Darren Young’s diary of a lower league football fan: Week 1

Week 1: It’s Football, Jim. But Not As We Know It

I have this friend who supports Liverpool.

In almost every other way, we are similar. We’re roughly the same age, our views on life aren’t a million miles apart nor are those lives themselves. We have shared football experiences and especially pain; following England together to a European Championship and World Cup.

But the similarities end there. You see, I am the supporter of a lower-league team and when our fans sing ‘the best team in the land’, there is a certain wit attached because we are often not even the best team in a five-mile radius of our stadium. It’s a song that is entirely formed of love and from the heart because our heads know only too well that, in pure ability terms and league placings, we will never be the best team in the land, unless we relocate – as if that would ever happen.

My friend’s team are, quite literally, the best team in the world. They are currently a zillion points clear at the top of the Premier League, with only two dropped so far. They have an embarrassment of riches in their squad. When they had too many fast, exciting forward players to fit into their XI, they flogged one and brought a goalkeeper for nearly £70m and a centre-back for £75M. When my team didn’t have any fast, exciting forward players we got a full-back in on season-long-loan from Bristol City.

It’s not just the finances and league position though. They are current and football is cyclical, so there will eventually be a bigger and better team to take their place. But Liverpool have history as well as being the holders of the Champions League, World Club Cup and European Super Cup – five other European Cups, countless league Championships and lots of other pots of silver over the years, so much that they can afford to discard their chances in the League Cup this season as one fixture too many. And although they fielded another weakened team in the FA Cup this weekend, they still beat fierce rivals, Everton, by a goal to nil. I won’t even bother with the ‘playing a weakened team every week’ line.

By comparison though, they have an anniversary coming up. In 1959-60, we won our first anything with the Football League Division Four title. In 2006-7, we won it again. Before, since and in-between, we haven’t won anything except for the play-offs (twice) and even then contrived to do that before the finals were moved to Wembley and the very year the stadium was knocked down. Not that it makes the day in Cardiff any less special but when we finally reached Wembley for the first (and only) time, 35,000 people from the town made the trip but, crucially, eleven others connected to the club didn’t turn up on the day.

But that is kind of the point. Lower League teams – real ones – don’t win at Wembley every other season. They don’t have dozens of league titles and cups that their fans can hark on about; it’s the very fact that fifty years separate their only honours and that a play-off final or giant-killing cup win are clung onto so dearly that defines the club and your irrational love of it.

Liverpool and their fans won’t ever walk alone, but if you arrive early at my club for a midweek match, that’s exactly what you’ll do. Not only alone but with a little vulnerability too, as you’ll walk past McDonalds, then Matalan, across the car park where the four stewards will almost certainly ignore you to the point that you’ll feel all alone before you encounter another more-talkative human being at the stadium, and possibly purchase a programme from them.

My friend, bless him, has no idea what this feels like. He has no concept of sub-4,000 crowds, the early rounds of the cup or the toilets flooding. Anfield is one of the biggest and best stadiums in the world, after all. His biggest worry is how many changes his manager might make after a Champions League group game, or if there are any tickets still left for the Atletico Madrid match.

He will never have to concern himself about whether there will be any pies at half-time or where to sit in an EFL Trophy game against Portsmouth because they aren’t going to bother opening the three other stands (bizarrely, even though that makes the decision for you, it’s still stressful – nobody likes change). My friend often confuses the EFL Trophy with the Under-23 League. Easy mistake to make, I suppose.

‘These strange names you speak of…’   

Occasionally, he’ll refer to something outside of the top flight but in a slightly confused way, with a face that looks like it’s trying to do algebra and you know, deep down, he’s wondering if it’s actually real and not just some mythical made-up thing that parents used in the old days to frighten their kids into behaving better.

The reality has never been less the stuff of fantasy than this season. Already one club has been expelled because of financial insecurity and another is sailing close to the wind. A third, Bolton Wanderers, were saved at the last minute but they aren’t a lower league club anyway; the status isn’t about what division you are in at any given time but where you truly belong.

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A team that has fallen on harder times (like Sunderland) are just passing through. They aren’t a lower league team any more than Leeds, Forest or the Sheffield clubs were when went into the third tier for a prolonged period. Neither is an upwardly mobile club either, such as Brentford, who have the foresight and means to challenge at the top end of the Championship and a spanking new 17,000+ seat stadium to move into. They might have been lower-league once, but they gave that up the day they got some money. And ambition.

A proper lower-league team spends virtually all its existence flitting between tiers three and four, and, on the rare occasions they do find themselves on the next rung, the rarefied air is almost intoxicating and all fans have to look forward to is gallows humour, ironic cheering, managers being sacked, some proper hammerings and the inevitable return to the tier lower at some stage, be it after one season or a few. But that also makes it all the more memorable.

Lessons will have been learned – if you want to go and play with the big boys, be prepared to get the shit kicked out of you every week – but not necessarily heeded. If the chance arises again, they’ll put themselves through it. Some clubs, such as Yeovil, will struggle to recover and fall out of the EFL altogether but, BTW, that doesn’t count as lower-league either because you have to be in it to not win it.

But I always knew that Liverpool will forever be there or thereabouts at the top and my club will not. That was the pact I made when I started supporting them. I did have a choice; it’s not like Liverpool didn’t exist at that time – they were pretty much the best team in the world then too – but I made the choice to follow my hometown club, the only club I could walk to and thus avoid public transport costs and where ‘kids for a quid’ was in place long before it was ever an actual thing.

But there has to be other advantages too, right?  Of course. Here are 5….

1. The Ego Has Left The Building – watch Tom Pope celebrate scoring for Port Vale at the Etihad on Saturday. There is something more to it than just the goal – it’s the bond between player and fans; more evident and honest in the lower leagues where egos are smaller and the pay gap between those playing and those watching is smaller still.
   

2. VAR Less Technology – imagine there’s no hawk-eye. It isn’t hard to do. A massive lower-league bonus and if you get knocked out of the FA Cup before the third round you can have a completely VAR-free season which means you might just find some of the fun in the game again.

3. Having The Runs – although it possibly means putting up with VAR, the odd cup run is useful for swelling the coffers and also giving you a tantalising glimpse of something else. In reality, it’ll probably be Southampton’s under-23s at a quarter-full St Mary’s – David and Goliath are becoming increasingly difficult to tell apart these days – but at least you get to visit different grounds and you can see them even better with empty seats.

4. NOMOTD – I watched some episodes last night on the iPlayer (to kill time waiting for the kids to go back to school) and realised how little I’m missing. I don’t have to suffer seeing player’s tweets pop up in the corner, the commentator’s obsession with turning every VAR review into a fully-blown crisis or when they interview managers who only converse in media-training speak.

5. In Emergency, Break Glass – there is no transfer window; not really. There is still the excitement of last-minute signings like everyone else, but in the lower leagues, when the window is slammed shut at five o’clock or midnight or whatever, it’s never really shut; more slightly ajar or on the catch. The League One and Two club window is extended, then you can still sign players on loan and after that, free agents are pretty much available all year round.

If that isn’t enough, then I can’t help you. Of course, you might prefer a life of multi-million pound signings, a residency on the back page of the papers and European nights under the lights. But there is a comparative zen to be had in knowing that all cup competitions will be over by the end of January, a ticket will always be there if you want it and in the Summer, Barcelona will never be sniffing around your best players.

That alone is worth walking down the Wednesbury Road all by yourself for.

And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Next Time: The Lower League Away-Day

words Darren Young, D3D4 columnist