Dreamstate: the mighty vs West Brom 92/93

'Just about made it in time...'

This never ending dream is like a fever in itself. Days and nights pass by and yet I do not wake. There is time. So much time and so many thoughts. Questions that have no answers but those which time will bring. I could worry, I could rage, I could retreat into the land of speculation and rumour, seeking sense in a senseless situation. I won't. I will let the days drift by and instead retreat into my own mind, seeking solice in memory, seeking experience in images.

There is much that I miss that I can bring to mind, much that I can relive to remind myself that the world we knew is only on hiatus and that our imprisonment is only temporary.

- the moment of recognition of a friend in a crowded pub
- the fertile leaf mulch smell of early summer woodland
- catching a train from here to there just because

I'm not a religious individual and I find it trite when people (especially if those people are Sky TV) make comparisons between football and religion. I wouldn't kill for my team, I wouldn't die in a holy war believing in the promised afterlife of 7 virginal left backs.

I am, however, not dismissive of the power of ritual within our lives and it has to be said, I am also missing the experience of coming out through the concourse and seeing the hallowed green turf in front of me. I'm missing the joy (?) of placing my emotions in the hands of a higher power and seeing them kicked around the pitch for 90 minutes. I'm missing the physical sensations, the way it feels totally necassary to shout 'c'mon Pool!' at the top of my lungs and clap loudly after any kick off, the involuntary rising from the seat as we attack, the elated wildness of the goal, the hollow slump of conceding, the shared anger at a viscious attack on our heroes and the shared bloodlust at a retaliation towards our enemies. All of these things are ritualistic in the extreme and I miss them very much.

I miss things from further back as well. I never want to be a nostalgist. I don't want to pointlessly claim that 'things were better in the old days' or 'they don't make music like they used to' because retreating to the past is impossible and all it does is make the shock of the new more frightening. Living in the past makes it harder to understand the perceptions and perspectives of the present. I don't miss things from the past simply because they were in the past. I miss them because some of them were thrilling and because they don't exist anymore.

And anyway, there's no present right now and the future is uncertain so all I have is the past!

So here goes... 

My all time favourite game of football is Blackpool vs West Bromwich Albion from 1992/1993. I was 13 years old and it was the first time I remember being in the South Paddock for a big game.

Then, as now, I came to the ground from Bloomfield Road. The exterior of the South Stand is ramshackle and all peeling paint and incongruous UPVC windows. It's an odd mixture of the elegance and understated 1920s and a brasher plastic era. Much like a lot of Blackpool. This town is genteel and uncouth at the same time. CuldeSacs and semi detached bay windows sit side by side with raw salt wind and brash sex shop sleaze. Retirement homes and stag parties. I don't understand that in those words at this point, but I know that Blackpool is somewhere else, somewhere different, somewhere entirely out of sync with the rest of Lancashire.

I love football when I'm 13. I love it unquestioningly and without reserve. It is everything to me and I have not yet discovered its unfairness and its corruption. I know we don't like Owen Oyston much, but only because he won't get his hand in his pocket and buy us a player to steer us out of the mess we're in. He's like a panto villain as opposed to a destroyer of lives and clubs. I've never heard of Segesta, or for that matter the Venkys, Mike Ashley or any of the other scumbags and chancers who will feast on my love like so many vampires.

He's behind you!

There's a queue at the South East corner of the stand. My dad gives me my ticket. It's an all-ticket game which confers it with an air of importance. I feel special, privaliged. It sold out but I am here. To this day, I still get gripped by a slight panic that I won't make the kick off or I'll go online to discover the ground sold out. It never happens, but it COULD. 'Keep hold of that' he says, words that I find myself saying, 27 years later, to my own son.

I don't get frisked, which disapoints me, young enough still to pass for a kid, but old enough to want to look like more.

The turnstiles are ancient. The paint covering them is slick and thick reflecting season after season of new beginnings. A lick of paint will bring us the luck we need. The bright turnstiles don't reflect the ground as a whole. Through the little corridor then up the steps to the corner terrace, and in front of me unfolds a picture of history. The east stand roof is a rude tangerine colour, a bold change as last year, a badly faded advert adorned it, barely more than a corrugated ghost of some business past. The West stand, where I first started sitting with my dad, (and soon came to yearn for the more visceral atmosphere of the South stand), is all wooden seats and timeless feeling. The Kop looms at one end and is endlessly fascinating. The three 'home' stands are humble enough, befitting our status as a Division 3 side but the Kop is a spectre that reminds us of our more distinguished past. It's huge and impressive, even from this distance, even half covered in advertising boards and the barriers that once divided fans rusting visibly, the old roof supports still sprouting from the concrete, shorn of their purpose.

The floodlight crouch in the corners, as yet unused in the late winter, (but ever so slightly spring blue) afternoon. As yet, I don't know that they were cut back to save money. I just think this is how Bloomfield Road is. How it will always be. A green pitch that curves up noticably at the side. A ramshackle set of stands that make up in character what they lack in comfort. Gazeeeeeert man and acrid stinking gutters of piss and open air toilets. Potts Out!

I assume you'll always be able to walk slightly below pitch level at the front of the stand, seeing the warm up as if lying on the grass and then turn, surveying the crowd and picking a spot (ideally to the right of the goal, far enough out to not be quite in with the rowdiest lot, but close enough to feel the atmosphere without the goal frame and the net blocking the view down the pitch.

We're early and the ground fills up around us. It's probably without about ten minutes to go I think 'I've never been in a crowd like this'. Not on a terrace anyway. There's a sway and an edge to it. I'm not as tall as I will eventually be and I have to stand on tiptoes at times and lean to find space over people's shoulders through which to see. I'm coming to the age where sometimes my dad's presence will embarress me but as the ground fills up I'm glad he's there. He watched football in the 60s. At Bloomfield, at Old Trafford, on bigger terraces and in crowds I can only dream of. He's not phased and I am comforted by this.

I am old enough to have sat, on a sandstone block outside of my house, excited for the cup semi finals, my whole world view narrowed down to sound of a transister radio speaker listening, ever more dumbstruck, ever less innocent as Peter Jones slowly but surely evoked the horror of Hilsborough.

Whilst I know theres only about twenty steps and no barriers in front of the pitch, this is the first time I've really experienced that sense of there being nowhere to go and of the power of the crowd. This isn't the seats and there are more than 4000 here. 'Gazeeeeert' man is only partially visible as he makes his way round and the sweet smell of second hand fag smoke is drifting from the crowd which seems to tumble down the steps away from me.

West Brom have swagger and are riding high. You can tell this, even as they warm up. My dad remarks 'they look bigger than us' - They have players like Bob Taylor who is dynamite, Andy Hunt who is brilliant on Championship Manager, Simon Garner, somewhat of a North West legend, David Speedie who only a year before was playing for Liverpool and most incongrously of all, given the surroundings, are managed by none less than Oswaldo Ardiles, a true world beating sensation of both domestic and international football. It's probably until we play Chelsea and Ruud Gullit a few years down the line that we'll see as renowned a name at Bloomfield.

I can't tell you the exact team we put out that day. I have long since let go the programmes I have from that era and the internet doesn't tell me. What is for certain is whilst we had some quality in Tricky Trev, Eyresy and Dave Bamber and heart in the likes of Gary Briggs and Mike Davies, none of our side had been recently playing for Liverpool and one of our team was Steve Spooner. Andy, oh Andy, Andy, oh Andy Watson had just joined and hadn't yet cemented his status as the follow up to Jesus Christ (superstar) but week in and week out the side had the feeling of (shorn of players like Paul Groves and Alan Wright and the aging Andy Garner) being short of class. Players like Bonner, Beech, Mitchell, Murphy, Stoneman and Gouck all either not quite ready or not quite qood enough, Phil Horner, Ian Gore and the like gave everything and we loved them, but they were never going to go on from us to greater heights.

(*edit - someone online, kindly dug the team out - I've left the piece as it is, as I prefer it as memory, but suffice to say, the fact we were playing the unknown Chris Speak and they had the rather better known David Speedie, spoke volumes about their strength in depth) 

In short, we were likely to get battered.

The game is a hazy memory and what follows is like recalling a dream. Some moments are razor sharp and others are faded and blurred into complete oblivion.

The roar as we appeared from the tunnel in the corner of the pitch. Ticker tape launched and Billy clenching his fists. The action that followed must have been a candidate for the most garish game of all time, our kit (by exclusive Parisian designer 'Pelada') a particularly vibrant Tangerine where as West Brom favoured a green and yellow mess of a shirt over their traditional and more reserved dark blue and white.

Good side, horrible kit

The kop swaying with noisy fans, loud, loud, loud. Blackpool singing back. It's a deafening experience. It's like the Maracana. It must be. It can't be much louder than this.

And then it gets louder, because we score early on and I don't know where I am as we're catapulted around. The Jungle at Parkhead, the Holte End, the Stretford End, the Gwadlys Street has nothing on this little unsung strip of terrace at this moment. I remember the goal as a simple tap in from a low cross and when I check it against a sketchy match report I find online, I discover, to my infinite pleasure, I am right. Bamber nods down, Eyres pulls back and Phil Horner (just about the least exotic footballer in the world but right now, the best) finishes it off.

My memory is suspect - I don't recall what end the goals were scored at or exactly when. In my minds eye (and I've never seen the game since) everything was at the South Paddock end but the timing of the goals says that can't be true.

I remember after the joy of scoring so early came the terror. They're really good and now we've roused them and we've got 80 minutes to defend against this lot.

When they equalise, it seems inevitable. The kop roars with its empty roofless sound but with such a big crowd in its like a percussive wave that stuns the ground. There's a silence and a folorn feeling. They're too good for us and we're in trouble at the foot of the table. The optimism of the early goal only makes the inevitability worse.

I can't remember who was in goal. I guess it was Lee Martin (TinTin) and I recall seeing him seeming shrink and the goal get bigger as they piled forward. We're heroic in defence and they're frustrated but seemingly indefateaguable, pouring forward again and again.

Somewhere in all this is half time. I don't know where exactly it fits into the action, but it involved a relief from the crush. My dad always stayed where he was so we wouldn't lose our spot and I went for the dubious relief of the toilets and then the kiosk in the South East corner for two pies and a sight of Transister Radio man, all beard and outsized radio relaying scores from far and wide - seemingly permanently resident in that corner of the ground.

We surely can't beat this guy? 

The opening of the second half is much like the first half ends, with them on top and me with  my heart in my now pie filled mouth. Then (and I'll admit this only came back after reading the report) it's Phil Horner again, with a stinging effort that's well saved and there's a feeling of optimism and hope. Maybe they've thrown everything at it. Maybe they've had too many chances and we've just might have a hope?

To this day, I still think any other manager is borrowing the 'Tangerine Army' chant off Billy and we chant it till our throats are raw and finally the Baggies fans are getting edgy, their full voiced roar is becoming urgent and tense.

Then we score. In my mind, the ball finds a little pocket of space just inside a crowded box and Horner drills it, through a mass of legs, past a flat footed and unsighted keeper. The sketchy match report does little to disabuse me of that image. Whatever the truth, there is no doubt about the celebration as the whole ground hits a peak of manic proportions and I think it's the first time I experience that sensation of kind of blacking out but remaining conscious at the same time. It's a beautiful moment but it's tinged as all goals like this, against a bigger, better side are, with the knowledge that now we've got hope and it's the hope that kills you.

Ian Gore - could not have given more. 

They come again and again. Ian Gore is heroic in defense and we're maybe a bit lucky. I don't remember a specific moment, I just remember players throwing themselves in front of shots and into the tackles. I remember Throstles players being quicker and better but ours just wanting it, just desperately wanting it more and being enraptured by their teamwork and last ditch efforts. I recall vividly, desperately wanting it to be over as soon as possible but simultaneously wanting the floodlit dusk, where the breath of the crowd and the players alike hung in the air, where the blood and sweat thundered and where the noise ebbed and swelled all around, to never, ever end.

But finally, it did, and the resulting sheer relief and elation, I can still feel to this moment. The lifting of all the tension and the cry of delight that we'd won. We'd won and the game would stay won. We'd have still won on the drive home, we'd have won when I went to bed and when I got up in the morning. They couldn't come back now. They were bigger, faster, more famous and basically better at football than us, but we cut them down to size with effort and no little magic and thus we applaud and we chant as our shattered heroes, socks round their ankles and shirts untucked and dirtied applaud us back and this seems to go on and on in a way that never seems to happen now.

We won and 27 years later we've still won that game and I was still there. They went up in the end and we survived by more points than 3. It didn't save us, take us up and it wasn't a derby or even a massive giant killing but it was and still is, my favourite 90 minutes of football ever. It was the game, I think, where I knew that nothing is better than being there. That all the Liverpool and Utd fans were wrong. Nothing beats being there.

I'm glad I can't look it up. It might lose its gloss.

Everything is a dream. A tangerine one.

UTMP