Sunday 26 May 2024

I’m as nervous as heck this morning, and I know exactly why.

I stayed up late last night, watching the new Dr. Who, but it isn’t that which is troubling me. It’s actually pretty good, not yet as good as Jon Pertwee or Tom Baker or Peter Capaldi, and not even on the same planet as the unparallelled David Tennant, but the 15th reincarnation, with Ncuti Gatwa as the new Doctor, is not too bad, nonetheless.

And I’m not nervous because of the left-over frozen ice cream birthday cake we finished as dessert after dinner last night, although all that richness did sit heavy for a while.

No, it’s because this morning, we play Southampton.

I say “we” and by that I mean, of course, Leeds United. It’s the final game of the season for both teams and, for one of us, it will lead to the glory and largess of the Premier League. One game, ninety minutes of football. [I’m sorry, but in this context I cannot use the word ‘soccer’.] The playoff for the two Championship teams that won their earlier two-leg play-off games. The chance to join Leicester and Ipswich, who won the automatic promotion both the Saints and we thought we had deserved. One game at Wembley. Winner takes all.

My family have all gone out for the day. They don’t want to listen to me rant and rave, scream and shout, mutter and curse. They don’t want to see me leaping around the room, punching the air, or hiding behind the couch, hands over my ears. They don’t really understand.

“It’s just a game,” some say, looking meaningfully at each other. I bite my tongue not to repeat the words of Bill Shankley, the Liverpool manager of the late 1960s and early 1970s, who famously said: “Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it’s much more serious than that.”

I have a photograph that was published in the Yorkshire Evening Post around 1963. It shows Don Revie, who was the manager of Leeds, and Billy Bremner, the team captain, sitting in a dugout. Next to them, at the front of the crowd, are two little boys. I’m one of them, my younger brother Simon is the other. Our Uncle Ernie is in the picture, he took us to the game. It was sixty years ago, and many triumphs (and disappointments) later, I still have that same sense of joy and ecstasy whenever we win.

There’s a new(ish) film out which reflects some of this. It’s called ‘Welcome to Wrexham’ and stars two Hollywood actors, Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenny, who bought the struggling football club and invested a lot of time (and money) into its operations. What is good about the film is not that narrative arc; it is the people of Wrexham, a small town in northeast Wales, who make the film a documentary about the impact football can have on a community.

We feel that impact in Leeds. Unlike cities such as Liverpool or Manchester or London, we only have one club. There are no divided loyalties in my home city. You’re a Leeds fan, or you shouldn’t really live there. There are some people who prefer to watch the rugby, or the cricket, and they are tolerated. But it would be a foolish person indeed who wandered around the city wearing the colours of a different football team. Especially Chelsea. Or Millwall. Or Scum.

If you don’t know who Scum is, never mind. It’s not important.

The link is visceral. It’s part of my identity, of the warp and weft of life. Those of you who know me have undoubtedly listened to me go on (and on and on and on) about Leeds United, about our many successes and (far more) failures. Yes, we’ve won 14 major trophies over the years, but at the same time we’ve come second in 13 more. As my brother Simon, who was with me at Elland Road all those years ago and many times since, is fond of saying, “Supporting Leeds United teaches you to manage your disappointments.” Indeed.

I left Leeds in the early seventies and went to Teachers’ College in Bishop’s Stortford, in Hertfordshire. I used to hitchhike the 200 miles back to Leeds to watch games or try to snag tickets to see them when they played in the London area. In 1973 I was at Wembley for the FA Cup Final, Leeds United versus Sunderland. I watched as Jim Montgomery made a phenomenal save from a Peter Lorimer shot, somehow pushing it up onto the bar and away. I still dream about that moment, thinking that surely this time it must go in.

In 1974 I got a job teaching in Harlow, a town near London, and after a year there went to newly independent Papua New Guinea on a two-year contract. Another English teacher and I used to string up a wire aerial between palm trees so we could listen to the BBC World Service on short-wave. His wife has a photograph of the two of us, sitting outside at midnight in the pouring rain, huddled under umbrellas and listening to the broadcast of a Leeds-Everton game.

Over the years I’ve watched us play all over the world. I sat in a bar full of Arsenal fans in Prishtina, pleased we got out of there with a draw. I happened to be in England in March 2020 and with my brothers went to Elland Road for the Huddersfield game. We had decided “oh, you only live once” and therefore bought Executive Box tickets – a nice lunch, some drinks, and a comfortable chair with a great view. We witnessed what turned out to be the goal of the season, Leeds won, and none of us knew that this would be the last game played in front of spectators for six months. Thanks, COVID.

I’ve caught games in Lebanon and in Sweden, in Istanbul and San Francisco, and from coast to coast to coast across Canada. In La Ronge, Saskatchewan, I looked after the girls early one Saturday morning so that Sally could have a lie-in. My idea of quality time was to feed everyone breakfast in front of the TV while we watched the football games broadcast from England. When Sally emerged, three-year old Kate looked at her from her nest of cushions on the couch and pouted. “Mum, Scum scored.”

Wherever I’ve been, my support for Leeds United has been my link to home, to heritage, to family, to culture. It reminds me of fish and chips from Coe’s, the Mecca ballroom, the Station Pub, cold tripe from the shop under the railway arches, the famous Leeds market. It’s Fountain’s Abbey and Scarborough Pier, it’s Haworth and Malham, it’s Wensleydale cheese and Whitby scampi, it’s John Smith’s bitter and Black Sheep Ale. As my favourite t-shirt says, I’m “Yorkshire born and bred.”

At her 80th birthday, someone asked my mum how she had managed to keep her five strong-willed boys still connected and talking to each other. “That’s nothing to do with me,” she replied. “That’s all down to Leeds United.”

The game will start soon. The winner will get promoted to the Premier League, to play the likes of Manchester City, Arsenal, Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspur. The loser will stay in the Championship, with trips to Sunderland, Plymouth, and Oxford. My brothers and I will be chatting back and forth on WhatsApp, watching from our homes in North Wales, London, Harrogate, and Charlottetown.
A lot of the time we whinge and complain to each other. The pass that wasn’t made, the certain shot on goal that was scuffed, the blindness of the referee, the tackle that was hard but fair and should not have resulted in a yellow card, the ridiculous decision by the Video Assist Referee.

All the same, deep down, we know we are going to win. We are the better side. We always have been. We should never have been relegated from the Premier League in the first place. We have the best supporters in the country. We have dug out our team colours. We sing our song, Marching On Together. We have traded photographs. We are ready.

It’s now early afternoon. We hit the bar. Their goalkeeper made a crucial save. Ours didn’t.

We lost.

Does anybody know any movie stars?

Oh, hang on, Will Farrell has announced that he has invested in Leeds United Football Club. He’s put in a ‘substantial amount of funding’, apparently. Perhaps there will be a revival next season. Perhaps we’ll get that new centre forward we so desperately need, the holding midfielder, a decent left back.

Perhaps we’ll charge back to the top of the Championship again next year, and this time stay there until the end of the season. It’s got to be time for us to meet our destiny.

Perhaps.

As they used to say on Ted Lasso, “It’s the hope that kills you.”

MOT