Premership football
and I had had a big bust up. Was it the state of English footie and the arrival
of the prawn sandwich battalions imposing a more sanitised product upon the
ranks of fans who had kept going to the matches?
Nobody
wanted to go back to the days of Heysel, Hillsborough and fighting fans but had
it gone into overdrive in the opposite direction?
Premiership
prices had forced me to put family first but yet these increases and massive
sponsorship deals had only served to feed the players greed, rather than being
invested in youth programmes, cheaper tickets for the disadvantaged, community
programmes…
Was I just
blaming football for all the injustices that existed in the world…?
As it was,
my only contact with the sport that had seen me through my formative years and
into marriage and fatherhood was now through listening to radio commentaries,
match of the day and casual glances at the results of Whitley Bay’s own
non-league team. Odessa maintained her enthusiasm for Middlesbrough through
Radio Tees and so I allowed myself to be carried along with their highs and
lows. England’s failures in various Euro championships and World Cups only
entrenched me further in my views that the Premiership was evil and to blame for
all manner of the country’s problems.
Little was I
to know how my life was to change after a visit to a pre-season friendly in
France’s Loire Valley.
August 2008
Tours v Niort
Hardly a hotbed
of football: the Loire Valley, synonymous for fine wine and a regular venue for
our annual holiday since 2005. I’ve no idea why I was drawn to watch a barely
publicised friendly featuring two teams that had competed in Ligue 2 (Niort)
and the Ligue National (Tours) – basically the 2nd and 3rd
tiers of French football yet we found ourselves on a warm, August evening
sitting in a football stadium: our first experience of family football.
The stadium was empty, with only the
covered stand open, as expected of a pre-season friendly in any country and
there was a relaxed atmosphere amongst the loyal fans who had wandered along on
that Friday evening. Polite applause greeted the teams as they emerged but this
was broken by four young lads who’d made the 89 mile journey from Niort as they
lit four red flares, holding them aloft like beacons as they shouted:
“Niort,
Niort, Niort, Niort!” One for each of them!
That was the
last we heard from them. In typical French fashion the home fans looked, shrugged
shoulders then carried on their conversations, paying no more attention to the
young upstarts who’d interrupted them with their high jinks. There were no
stewards dashing across with fire extinguishers, no heavy police presence and
nobody was thrown out of the stadium. The flares eventually died out and the
foolishness of youth consigned to a distant memory for the regular home fans.
This relaxed
(laissez-faire) atmosphere was added to by the sight of the Tours manager
Daniel Sanchez emerging onto the touchline wearing jeans and a shirt: I doubted
whether the likes of Dalglish, Ferguson and Robson even knew what jeans were,
never mind having the audacity to stand on the touchline brazenly wearing them!
The game
itself ended 1-1 with Niort delighting their fans with the lead only for Tours
to force their fans into applause in the second half with an equaliser. The end
was almost signalled apologetically as the referee blew for full time and
everyone trooped off – the fans still carrying on their conversations that had
been interrupted by the flares one and three quarter hours before.
Still in shirt sleeves we wandered
through the tree-lined rows of the empty car park to our before driving back to
our tent. Relaxing and calming was hardly how we had been used to watching
football yet it seemed entirely appropriate and agreeable. We’d do this again
next year – I’d see to that.
August 2009: Tours v Le Havre – Coupe de la Ligue 1st
round
Our lives
were changing.
Jasmine and I had been to see non-league Whitley
Bay play at home and we’d seen them recover from 2-0 down to win 3-2. Not only
that but they followed that up by winning the FA Vase at Wembley. Jasmine had
also decided to join her friend playing for North Shields under 10 girls’ team
(even though she was only 8). Football was back into our house again: watching
and playing. To honour getting onto the team she was bought a strip. She had
already decided that she would support mum in her times of woe by supporting
Middlesbrough (Holly had decided to support Newcastle to be on Dad’s side:
probably only to wind Jasmine up).
Our positive
experience of the previous year’s holiday had made me determined to repeat if
not better our foreign footie experience. This time it would be a competitive
game: although I still expected to see a manager in jeans.
Tickets were
bought on line from the Tours ticket office and we were to pick them up at the
box office on production my passport. Apparently this was normal but I wondered
the reaction when my British passport was pulled out: an instant banning order
as a potential football hooligan or much disgust and spitting on the floor.
Being English, especially, made me extremely conscious about the reputation our
various groups of supporters and stag parties had even though I was obviously
with my family I still felt like I could be an unwelcome guest at a select
party (being held in an enormous warehouse).
I needn’t
have worried: tickets were dispatched without a hint of distaste in the “Merci”
and “Bon match”. Bon match? Could you imagine English ticket offices inviting
you to enjoy your match? It was akin to a shopkeeper wishing you to: “Have a
nice day”.
The ground was mostly all open, with
the seating behind one goal covered with a massive mural depicting the sponsors
logos as if they were being carried above the heads of a packed crowd: a
slightly optimistic situation considering the empty expanses around the ground.
Fans were clustered in pockets around the stadium but there was a larger crowd
than we’d experienced on our previous visit and there was even the sight of
passionate fans unrolling banners supporting the team expertly written in
graffiti: the Tours ultras were here, with names like: KOP Tourangeau and Tours
N’Boys flapping in the gentle evening breeze, and it added a bit of edge to an
otherwise calm, warm Summer’s evening. There was no biting wind off the North
Sea or sheets of rain drenching you to the skin. If this was French football:
it got our seal of approval: shorts and t-shirts weather and football was the
ideal. Under these conditions it didn’t really matter the standard of football
you saw.
The idea of
Ultras had never taken off, or been considered, in England. All fans were
considered to be loyal and the only difference between supporters was how much
they wanted to pay for a match and where, and with whom, you wanted to sit
with. The nearest England came to ultras was the groups of hooligans that
disgraced each club in the 70s and 80s: our own take on a theme. Yet these
seemed to be no more than groups of supporters having an identity and a voice.
I remember the role Newcastle United’s Supporters’ Club played in organising
away trips, selling merchandise etc before they had both franchises taken away
from them by the club. They had been set up when times were hard for football
and when the good times arrived had found themselves pushed aside. It was
reassuring to see that there were indeed devoted football fans in what had
become our tranquil holiday destination.
The quality
of football wasn’t the best and with Tours struggling to make any impression on
the Le Havre defence, wayward passes were annoying the home fans who weren’t
backwards in venting their frustrations although I doubted the players heard
much of it as the open stadium allowed the comments drift into the ether.
The crowd were further annoyed when
Le Havre took the lead: a move that made me notice the small pocket of away
fans, behind the eight foot fence, clustered around their Barbarians flag to
our right. They certainly didn’t look Barbarous to me although there were a few
barbarically bare chests on offer: a tribute to their English counterparts?
I hadn’t
spotted whether Sanchez was wearing his requisite jeans however the standard of
Tours play improved dramatically in the second half as their passing become
accurate and quicker. There were pleasingly no aimless punts up field only
passing to feet that would frequently break down to further annoy the home fans.
Chances continued to be created and
wasted by Tours until Olivier Giroud tucked away a rebounded shot with less than
ten minutes to go. Thoughts of extra time were dispelled when Giroud once again
scored, this time scoring with a cross between a diving header and a belly
flop. The home fans lapped the goals up and cheered every time there was a
backheeled pass, of which there were many, as the home team grew in confidence.
There were Gallic gestures from the away fans as Jasmine (7) celebrated next to
the partition fence then both sets of fans set off for the exits chattering
incessantly. Despite being 10 o’clock at night we were still warm and had no
need for the waterproofs and sweaters we’d brought with us: after all, being
British, you never could tell what might happen to the weather!
Once out of
the stadium, intense discussions were hastily broken up as everyone raced for
their cars and soon the air was filled with chalky gravel dust clouds as the
Tours’ wacky races began. In true French fashion, most drivers had managed to
lodge a Galois at a jaunty angle into their mouth as they drove off with their
elbows resting on their open car windows, beeping incessantly as the
competition to leave the car park intensified. Nobody had left early, unlike in
England, as they would have missed out on their traditional fun! We decided to
remain avid spectators, enjoying the sport on offer, before we too set off back
to our campsite.
However,
supporting Tours was not a viable option for us since the Loire was a difficult
place to get to from Newcastle.
For
Christmas I had bought a Playstation portable to while away the odd moment of
spare time and bought Fifa 08: as it was going cheap. After playing as Niort
for a while I began to look out for my new adopted French team. Scrolling
through the team strips, I had to admit there was a lack of imagination: all
red, all white. I wanted something to stand out. Nice had a smart black and red
strip, however they were further away than Tours: a nightmare for a home match.
Similarly Marseille, however on top of that there was something about their
constant success that didn’t sit right with me.
It was then
I was drawn by the yellow and red checked squares of the Racing Club de Lens.
Lens – Northern France – near to Calais should I ever want to visit them…I
checked their background and history (didn’t do to be caught unawares). Lens –
once strong mining town, now all closed (comparisons to the Northeast and the
Miners strike in the 1980s, Maggie Thatcher, milk snatcher). Once French
Champions in 1998 and recently promoted to Ligue 1: former glory, just like
Newcastle. The fickle hand of fate had struck me just like a casual trip to
Newcastle Arena had ended up with 13 years spent following Newcastle’s ice hockey
until their demise (ironically in my home town Whitley Bay’s Hillheads Rink).
From May
onwards I poured over the internet to research my new team: in my opinion we just
seemed to complement each other: the colourful pageant, the down to Earth
ideals the caring owner… just as Odessa and I had felt when we were getting
married: nature simply took hold and carried us along. So, once again, fate had
struck, pulling me into an inescapable yellow and red whirlwind.
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