Bath City's relegation and sport - it's the hope that kills you

One of the many wonderful things about sport is the collective sense of hope that occurs seconds before the first ball is kicked, thrown or batted away at the start of a season.


Thus, at a couple of minutes before 3pm on a Saturday afternoon in August, football supporters who follow teams from Clevedon United to Manchester United all secretly thought “this is going to be our season”. Within maybe a few minutes some may have doubted that thought, but for that glorious moment before it all kicks off, everybody can see only glory.

That is how Bath City’s loyal supporters may well have felt as their team lined up on August 13 at Mansfield Town where they went on to pick up a creditable draw to start the season in style. The team had gone into the campaign on the back of a superb top ten finish in their first foray into the Blue Square Premier League and with a new, enthusiastic chair(wo)man on board, hopes were high on and off the field for a season to remember.

Well, it has certainly been that – but sadly for all the wrong reasons.

For last Tuesday night, City became the first club in the top five divisions of the English game to be relegated. Cast adrift at the bottom of the table they didn’t even have the opportunity to influence their own fate as it was decided by a result elsewhere which left the club down and indeed out of a league they seemed so at ease in 12 months ago.

It is hard to take much comfort from the season that has passed and to those loyal Bath City fans – and we should never under-estimate how loyal so many of them are even when the club has performed so consistently poorly on the pitch – this will be a very tough period indeed. To be looking down the barrel of relegation before you’ve even had the chance to open an Easter egg just doesn’t seem right.

But, in this gloomiest of weeks for local football fans, I want to try and stay positive. The second season after promotion is always notoriously difficult – it is sport’s equivalent of the second album syndrome – and City week in, week out were competing against teams with bigger squads, bigger budgets and bigger crowds. The fact that they did so spectacularly well last year seems even more remarkable now and I hope the club and their fans will remember that. And, once they have licked their open wounds in the coming weeks, I hope they will start to think afresh about next year when they will be in a league where they will go from being the underdogs to being among the top dogs again and the winning habit will return.

I watched City myself last Friday night as I returned to my hometown Tamworth to watch the fixture between my two favourite non-league teams and it was great to see City perform so doggedly there and claim an unexpected victory.  I hope for the rest of the season they will exhibit a pride and even maybe a sense of freedom now their inevitable (?) fate has been sealed.

Bath City are a great club and an important part of the local community. I sincerely hope that they will regroup in the summer and come back stronger, fitter and more determined when the 2012/13 campaign begins. Oh, and there is one thing we can all do to help as well. If more of us watch this team more often then it will have more resources to be able to ensure that horrendous seasons such as the one they are currently living in are very much the exception not the norm.


Bath needs a strong football club – but it also needs us as a city to invest in that to make it happen.

How I faced the Tebbit test when Bath faced Tamworth

On Saturday, in Bath, I was asked by two different people, if I was struggling with the ‘Tebbit test’.

For those who don’t remember, former Tory hard-liner Norman Tebbit said that all those people who move to a new country should, in effect, support their adopted home in sporting terms as a sign of commitment to their host nation.

I always thought that this was hokum as I have friends and relatives in countries such as Australia and America who love their new abodes but are still fiercely pro-British. And so if they are allowed to ‘fail’ the test why can’t those people coming into the UK?

However, the question of split loyalties was what I still faced in a sporting sense on Saturday when the wonders of football saw me attend a match featuring the team of my adopted community, Bath City, against the team from my home town who I have followed for decades – Tamworth FC.

It has been said that men are more likely to change their wives than their football teams but I’ve always believed that when you arrive in a new area you should at least try and support the local clubs – without, crucially, abandoning your original ones.

It meant that on arriving here I immediately became a Bath Rugby follower (although that is easy as I didn’t have a rugby club before) and I duly adopted Bath City as my local football team.

But, on Saturday, as Bath ran out against Tamworth, I realised that you can’t change your heart and although I stayed as neutral as possible throughout and cheered chances at both ends, I knew that ultimately you can’t ever leave your true sporting love.

What I also realised – as I’ve always passionately believed – is that football at non-league level really is a joy and I thoroughly enjoyed my time at Twerton Park as much for the camaraderie and fun amongst both sets of supporters as for the action on the pitch.

As someone who began his association with non-league football by selling programmes at Tamworth FC’s ground and then spending more than a decade reporting both home and away on the club for my old local paper, I had the pleasure of travelling all around the country and meeting so many people whose main passion for their home town was manifested in their local football team.

The grounds weren’t always beautiful (and the football certainly wasn’t) but there is a real spirit about grassroots sport that makes all the shenanigans of the multi-millionaires in the Premiership seem like a different, and far less pleasant, world.

So, my overriding thoughts about Saturday’s game were all positive. I realised how much I liked and admired Bath City and their fans and I realised again that, once the seed of love for a team is planted inside you, that love never dies. As the chant goes Tamworth FC 'I'll love you til I die...'

You’ll notice, incidentally, that I haven’t mentioned the score of Saturday’s game and that is because I genuinely think I was the only person in the ground who didn’t care who won. Put simply, I just didn’t want either side to lose.

So did I fail the Tebbit test? Possibly.

But did I remember again how much I love non-league football? Definitely.

How I nearly fell out love with football...

There are not many things in my life which are cast-iron certainties but one of them is that I love football. Always have, always will.

Or, so I thought . . .

For, as the last ball of the season was kicked this week I realised just how much the past football season had actually passed me by and I wondered if I was alone among my fellow footil fans in feeling this.

The reason I think that this has been a season that I will happily forget almost instantly is that although I still regard this as the sport of sports and a truly beautiful game, the occasional ugliness it produces has really put me off.

For this, I don’t blame the teams that I follow myself – Nottingham Forest, Tamworth FC and now Bath City if you’re asking – but the game on a much broader level. It has totally tested my patience this year.

I think it was the World Cup that first started to dent my usually never-ending love affair. Like so many of my generation who are too young to truly appreciate what 1966 meant, I have had my hopes and dreams smashed and shattered so often by our national football team that I am amazed why I still keep believing.

So, at least year’s World Cup even though I wasn’t as wildly optimistic as in previous tournaments, I still harboured the secret belief that England could go against 40 years of evidence and win the big pot. The fact that they didn’t wasn’t really that much of a surprise but the way half-hearted multi-millionaires timidly screwed up my dreams in a ball and kicked them into the South African sun left quite a mark on me.



I watched our final German capitulation in the sun at Glastonbury and a quiet voice said in my ear me “never again. It’s not worth it”.

As the season duly began my enthusiasm returned a little bit – particularly watching the ultimate David’s (Blackpool) taking on the obvious Goliath’s – but then the world’s stage intervened again and the appalling way that England’s genuine and honest bid to host the 2018 World Cup was dismissed for all kinds of reasons (none of them footballing) made my enthusiasm sink again.

To see Prince William, David Cameron and David Beckham smiled at by people who then stabbed them in the back made me think that football was sinking. And this week’s Stalin-esque ‘one man one vote’ reappointment of the always disgraced candidate in the election for FIFA President hardly helped. Football? Pah!



But......

Just as I was beginning to think that my love affair with football was going to struggle to ever reach its previous heights, I saw two things this week that reminded me why I loved it in the first place.

I was sad to see a British club lose in the Champions League final on Saturday (and that is being honest, I am no stereotypical 'anti United' bore) but I felt nothing but admiration and respect for the Barcelona team that beat them. They truly played beautiful, inspiring football. Now THAT is what I call football I thought. And then on Monday the somewhat more humble Swansea – who also try to play football the right way – became our ‘new Blackpool’ and proved that unlikely dreams can come true in this splendidly infuriating game. Hallelujah.

So, England’s multi-million pound flops, FIFA and Sepp Blatter you nearly did it.
You nearly made me fall out of love with football.
But you failed.

Roll on next season.

The joke wasn't on you this year

No doubt many of you looking at the Bath Chronicle of April 1 would have been on the hunt for that classic old newspaper trick - the April Fool joke.

Perhaps you're thinking our story in that week's paper about an owl found sitting on a doorstep in the hope of finding its owners was such a story? Or perhaps you were suspicious about our yarn about a proposed exhibition on how your choice of shoes can reveal your personality? Or, perhaps, you were convinced that our April Fool joke this year was that we have given publicity to a man who has written a book about . . . how to get publicity.

Well, you would be wrong in all cases and it is because fact can often be stranger than fiction that we didn't actually do an official April Fool's Day joke at all this year.

I'm sure over the years there have been many great ones in newspapers on this particular day but the truth is they can also fall spectacularly flat – or worse.

I remember many years ago as a sports reporter in Tamworth writing an April Fool joke about a Tamworth FC player – by the name of Willie Gilmour – whom I 'hilariously' claimed was being scouted by many big clubs.

Willie, bless him, wasn't exactly the greatest player to ever grace a pitch and I assumed most of the fans of the team I was writing about would guess this was something of a wind up. However, when one of Willie's relatives rang up in a flurry of excitement to ask for more information as she didn't know about this 'story', I felt pretty bad and realised my joke hadn't exactly hit the mark.

There was, however, a much worse one in a local newspaper that is still often brought out at training courses to let us all have a collective wince.

It was a paper based in the north which had devoted its entire front page on one April 1 to a story about how the local council had gone bust and all services such as daycare, education and bin collection had been suspended with immediate notice.

Apart from being spectacularly unfunny, the problem with this is that too many people believed it and the newspaper (an even more so the entirely innocent council) were bombarded with calls from tearful people worried about the implications of this disaster.

Suffice to say, the real joke was on the editor who was allowed to spend more time with his family soon after . . .

No, if you want real comic fun this then can I point you in the direction of the Bath Comedy Festival which began its second year of hilarity on April 1?

The festival has been put together by the energetic and enthusiastic Alex Timms who has once again produced a fantastic and varied programme which will see all manner of comic turns in venues throughout Bath and indeed on the streets of the city.

We wish Alex and his comic entertainers every success and we hope that their jokes are funnier than councils going bust...

Excellent view of the Lifde of Brian (Clough)

OK, I know I am biased here – I became a Nottingham Forest fan in the 1980s to go alongside my beloved hometown team Tamworth FC simply BECAUSE I love Brian Clough so much – but I have to say the new film about him, The Damned United, is really very, very good and any football/sports fan will love it.

I had previously read and thoroughly enjoyed the book of the same name (which is an absorbing read but is very dark and often quite depressing) and having seen the Clough family distance themselves from this film I was in two minds about seeing it. But I really hope the Clough family DO actually see it because although the book is slightly ambiguous the movie shows Brian at his very best and is a joy to watch from start to finish.

In case you don’t, know the film centres on two main events in Cloughie's remarkable life – his success and eventual resignation/sacking at Derby and then his bizarre 44 day reign at ‘dirty’ Leeds where he was motivated by his hatred for their title-winning boss Don Revie. Revie stood for everything Cloughie disliked and the tension between the two men when they meet is palbable.

The film as a whole is riveting from the ‘kick off’ and also (like Clough) it is both very funny and very unpredictable.

Cloughie made many mistakes – as Forest fan I know this - the signing of Justin Fashanu anyone? – but he also had the ability to make people walk over hot coals for him and to make the ordinary extraordinary and this film portrays both sides of this character perfectly. And it is perfectly acted too. Michael Sheen (pictured here) is simply brilliant (as he was as Tony Blair in The Queen and The Deal) in the title role and the supporting cast are equally impressive with Timothy Spall’s Peter Taylor and Jim Broadbent as Sam Longson, the Derby chairman especially impressive.

In addition it is also a wonderful evocation of the 1970s. I recall that Leeds side really well (I could have named them without much problem) and the film captures them all very well (even if Johnny Giles is a bit too tall!) but it is more than just the football that rings true. The film is brilliant on the fashion, the language, the cars and the fact that football was a bit of a tuppenny-happenny sport then compared to now (there is a great scene of Cloughie preparing the Derby County dressing room where each player just gets a mangy looking towel, an orange and….an ashtray).

It is as far away from Man United and their masseuses and chefs as well, Billy Davies’ current Nottingham Forest is from the European Cup which Cloughie won twice.

If you are nostalgic for the 70s, love football, love Cloughie and hate Leeds (but can’t exactly remember why!) then this is the movie for you.

Go see.