One Night in Turin

'One Night in Turin', a documentary about England at the 1990 World Cup, was shown for one night only in a few cinemas across the country this week, so we went along, not least because our mate Stuart Hancock had composed the score. It wasn't bad, though I think a sharper, more highbrow film could have emerged - close-ups of Chris Waddle's face as he took his hoofed penalty and the aftermath as West German players celebrated around him, the freeze-frames just before dramatic goals etc were great, but it kept sliding into jingoistic rhapsodies. The slightly grubby, rough-edged play and depiction of the fag-end of English hooliganism seemed a world away from the rainbowish, pan-global glamour of the Premiership, or so I thought: more used to watching 'Looking for Eric' or 'The Damned United' among polite, art-going members of the public, I found myself surrounded by the worst sort of stereotypical fan. Almost all entirely male, oafish, skin the colour of uncooked pastry, aggressively bull-headed, plastic sloshing cup of lager held aloft, they depressingly lived up to the football fan of yore depicted onscreen: jeering whenever someone non-white/male/thin/straight appeared, making derogatory comments about the Minister for Sport for being a bit lispy and ginger, about the girl that the tabloids suggested had spent the night with a few players apparently not looking shaggable enough. They did calm down as the film went on, and as Gary Oldman's ludicrously rapturous narration became loftier, but it was a dispiriting experience. In the age of quid-for-kid days, all-seaters, a female ref and commentator or two, the old order hasn't quite gone away.

Wycombe are, of course, down, but at least did it with serious bloodthirstiness, dragging poor Gillingham down kicking and screaming with them by putting a third goal past them. OUCH; that has to hurt. Unlike the gasping Gills fans, ripped off the fish hook and into the bottom of the boat, it seems WWFC fans had a great time, making our Big Drop into something of a party atmosphere. Ah, the gallows humour. WWFC have always had that 'it was better in the Conference' mentality, at least amongst the 'ole gits I used to stand betwixt; I think a lot of fans are confident we'll do much better at a lower level, and with Gary Waddock given a wee bit of spending money. Roll on, next season.

Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain*

The last time I walked down Leyton High Road towards the Matchroom Stadium was in November 2004, on my second date with a lovely young rake who, apart from watching England on the telly occasionally, had no interest in the footer. I, on the other hand, being a girl with lower league blue blood bubbling in my veins, noticed how close said date-ee lived to the ground and worked my magic... We sat shivering in the away stand giggling at Leyton Orient's half-ground with two sides of the ground mere rubble. As I recall, the match contained the rather unprecedented event of the ref getting clattered and stretchered off, and that Keith Ryan's boys (YES! Post Tony Adams, my old heartthrob was briefly player-caretaker-manager) eventually won 2-1. Had WWFC lost, who knows what my fate might have entailed: maybe my date might have thought I was a deluded weirdo and galloped hurriedly off in the other direction, possibly into the arms of some cricket-obsessed Sloane or something.

In May 2010, I was back on the high street towards the ground, with the same chap, now my rather smashing husband, who though not affiliated to one team, does keep tabs on Wycombe for me and shares many a happy MOTD-watching evening on the sofa. The ground's changed too, now with a whole FOUR ends, amusingly with new flats poking through at each corner, which can only have been sold to hardened Orient fans gagging for a view of the match from their sofa.

This date had been in my diary all season, as it's one of the few I can make what with me teaching on Saturdays, but I didn't know then how crucial it would be. If we won this and our final game, and the two teams above us lost, we'd be home and dry, escaping relegation by the skin of our rattly teeth.

As it was, we were fair to middling in the first half, piled on ridiculous amounts of pressure in the second (Gareth Ainsworth particularly steaming down the right wing) but didn't possess a single man capable of sticking the darned thing in the net. Then the O's scored a pretty fine goal, the home fans found their Eyjafjallajoekull-like voices, we couldn't recover, and they finished the job with another towards the end. To be honest, I had already, months ago really, resigned myself to our sad fate. Depending on others losing is never helpful. Instead, the weather painted our inexorable path: I watched as the sky deepened to a bruising grey, and the air thickened to mist, then quiet, prickling drizzle, and finally sad, fat raindrops, deluging by the end as the boys stoutly played their way into League Two. It was really rather beautiful.

It was still great. Who cares if we're down? I was proud to be a part of the lustily-baying masses, (even though my musician's ear was constantly analysing the exact pitch-slippage throughout a chant of 'Wycombe 'til I die' - a slip of at least a minor 3rd! - and the accidental pushing of the classic footy rhythm from a 4/4 time signature to 15/16 - brilliant!), staying resolutely until the end to applaud the soaked lads, to prove our love was not unabated, that we would be there in League Two just the same. I wouldn't have been anywhere else but there, picking Cornish pasty-gristle out of my teeth and drinking THE worst hot chocolate ever (rubbing my face into a dead cat would have been more pleasurable) and chuckling at the frustrated old geezers next to me politely heckle our subs ('Harrold, you plonker! Take him back off!'). I collected a sky-blue balloon and took it all the way home to Bethnal Green, where it will stay until it wilts, loses its last breaths, and sags to nothing. There are always more balloons.

* Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain by Fred Rose, 1945

Last Gasp

Urgh, I can hardly bear it. Whilst I was away in Sweden and subsequently trying VERY hard to return to England via a gazillion trains, buses, boats and cars, Andy sent me little nuggety texts: 'Wycombe 2 Hartlepool 0 '; 'Tranmere 0 Wycombe 3'; 'MK Dons 2 Wycombe 3'. These have made my heart feel a little like a flopping guppy who thinks it can still make it back to the ocean from the restaurant filleting board. It's very irritating really, that, being 2nd bottom ALL SEASON, the lads have suddenly decided to toy with my tender and fragile feelings. I was all ready at the basement door, listening to the childlike thumps of Dagenham and Barnet, imagining the simple, unchallenging pleasures of League Two, and suddenly it seems there's a chink of light upstairs from the big boys' room. Damn that Kevin Betsy and Alex Revell, suddenly all shimmering runs and pounding goals. Damn you to hell.

Head To Head With The Godfather: When Kerry Met Steve

In one of my more surreal encounters with the good and great, I went for a drink last night with The Man Who Owns Wycombe Wanderers. Yes. The Boss. Steve Hayes, a very rich and successful man who also owns London Wasps. The Godfather! Having come across this blog, he suggested we meet in my manor, so we hooked up at the Eagle in Shoreditch. Ha ha!

Not being entirely sure why he would want to meet me, I was a little apprehensive that, displeased with my naughty slap-downs of the Blues, he was luring me into a trap. I'd be bundled into a car, and if not actually killed, then at least made to promise to only wax lyrical in future blogs, whilst having a gun pressed to my sweating temples. So I took along my own trusty henchman* for security, giggled at the impassive, sleekly black car outside the pub with the number-plate 'Blues' and waited, slightly nervously, inside.

Turns out he's a rather a nice chap. I had a comedy moment of half-offering to buy the multi-millionaire a drink before he plied us with chips (hhm, my henchman seemed fatally distracted at this point) and, well, just chatted, about Wycombe, and about the future of the club. Hilarious! Rather impressively, Steve likes to get down and dirty with the hoi polloi, and is frequently to be found buying fans drinks, going to supporter's club meetings, and showing old moaners he is keen to lend an ear and be open to ideas. He told me his plans for a new stadium, divulged how much (and how little) some players earn, and who he thought were cloth-eared.

There are a lot of fans who are not keen on Steve. In the summer last year, he took over WWFC good and proper, wresting supporter control from the club with something of an aggressive ultimatum. He's been criticised as a bully and a bit of a control freak. It's a tricky one, but it's a fact as bald as Pierluigi Collina that WWFC has a lamentable lack of support, given its catchement area, and no matter what the old codgers think, the club needs refreshing in order to start tempting the slack-eyed masses in Bucks and make some money. There's surely a few more thousand residents who are ripe for the plucking - where else do they think they can go to watch half-decent live football? It's rather fascinating to consider how a club could suffuse and enrich a community, which is exactly what Steve wants to do, even if he will be bringing the dastardly rugger-buggers along with him. His plans for an eye-catching, totally sustainable new ground, prioritising community and the environment, fashion him as one of the better sort of businessman, albeit maybe a rather brutal one. It's perhaps all to be taken with a pinch of salt, especially after reminding myself of this article. But it's done, and you might as well look at the positives of his takeover.

So, we discussed the economic ins and outs mano a girlo, as if I was freakin' Alan Sugar or something. And I actually felt that I was being USEFUL! As if I had some insight both into the world of education and today's YOOF, being, y'know, 31 and all, ahem. Even though Andy and I are arty-farty East Londoners and Steve is a pinstripe suit-wearing, wodges-of-£100s-coming-out-of-his ears sort of fellow, the blessed common denominator of le football levels all.

We left with kisses on the cheeks and him telling me to let him know when I'm next at an away match. I'm going to email him some thoughts, especially for how to get a bunch of young keen fans involved online, as hysterically he thinks I'm some sort of IT whizzkid. I'll probably become his omnipresent, svengali-like adviser a la Yoko to John, or slightly more demoniacally like Mandelson to Blair. Watch this space.

SPECIAL 'LATE KICK-OFF LONDON AND SOUTH-EAST' EDITION OF SHIRTWATCH:
In a cross between a slightly sleazier Viggo Mortensen (hair) and Sean Bean (voice), WWFC's Gareth Ainsworth, sitting with his knees just a little too lothario-angled apart, wore a safe fitted stripey number as he talked about his caretaker manager job at QPR and about his sending-off against Millwall last weekend and the ensuing 21-man brawl. Whoops!

I also practically bawled at the wee retrospective featuring WWFC's Wembley play-off win to take us into the then League Two (now One) back in 1994, and especially at Dave Carroll's wandering wonder-goal. Sob!

* Also known as Andy

(Not Quite) The Bees' Knees

I made the most of my Saturday off by visiting Griffin Park for the Wycombe game against Brentford. Wycombe are frankly standing trepidatiously on the gallows' trapdoor now, just waiting for the snappity-necked welcome back to League Two; I got so excited by the BBC's website updates when we'd drawn level with Yeovil last week, only to blink and see the darn thing refresh to a 4-1 loss. Argh! But a free Saturday with a London game is a lucky thing indeed, so off Andy and I traipsed to the deepest south-west, wrapped up to the nines, drinking as much peatboggy tea as we could bear to keep our minds and toes from numbing.

We were perched in a rather benign corner of the knock-kneed ground, with the hardcore WWFC elite sounding sonorous, and possibly bearing thunder sheets and timpani, given the impressive noise, in a terrace underneath us; up on the seated level we just had a chap querulously crooning 'we're winning away...' and a row of flat-cappers leaning over the front rail to heckle the lino with crotchety gusto like the two old codgers in the Muppet Show.

It started badly, with both Brentford and WWFC sliding about on the filthy scrap of a pitch, which looked enjoyably 'Damned Utd'-era in muddiness levels. I haven't seen Wycombe live since the Millwall away game, and was a bit disheartened to watch them looking as confused as if they'd just been beamed in from some distant dimension and had no clue who they were or, indeed, what this leather globe was trundling at their feet. But it picked up, and whilst the Bees looked mostly like bumbling drones, fat on honey, Wycombe - keeping the ball in their attacking half for much of the time - were like buzzing, hungry workers. In particular, Keates (though he's about as big as a Subbuteo figure), GI Joe-a-like Oliver and Chris Westwood looked lively. It's a bit confusing having Kevin McLeod playing in midfield and not serenely but forcefully questioning some bonkers-rich couple about their plans for building a lighthouse-cum-windmill in the middle of Shoreditch, but I went with it. It's really only the extremely unkingly Harrold who seems like a total lubbock to me. The only excuse for his lumberish behaviour - running with his head down, generally falling over at every opportunity - WOULD be if he had a freakin' arrow in his eye.

Aaanyway, we needled at the home side until Betsy popped home a cross missed by most of the rest of the team, and kept at them until half time and for much of the second half. Then on 75 minutes, the Bees unstuck themselves from their honey-induced stupor enough to score a rather good goal, deflate both away fans and team, and see the match through to a probably fair draw. So we stay second bottom which is very likely where we'll stay until that hangman's drum comes a-rollin'....

Wet Wet Wet

What a flippin' diluvian weekend. Just as well the WWFC boys have been resting upon both a) their laurels after two whole triumphant wins and b) their arses, sitting out the FA Cup 2nd round games (pah! who needs the FA Cup anyway...) and thus not having to boinnng all over the pitch like the Princess And The Pea on her mattresses, as did many a Prem player all weekend....

Match of the Day awards:

Lookeylikey of the Day: Fulham's Roy Hodgson and the cyclist kid from French animated film 'Belleville Rendez-Vous'; it's all in the nose, I promise you!:Moniker of the Day That Andy Desperately Wishes He Had: Mario Melchiot, sounding like a sexy but evil prince in a saccharine Disney film.

Most Aesthetically Pleasing Player of the Day: Wigan's Hugo Rodallega, fervently thanking god not for his apple-y cheekbones but for the goal he scored after last week's Super-Drub by Spurs.

Goal of the Day: Jimmy Bullard, who sports a classic '70's-midfielding-mucker sort of look, and his equaliser for Hull, whom I have a massive soft spot for. Mostly for his immaculately-staged recreation of Phil Brown's classic finger-jab (when he made his team sit in a circle at half-time like naughty primary children, admonishing them in front of the whole ground) for his celebration.

Quote of the Day: 'Goals change games' says Burnley manager Owen Coyle, causing a rabbit-in-headlights epiphany for me, who thought the chaps just dashed around pushing each other over and scuffing their knees in an effort to win points...

Hair Here

Here is Gareth Ainsworth, brought in by the gaffer and one of those real-live honest journeymen: before his long stint at QPR he trod the turf at Wimbledon (the old school version), Port Vale, Lincoln, Cardiff and more. He is WWFC's new no. 31 and a fizzy little fella if ever there was one, catching the eye at the Millwall game with his feisty turns down the right wing. He made a real difference in our first win in three millennia or whatever it was, and won man of the match in YES! our next win on Tuesday at home against Brentford. We have now risen to third from bottom, which feels as lofty as sitting on a little heavenly cloud strumming an Irish harp and eating manna. Gareth even gave us a classic quote on the WWFC website to rival Alan Green's one about 'the rush of Seamen', saying cheerfully after his busy few days on the pitch: 'I'm as stiff as a board!'. Glad to know he enjoys it to such lengths. Etc. BUT I have one problem with Gareth and that is his hair. As any fool know, men + short hair = lovely; men + long hair = AESTHETIC DISASTER OF EPIC PROPORTIONS (there are two exceptions to the rule: Viggo Mortensen in the Lord of the Rings movies and Torres, rrrr...). Poor Gareth is no Fernando and with his attempt at the Italian stallion (circa 1995) is only holding himself back. Pray, compare his current look with one, though admittedly a bit of a teddy-boy-for-the-noughties sort of vibe, of old to the right, to see my point aptly proved.

P.S. Chairboys Gasroom readers will no doubt disapprove of this sort of thing, but give over, I am a GIRL! My thanks to those nice chaps on correcting my stats gaffs which are being duly corrected. I don't have time to get all my facts right as I'm usually doing my nails and dribbling all over shots of Torres. Arf.