There's a malaise. A sense of us being the doldrums. The good ship tangerine becalmed without the wind of progress in its sails. The storm of noise that urged us on is now a squall of dissatisfaction. Anyone you talk to is more likely to diagnose a terminal fault than they are to proffer any optimism.
At Bournemouth last year, we were utter gash for the first 45 minutes. So much so that I said at half time to someone 'I don't know why we don't just chuck the kids on and do something weird for the second half because there's no way this is working - we might as well get battered and learn something' - but... we kept singing and singing and singing. The second half was one of my favourite experience watching 'Pool ever. The team responded to that blind, foolish, stupid, illogical belief. I have absolutely no doubt that we lifted them on that day when their heads really should have dropped. The point gained was brilliant because it was one of those rare, magical days that stay in your bloodstream for years - where it feels exactly as if you chanted yourself raw and somehow influenced the game. You look at the table and think.. +1 - I did that. Me and the fella next to me and the person next to him and behind him and in the row below and up at the back and all around. Drunken, glassy eyed. Upright and proper. Woman and kids, lads day out, old fella, flask and blanket, hair gel, wrap of coke, perfume, lynx spray, sandwiches wrapped up neatly stinking of piss, stinking of ale, nervous eyed, swaggering, ill and tired, fighting fit, thin, fat, male, female, tall, short and whatever fucking else there is. All of the world. The extremes, the in-betweens. The mass. As one. Like nothing else in the world.
Now, whilst I get that very clearly people don't believe in Appleton - he's a single man and he's not playing in the game. As many also say, he doesn't really do much in the game so it's our choice whether the atmosphere is leaden and heavy or whether we make a fucking noise cos he's not going to do owt either way. There's a massive 3 points on the line. It's huge. Whether Appleton stays or goes. Whether a new man comes in. Whether that new man is one of the ludicrously out of reach names that people keep suggesting or the sentimental choices that have no logic behind them or a random coach who looks too young to tell Gary Madine what to do in any situation, let alone that it's time to go to bed now because there's a game tomorrow, it doesn't matter. We need those three points. Whatever it means for whoever. We need them.
Whatever Appleton does before the game, we still need the points. Whether he picks the team you want or whether he puts Poveda in central defence and Jordan Thorniley on the wing. We cannot be sulky, sullen. We've got to have fire. We've got to demand that they're quicker to the ball, faster, hungrier. When Sonny tries a pass that curls beyond a run or Charlie drops it short and his clever touch doesn't quite come off, we've got to roar encouragement like they're the greatest footballers that ever lived and next time will be a triumph of footballing legend. When Jerry chases one down, we've got to have a full rendition of all three of his songs. When Gaz knocks someone over, we've got to make them feel like they're concussed by noise. When the ball gets vaguely near Josh Bowler, we've got to make them feel like a storm is coming. Every time there's a goal kick, it's the start of a new moment. Every flick, every kick, every single little moment we have to be on their side. We've got some fucking good players. If they don't get made to feel that way by the manager or the coaching, make them feel that way with the noise. Make them taller, quicker, stronger. Make them fearless.
That's what we need. We don't pick the manager, we don't get to sack him mid game either. That's literally never happened* From whistle to whistle, I couldn't give a fuck about Mansford and his contact book, I don't care about processes and strategies. I don't give a fuck about financial disparity or East Stand plans. I don't care about the trudging turgid away days or the collapses at home. I don't care about what has happened or what is yet to come. Financial fair play and regulators and FIFA corruption and kits made in sweatshops and endless fucking cunts trying to leech money out of a game... you could moan about football all week. I know, I do. I don't care now though... It's matchday**
*Actually, it probably has, but you get the point.
** that depends obviously, on when you read this.
I care only about the moment. About the team in tangerine. The only one in football who combines that magical colour with white. The team that is the greatest fucking thing in your pitiful little life. The team that takes us to such heights that make all the other things disappear. The team that can have you hugging strangers and tumbling down steps. The team that when they're playing and the whole ground is singing, can make you feel something that feels like a blissful nothing. The club we thought we might lose and the club we got back.
We do that, we give everything, we absolutely demand, in fire, in fury and in flares, in beats of the drum and in the rolling chorus of our hoarse voices, never stopping, never giving up, never giving way, never stepping back - then we've done our bit. What will be will be. Que sera. What others do, their mistakes, their stubbornness, their misguided decisions, their confusion, their ill thought out strategies or their misplaced loyalties - that's for them to deal with. All that will roll around again at 4.50pm. It'll be there, ugly, frustrated, angry along with everything else that weighs heavy on your soul.
There's no ambiguity. There's no question what the vast majority of the fanbase think. It's clear. Whether people think Appleton is on a one man mission to destroy us from the inside or is an unlucky fella who tried something and didn't get the rub of the green. There's barely a soul who thinks he's going to be here much longer. It doesn't matter. We've gone over it and over it and over it. Whether you think that we should have/could have/any fucking idiot would have... It doesn't matter. No one has got anything left to say. It's been said. It will be said again.
None of that is a reason to not give everything to the players and turn the game into a war. We're up against one of the few sides who've looked consistently as ill suited to football at this level as we have at our worst. We can be who we are. Special. Beautiful. Different. FUCKING TANGERINE FOR FUCKS SAKE. Or we can be a bunch of pissy, pathetic gripers, tutting at the back and grumbling at the politics of it all because the boss is making silly decisions. There's enough of that horrific shite in the week, there's enough fucking miserable cunts being miserable and enough stuff to be miserable about. There's enough of feeling powerless in life, enough of being just swept along being quiet and compliant and just sighing at all of it. Fuck that. Fuck that. Fuck that.
This three points matters. It matters in the context of this season. It matters in the context of the next and probably the one after and so on and so on.
Actually, probably, in the interests of fighting hyperbole if we think about what we know about the universe, it's likely nothing actually matters and meaning is just a story we make up but as we've collectively agreed with each other that football does matter and that we all are going to turn up together and pointlessly cheer on one team against another in a competition neither will actually probably ever win then... for fucks sake, we might as well do it well cos it's basically fucking stupid. We could actually do something that wasn't so fucking frustrating with our lives if we wanted.
If you're going to put your life in the hands of a football, club, you might as well fucking go for it. We might as well stand up if we can. We might as well give the ref living hell. We might as well give their keeper absolute hell, we might as well take out the ire and the tension on someone fucking else for one week. It might as well be Huddersfield because frankly, compared to us, who the fuck are they?
Herbert Chapman's project he dropped for someone else. A right bunch of dour bastards who live in the hilly Yorkshire version of Preston where their best thing is a fucking gasometer***. That's nothing compared to a fucking tower and the tower is just the start. Our best player is Stanley Matthews. There's is propably called Tommy Hebbleswick or something like that. He's got 3 caps for England in 1927 and he's built like a ploughman. I literally can't think of anyone who ever played for them apart from Phil Starbuck and that bald lad from when they were briefly good for 5 minutes a bit back. Fuck them. Fuck everyone else
***to be fair, I do quite like gasometers, but I don't think a digression on industrial architecture or the symbolism of local energy in a time of global unrest is quite in keeping with the mood of the rest of this particular blog. To be honest, I quite like Huddersfield in general, but again, talking about that's not really going to be of any use in terms of setting the tone is it?
Without us being us, we're nothing. We're just another club. The actual professional bit of the club, like all clubs, is just some cunt who is rich enough to run it, some cunts he employs to run it for him and some players who dance to their tune. They get their decisions, their boardrooms, their wages, their press releases, their agents, their awards and everything else. They can walk away.
All we get is Saturday afternoon and we're stuck with it. That's it. Might as well make something of it.
We're not just another club though. We all know that. We're so, so, so much more than that. I swear we'd feel better if we remembered it on Saturday, just for a bit.
Onward
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