Hello fellow Dale fans,

When I saw Col's recent request for bloggers, I thought it might be a good place to share bits and pieces of a diary/book/blog thing I wrote covering the 2010-11 season. It heavily features Dale's excellent season back in League One - me and my son had country season tickets that year as we live in Birmingham - but also lots of wider football stuff, broadly on the theme of football addiction. All feedback welcome on whether anyone wants me to share any more of this!

Cheers,

Middale

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Saturday 7th August 2010

At 4.29pm on the first Saturday of the new season, my phone bleeped to indicate a new text message. My first thought was one of selfish irritation at this minor intrusion into my precious time immersed in football, watching Rochdale v Hartlepool at Spotland. This is my chosen form of escapism, so please do not disturb. I don’t want a reminder from my wife Lydia to try and get back home by a certain time. I don’t want any human contact really. Bleep off and leave me alone.

About 20 minutes earlier I’d overheard the conversation of the guy sitting next to me in the TDS Stand behind the goal. The poor sod was going through the motions of rustling up a few half-hearted questions to his wife about what she’d been doing. Had their young son finished his afternoon nap yet? Were they still going to the park? Come on mate, surely you need to set some contractually binding ground rules. It’s pretty obvious you just wanted the conversation finished as soon as possible so that you could give the Dale your undivided attention. They deserve nothing less.

Anyway, it turned out the text was from my friend Pad saying he’s watching East Fife v Airdrie and the score is already 3-3. He’s much more of an occasional fan than me but is up in Scotland doing an Open University course and taking in a game before it begins. I immediately felt jealous and wished I was there with him, watching a goal feast at The New Bayview in sunny Methil, one of the 6 Scottish league grounds I still haven’t visited. Doubly so, as he’s spent the last few days pontificating about whether to see home matches at East Fife, Stenhousemuir or Cowdenbeath. I tried to subtly steer him towards these latter 2 options but no, predictably he’s gone for the ground I haven’t been to just to annoy me. That’s entirely consistent with the nature of the friendship within my circle of friends, which is based on a not-so-varied repertoire of mild-mickey taking, verbose pedantry, wind-ups and put downs. I send back a churlish 2 word response of “good choice” through gritted teeth.

By contrast, goals and entertainment were in short supply at Spotland. It should have been a truly momentous occasion, Dale’s first game in the third tier of English football for 35 years. However, my childlike first day excitement and anticipation was quickly giving way to the realisation that it is going to be a long slog of a season. The tedious drive back down the M6 began to loom large. My car radio had recently packed up so it was going to be CDs only rather than James Alexander-Gordon intoning the all-important classified check. The latest CD I bought by Marina & the Diamonds got it’s first play on the journey up and sounded disappointingly crap with far too much shrill affected screeching. So apart from the 2 singles “Hollywood” and “Oh No” there wasn’t going to be any meaningful respite from a 2 hour post-mortem on the game with Jake. The way the game was progressing as a non-event with 20 minutes to go, 2 minutes analysis would definitely suffice.

Tiredness began to kick in. This trip was hot on the heels of a short family break to Southend, and once the novelty of seeing various Dale debutants with unusually exotic names like Brian Barry-Murphy and Jean Louis Akpa-Akpro had worn off, the whole Spotland experience started to feel curiously diluted. Where was the reassuring familiarity of Daggers (Chris Dagnall), TK (Tom Kennedy) and Higgy (Kallum Higginbotham) controlling possession, passing in neat triangles and generally running the show? Dale were starting to get seriously outpassed, something us fans are accustomed to happening approximately once in a blue moon in the glorious Keith Hill era. Marcus Holness, a young reserve for much of last season, looked especially shaky and vulnerable in the centre of defence.

I started to get a serious sense of déjà vu. The anticipation for this new season had been immense, hell I’d even taken the plunge and bought 10-game country season tickets for me and Jake for the first time ever. However, Rochdale v Hartlepool just ended up feeling like the millionth time I’ve been to a game that’s destined to finish 0-0, and I needed more.

Tuesday 10th August 2010

Three days later and the Dale love kick starts again, albeit belatedly. Away at Barnsley in the Carling Cup, Dale grabbed an unlikely 1-0 victory. They looked particularly clueless in the first half, struggling to put two passes together unless, like introspective crabs, they’re backwards or sideways. The low key atmosphere deep in the heart of the Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire didn’t help either, with 4,000 lost souls scattered around the vast stands of Oakwell and passively observing proceedings as if they were watching some predictably bland rom-com unfold at the cinema. This was certainly a stark contrast to my last visit to Oakwell over 25 years ago, when in the 1980s era of terraces and hooliganism, Birmingham City won a rip-roaring FA Cup tie in front of a hostile full house of baying Yorkshiremen.

Barnsley also managed to irritate me twice before kick off (OK it doesn’t take much as I am turning into Victor Meldrew); first by charging £10 for children to get in having widely advertised the price as £5, then by sticking the Dale fans in the corner section of the stand behind the goal rather than the middle. So Jake and me trudged up about 40 rows and watch from the gods, where we were treated to a panoramic view of the dystopian Barnsley skyline. Jake, in his typical up or down with no middle ground mode, spent most of the first half condemning Dale as certainties for relegation. He has a point, and I’m far from convinced by my half-baked explanations to him that a) new teams always take their time to gel together and b) despite the footballing incompetence on display we were actually somehow holding a Championship team away from home.

When the second half started it was a different story. Dale come out with a renewed sense of purpose and new signing Anthony Elding scored 15 minutes into the half. Tattooed and tubby, his appearance amused us initially as he looked decidedly unfit (aptly enough, as he’s just signed for Dale after completing his latest football spell in the backwaters of Hungary). He bustled around comically and soon acquired an unfortunate habit of arriving precisely where the ball had departed a mere two seconds earlier. Yet hang on, amidst the comedy he somehow contrived to make a difference, even finding the time to miss a great chance before scoring off some combination of his head and shoulder. This unexpected turn of events saw the confidence visibly seeping back into the team, Gary Jones started dominating midfield against his old team and Dale ended up fully deserving this moderately inconsequential victory.

Speaking of stories, just before kick off I turned round and saw a guy about my age watching the game with his son. Nothing very remarkable there, but I’m 99 per cent sure it was Mark Hodkinson, Rochdale’s unofficial writer–in-residence. I’ve never met him but have seen his picture on a website and briefly exchanged emails with him regarding one of his excellent books on Dale.

This probable sighting was a bit of a coincidence as only three days earlier I’d bought his latest hot-off-the-press title “Spotland: The Sun Also Rises”, from the club shop. I read this account of Dale’s glorious promotion season over the weekend. It’s great as always, though it annoyed me that:

a) he’s cornered the market in Dale related writing and set the bar ridiculously high;

b) he’s beaten me to it on at least 3 themes I’d thought of drafting to include in these ramblings;

c) his current support for Dale sounds semi-fraudulent when he justifies or glosses over missing various games like Burton away in the glorious promotion season last year.

What a part timer! I live 100 miles away in Birmingham and I was there week in, week out for most of last year’s glorious promotion (well I was from November 2009 onwards once I’d got a bit of early season nonsensical Welsh Premier League / groundhopping madness out of my system at various seminal foootballing ampitheatres like Newtown, Caersws, Airbus UK, The New Saints, Bala Town and Newi Cefn Druids).

I laughed out loud at the second consecutive spooky parallel I’ve found when reading one of his Dale books. In “Believe in the Sign”, he wrote a memorable section about corresponding with a Buckie Thistle player, as you do when you’re a football obsessed 12 year old. This act understandably led his girlfriend to describe him as a “weirdo” when she found the letter preciously retained in a secret box that she’d foolishly assumed was full of love letters. I proudly told him in our email exchange that I’d seen a Buckie Thistle home game only a few months earlier, having followed them vaguely from afar ever since being tickled by the quirky sound of their name when they reached the first round of the Scottish Cup in 1980.

In “Spotland: The Sun Also Rises”, Hodkinson describes the decision to go undercover in the main home stand at Macclesfield v Dale as the view is much better. I did exactly the same, taking advantage of a rare match without Jake’s dogmatism to prioritise having a decent view of the game over the dubious delights of a poxy away end with crap sightlines.

So back at the Barnsley match, I debated for a good 10 minutes on whether to introduce myself to the probable Mr Hodkinson. In the end I decided against it, mainly out of fear that he’d think I’m a complete weirdo. A conclusion that both Jake and his teenage son would also agree with I’d imagine.

My other reason for ducking this possible conversation with Mr Hodkinson was more fundamental. In my fantasy world these ramblings could maybe one day end up as one of his Pomona publications. He’d drop his standards and make this a sympathy publication due to the Rochdale link, surely? I’ve only just started and I’m scared I’ll make a complete prat of myself by talking up this fledgling work, he’d be obliged to actually read some of it and then have to contrive some polite way of telling me it’s rubbish. I wanted to retain the 0.01 per cent of hope that it could end up being good, so weighing everything up, I took the easy option and settled down to the business in hand of watching Barnsley v Rochdale.

Back in Birmingham five hours earlier I would have happily settled for just arriving at Oakwell without being in excruciating pain. I was feeling disconcerted having just had my first ever filling, after which the dentist warned me that the offending tooth might cause me great pain as the filling was “extremely deep”. In my half-mouth numbed state I still managed to plaintively blurt out to her “will I still be able to drive a 200 mile round trip starting in an hour or so?” She probably looked at me as if I was mad, said she couldn’t guarantee anything, and that was that. Off I went groggily to pick up Jake from his sports club, then soon we were heading up the A38. No matter that excruciating pain could strike any time, we’re off to see the Dale, no problem.

Luckily the only problem turned out to be the A38 rather than the tooth. Just short of Burton-on-Trent, a massive traffic jam loomed, and presented the perfect excuse to partake in an impromptu scenic Peak District diversion via Ashbourne, Wirksworth, Matlock and Chesterfield. Jake provided the conclusive proof that parts of the Derbyshire countryside must be breathtakingly beautiful. Normally spectacularly oblivious to his surroundings, he was moved to grudgingly admit that some of the hills were “quite impressive” and even showed a hitherto dormant interest in map reading. That’s quite a double breakthrough. The return journey was quicker and less eventful; leaving Barnsley post-match at 21.45 we were home at the perfectly respectable time of 23.40. Lydia was less impressed though and told me that:

a) this was unreasonable and far too late for Jake, and

b) the motorway late at night is an extremely dangerous place to me.

I gave her a) as a reasonable point and so opted against the obvious retaliation of “well it could have been an whole lot worse of if it had gone to extra time and penalties”. Comment b) had struck me as slightly odd until it transpired the following day that she’d been watching a harrowing programme called “Madness in the Fast Lane” where 2 mentally disturbed Swedish women had miraculously survived after running amok on the M6 in Staffordshire. That puts football addiction into better perspective I suppose.

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