up to Premier League football matches (to play) driving the latest baby Bentley.
Steve Leach, disillusioned with the mega-bucks world of Premier League football, takes his readers on a journey around the Football Conference to rediscover the soul of professional football.
It is a wonderful trip through the 24 different clubs in England that make up the Conference’s top division, and tells compelling football stories through his own observations; from dancing bears at Nuneaton, to demented screamers at Barrow, and ‘badger pasties’ at rural Forest Green.
All of this is put into context through a socio-economic football prism. Is Barrow really “the end of the road, the end of the line. A one- horse town at the dead end of what has been described as ‘the longest cul-de-sac in England’ (the A590).”
Or is it the start of a life-affirming football journey that will rekindle the readers love and desire to really try and understand what the grip is that this game has on us.
England’s new breed of foreign owners should read this book (or get one of their closest advisors to and explain it to them). Football academies should have it as part of their curriculum. One of football’s new modern words – respect – comes into mind.
As the season progressed Leach relishes how unfancied teams of part-timers, such as Braintree Town and Dartford, can defeat higher status opponents, and watches ‘big name’ clubs such as Luton Town and Lincoln City struggle to make an impact.
This is Leach’s personal journey but it is actually about all of us. The insights and potted histories of the towns these clubs play is fascinating and revealing.
More details of the book can be found at www.BennionKearny.com. The print version costs £11.99, £7.99 Kindle.
Contact the writer of this story at moc.l1734846855labto1734846855ofdlr1734846855owedi1734846855sni@n1734846855osloh1734846855cin.l1734846855uap1734846855