In this first extract from An Ordinary Spectator Returns: Watching Sport Again, I refer to a visit to Scarborough in July 2021 to see Yorkshire play Surrey in the Royal London One-Day Cup. It was my first cricket-watching for over two years due to the Covid-19 pandemic. (Two days later, at Headingley, I went to the Northern Superchargers versus Welsh Fire in the England and Wales Cricket Board’s new “The Hundred” competition. My reflections on that match are covered in a separate essay in the book).
… I selected the two matches in order to juxtapose the (fairly) old and the (very) new. The RL Cup is contested by the First Class counties over 50 overs per side; it is the latest variant on the one-day competitions that they have played since 1962 (when it was 65 overs each). Royal London have sponsored the tournament since 2014.
The Hundred is the ECB’s brainchild (if that’s the word) to attract new audiences to the sport. It is a city-based tournament, hosted at test match grounds – Headingley being one of the eight chosen locations – the matches comprising 100 deliveries (in batches of 10 from each end) per side.
Of course, whilst putting The Hundred to one side for a day or so, it was obviously the case that its shadow hung over the match at Scarborough. Yorkshire have supplied 11 players to the new competition – and Surrey 12 – so the teams on show comprised (for me) some familiar names and a significant number of unfamiliar ones, particularly in the visitors’ ranks.
Surrey’s comfortable victory was based on contributions from both the youthful and the experienced. In his first RL Cup match, the seam bowler Gus Atkinson took 4 for 43, including three of the first four wickets to fall. Later, the opener Mark Stoneman – a regular thorn in Yorkshire’s flesh over the years – batted through the innings as Surrey reached the target of 166 for the loss of 5 wickets with over 10 overs to spare. That Yorkshire had been dismissed in only the 35th of their allocated 50 overs – and on a wicket that was far from spiteful – betrayed a collective misjudgement in the pacing of an innings. The 19 year-old Matthew Revis looked very promising, however, and it was a disappointment when a rash shot truncated his innings at 43.
In the long term, I will probably not recall the match for its detailed statistical outturn. I shall remember it – with affection – for constituting the resumption, after the long coronavirus hiatus, of my county cricket watching with all its quirks and skills The circle drawn in the air by Yorkshire’s off-spinning captain, Dom Bess, at the beginning of his run-up; the urgent skip into action by Surrey’s left-arm spinner, Dan Moriarty, at the start of his; the brilliant diving catch by Jonny Tattersall; the neat efficiency of the two wicket-keepers, Jamie Smith and Harry Duke; the umpire Neil Mallender’s acknowledgement to the section of the crowd that had signalled a 4 (rather than 6) when a lofted shot skirted the boundary rope; the wholehearted aggression of Yorkshire’s South African fast-bowler Mat Pillans – released by Surrey in 2018 – who ended the day with 4 wickets; the skilful way in which the impressive Nico Reifer, another Surrey debutant, evaded a hostile delivery from Pillans by dropping his wrists and swaying out of the way… And so on. It was good to be back.
Indeed, my enjoyment of the occasion had begun even before play commenced. I arrived about an hour before the start and took my favourite place in the West Stand. (I was grateful to be sporting a wide hat in the warm sunshine). The familiar routines unfolded: my initial purchase of a coffee and flapjack; the idle chat amongst some of my near neighbours, some of whom had obviously not met for some time; the volunteer scorecard vendor selling his wares for £1 each; the players warming up on the outfield; the flags drifting in the breeze at the top of their poles; and, this being Scarborough, the seagulls above, circling and observing with a hint of menace. I confess to having felt a pang of emotion. We have all been through a lot and we are now – hopefully – coming out on the other side.
Down to my right stood the hospitality marquee, on the grass in front of which were the rows of deckchairs for the sponsors and their guests. I identified the rough acreage of grass – a couple of square metres at most – on which my friend and I had sat on another hot July day (in 1969) and watched Yorkshire’s Gillette Cup semi-final win over the Gary Sobers-led Nottinghamshire. That had been my introduction to this – my favourite – cricket ground and I was mindful that it had been a long time ago.
After Surrey had completed their victory, I waited for a while before taking a couple of photographs and then making my way to the exit on the far side of the ground. By the time I got there, Mark Stoneman had already emerged from the changing room and, still in his kit, was talking to a couple of acquaintances by the boundary edge. Just along from him, a young boy – I would guess aged no older than 6 or 7 – was facing some under-arm deliveries thrown down to him from a few yards away by (I assume) his father. The boy played his shots with a correctly positioned left elbow and a perfectly straight bat.
As Stoneman started to walk past on his way back to the pavilion, the father stopped him to request a photo with his son. He agreed without any hesitation. A modern – very professional – cricketer with, perhaps, one for the future. It was a touching scene with which to end a very good day.
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July 2021
In 2019, I visited Cumbria for a first-round match in that year’s Rugby League Challenge Cup. Millom RLFC – which is generally acknowledged to be the oldest amateur rugby league club in the world, having been formed in 1873 – were pitted against Red Star Belgrade.
I was in the company of the leading experts on the history of rugby league in Cumberland/Cumbria: Harry Edgar (the editor of the Rugby League Journal) and Stephen Bowes (an Editorial Contributor to the Journal).
… I know that we live in times that do occasionally appear rather bizarre but, even so, this was a side from the southernmost tip of the old county of Cumberland doing battle with a team from Serbia in a cup competition that dates from 1897 and of which the current trophy-holders [the Catalan Dragons] are based in France.
Millom are currently in the Third Division of the Kingstone Press National Conference League: the fourth tier of the sport at the amateur/community level. The coverage of the Red Star Sports Society in Belgrade extends to no fewer than 30 different sports, ranging from taekwondo to water polo and karate to women’s basketball. The largest and best-known member is, of course, the football club, which won the European Cup in 1991. The rugby league section was founded in 2006.
The history of the sport in Serbia dates back much further – to its introduction by the French Rugby XIII Federation in 1953. However, in the following decade, the Yugoslav authorities demanded that clubs switch to rugby union and it was not until 2001 that the sport was re-established with the formation of the Serbian Rugby League Federation. Red Star Belgrade were the dominant team in 2018, winning the “quadruple” of Serbia’s Championship, Cup and Supercup together with the Balkan Super League.
It might be noted that Millom is not the easiest place to reach by public transport from Glasgow on a weekend. I spent the Saturday night in Lancaster and took the local trains on a bright and cold Sunday morning, changing at Barrow-in-Furness. It is an interesting route, crossing the Kent and Leven Viaducts over the estuaries (sandy and misleadingly enticing at low tide) to Morecambe Bay and Lancaster Sound, passing through Ulverston (the birthplace of Stan Laurel) and skirting the ruins of the 12th century Furness Abbey…
…We looked out on a welcoming scene: a healthy crowd ringed the touchlines and in-goal areas (supplemented by those looking over the low wall on Devonshire Road, who had declined to stump up the £3 entrance fee); the pitch was in excellent condition; and, in the middle distance, against the blue sky, there was Black Combe which, at just under 2,000 feet above sea level, is the dominant natural landmark in the locality.
The only slight downside was the very strong wind, which blew straight down the pitch and favoured Millom in the first half. They took full advantage – not least through two long-range penalty goals, rare occurrences in modern-day rugby league – to establish a 22-6 lead at the interval. The question was whether this was a big enough margin for the home side to defend when the gale was against them and the answer was quickly given, when they scored the opening try of the second half. The final score was 38-10.
Red Star Belgrade were not disgraced. As expected, they played with passion and commitment, notably when defending on several occasions near their own line, and they scored two neat tries of their own. The American centre three-quarter Jamil Robinson – one of only three non-Balkan-born players in the team – played a particularly impressive game with his forceful running and stout defence. However, they were vulnerable to the runs from acting half-back by the Millom hooker, Noah Robinson, and they struggled to complete any threatening passing moves, though the windy conditions certainly did not help in that respect.
As ever with my trips to towns being visited for the first time, I was interested in Millom’s economic history. The relevant starting point is the 1850s, when the local discovery of iron ore led to the swift transformation of a collection of fishing villages into a major industrial centre. The new town was built in the 1860s and, by 1881, the Hodbarrow Mining Company was operating seven pits to feed the furnaces of the Millom Ironworks. (Stephen Bowes informed me that many of the incoming workers came from Cornwall and that some Cornish surnames are still to be found in the locality today).
The industry’s decline, when it came, was just as swift: the Ironworks were closed in 1968 and the town’s population fell by over one-third (to just over 7,000) in three years. Wikipedia reports that “Millom’s economy is now mainly based around retail, services and tourism” – the standard cocktail in post-industrial localities – with the options of commuting to Barrow or Sellafield.
My walks to and from the ground from the railway station suggested a neat town that is proud of its industrial heritage. There is firm evidence for this in Market Square, where Colin Telfer’s sculpture The Scutcher [pictured] stands in front of the 1879 Clock Tower. A scutcher’s task was to stop the heavy iron ore tubs by thrusting a metal bar through the wheels – it required a hard man to do a hard job – and the public display is a fine tribute.
There has been a strong two-way connection between Cumbria and rugby league, of which, over many decades, the tough industrial environment has been a key component. For over a century, the region has provided a plethora of outstanding players, many of whom earned their honours with other teams outside the area. At the same time, the sport has been an integral part of the local culture, which – I fervently hope – will continue into the future.
The Millom club is certainly playing its part. Harry informed me that the current side is almost entirely made up of local lads, whilst a glance of the match programme revealed that the club runs no fewer than seven age-group teams from Under 18s down to Under 6s. I wonder if, in 20 years time, some of the latter group will be playing for the first team in the Rugby League Challenge Cup.
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January 2019
In 1992, I moved from London to take up a new job in Glasgow. Although I had a long-deceased grandmother who had been born in the city, any family connections had been lost in that part of the world. For me, it was a strange and unfamiliar place.
My new office colleagues had a range of soccer interests, which included, in one case, going down to Manchester every fortnight to watch United. When they learned that I hailed from Leeds, they revealed an impressive knowledge of the Elland Road sides of old.
On 21st October, Glasgow Rangers met Leeds United in the first match of a two-legged tie in the European Cup.
This extract from An Ordinary Spectator Returns: Watching Sport Again was posted as a blog on the 30th anniversary of the game. The essay was also published in the February 2023 edition (No. 83) of the Backpass football magazine.
… In those days, it was only a country’s champion side that competed for European club football’s top prize. Rangers had lifted the Scottish title the previous year for the fourth consecutive time (in the unbroken run that would eventually end at nine). Leeds had taken the last of the (pre-Premier League) English First Division honours, heading off my colleague’s Old Trafford favourites by four points in the final league table of 1991-92.
Looking back from today’s perspective of the hugely bloated Champions League, it seems mildly incredible that one of these sides – both of which had lifted European silverware in their time – should face elimination in the season’s autumn. However, by this second round stage, there were only 16 teams left in the competition. (If I have understood the chronology correctly, it was at this season’s group stage that the rebranding to the UEFA Champions League took over).
The stage was set for the “Battle of Britain”. (Or perhaps another “BOB”, given that I recalled that the nomenclature had also been used for the epic Glasgow Celtic-Leeds United European Cup semi-final of 1970). And – after all this time, I’m still not at all sure how – someone in the office acquired the tickets for a group us all to go to the first leg, which was to be played at Ibrox Stadium.
Of course, in addition to having impressive European pedigrees, the two clubs had other – less savoury – reputational baggage, not least the presence of their hardcore hooligan elements. For this reason – plus the recognition that there would be an overwhelming demand for tickets for both games – it was decided that visiting supporters would not be allowed to attend either match.
We sat in the Govan Stand with its excellent view across the pitch. In the minutes leading up the kick-off, with the ground full – and no away support to disturb the proceedings – the intensity of the crowd’s expectations reached a fever pitch. This was no doubt partly due to the importance of the fixture. More pertinently, however, the fact was that over 43,000 Rangers supporters were gathered in the one place. The roar was absolutely deafening – one of the loudest I have ever heard at a sports stadium. The Sash and Billy Boys – the latter with reference to being “up to our knees in Fenian blood” – rang out around the ground.
I watched – and heard – all this with a bewildered astonishment. And I realised that my understanding of the city of Glasgow – or, at least, of one half of it – was increasing apace.
More drama followed immediately. Within a minute of the kick off, on their first attack, the visitors won a corner on their right. The ball came into the Rangers penalty area and was headed out to the Leeds captain, Gary McAllister, who was lurking at the angle of the penalty area, also on the right-hand side. In a textbook demonstration of the skill – angling his body, taking his weight on his non-striking leg and keeping his head over the ball – McAllister volleyed the ball into the top far corner of the Rangers net.
The Leeds players mobbed McAllister to the sound of the proverbial pin dropping somewhere in the ground. Or, at least, it would have been, had not the goal elicited a joyful response from a small knot of Leeds United supporters – probably no more than a dozen altogether – further down the stand on my right-hand side.
This only added to the home supporters’ grief. Not only had their side fallen behind before the opening skirmishes had been properly engaged – and conceded a precious away goal into the bargain – but the sanctity of the ground had been invaded by those who were not welcome. There was a rising chorus of vitriolic hostility towards the Leeds supporters, who, after obviously concealing their identity in order to gain entrance to the ground, were now completely open in their allegiance. I thought it wise to keep my counsel: not a hard decision, if I’m honest.
To their credit, Rangers kept their composure and recovered well. They had a fair sprinkling of big match players – Richard Gough, Ally McCoist, Mark Hateley – who, after the early setback, did not panic, but calmly and professionally set about trying to turn things around. They were aided by Ian Durrant – the best player on the pitch – who shaded his midfield duel with the aggressive David Batty and, most noticeably, consistently used the possession that came his way intelligently and efficiently. The action around him was frenetic, but he did not waste a pass.
Roared on by the home support, Rangers had taken the lead by half-time, courtesy of a John Lukic own-goal and a timely demonstration of McCoist’s close-range predatory instincts. As there were no further goals in the second half – a fiercely contested affair conducted against an unrelenting cacophony of sound, the noise seemingly amplified by the acoustics of the stadium – the tie was left tantalisingly poised – at 2-1 to Rangers – in advance of the Elland Road re-match two weeks later.
In the event, the Glasgow side progressed into the next stage of the competition with something to spare. Hateley scored an early goal from long range in the second leg and, on the hour mark, laid on another for McCoist, leaving Leeds well beaten. The Elland Road faithful had to settle for a late consolation goal by Eric Cantona (who, three weeks later, became a Manchester United player).
Following the completion of the tie, back in the office, I took it like a man. My half-hearted protestations – “I’m more a rugby follower, really” – cut no ice at all with the McCoist and Durrant supporters. Meanwhile, the Celtic contingent amongst my colleagues kept their counsel whilst, I sensed, at the same time being seriously aggrieved that Leeds had not done them the obvious favour.
The 1992 “Battle of Britain” really did feature some of the best British players of the era. In addition to the names already checked, the contest involved Trevor Steven and Gordon Strachan, Andy Goram and Gary Speed, Stuart McColl and David Rocastle… Only Cantona and the Rangers substitute, Pieter Huistra, were foreign internationals. In this respect – as with the concurrent farewells to both the old-style European Cup and the English First Division – the match does now seem to represent the end of an era.
I am bound to fall back on a reference I have used before from H.G. Bissinger’s Friday Night Lights. The author reflects on an incongruous visit made to a high school (American) football game in Marshall, Texas, by a delegation of Russians who had been visiting a nearby US Air Force base: “[T]hey don’t understand a lick of football, but… their understanding of America by the end of the game will be absolute whether they realise it or not”.
By the time I got home that evening, my understanding of Glasgow – and Scotland – had certainly been enhanced.
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October 2022
At first sight, this final extract from An Ordinary Spectator Returns: Watching Sport Again might seem to have been misplaced, as it largely covers a visit that my sister, Rosie, and I made in October 2018 to the Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony)Land of Germany to visiting some of the places associated with our family history. The sporting connection is made, however, even though “it only represents sport’s peripheral place in the much grander scheme of things”.
… Our grandfather, Alfred Edgar Niblett, was born in Osnabrück in 1888 to an English father, Charles James Niblett, and a German mother, whose maiden name was Anna Karoline Borstelmann…
In the small town of Elze, to the south of Hannover, we visited die Peter und Paul-Kirche, in which Charles and Anna had married in 1873. It was curiously empty on the Sunday lunchtime, apart from two middle-aged women – the organist and a singer – who held a long practice session, perhaps 40 minutes or so, for the time we were there. The melodic sounds resonated down from the balcony and around the clean white walls of the church’s interior.
Outside, I found the statue of Martin Luther, erected in 1883 on the 400th anniversary of his birth, to be both powerful and moving. The inscription read: Hier stehe ich. Ich kann nicht anders. Gott helfe mir. Amen! “Here, I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen!”. This is reputed to have been Luther’s statement to the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, at the formal hearing in Worms in 1521. (In his monumental A History of Christianity, published in 2009, Diarmaid MacCulloch notes that the phrase was only attributed to Luther after his death by the editor of his collected works).
For the following day, we had hired an excellent local guide to show us around the village of Kirchwalsede and the town of Visselhoevede, including the two beautiful parish churches. At the former, she had arranged for us to see some of the original church records. We started by finding the baptism record of Anna Margreta Marquardt – the mother of Anna Karoline Borstelmann’s father, Johann Friedrich Borstelmann, (and my great (x3) grandmother) – in 1772. I felt the lump in my throat as I saw her name on the page: I just about held it together.
I have previously spent some time examining the comprehensive online database of Lutheran church records in Niedersachsen and was familiar with the long direct family line that goes back through the Marquadt, Lange, Dieckhof and Henke families to the baptism of Harm Henke in 1582. We looked up some of the other original records: the burial of Gert Dieckhof in 1713, the burial of Casten Henke in 1691, and so on.
An unexpected bonus was that the written records contained additional information. Even in the Lutheran church, the type of service was, to some extent, dependent on the amount spent by the worshippers. Hence, the burial of Anna Marie Henke in 1711 was accompanied by “a sermon from the pulpit”. Elsewhere, the causes of death were given: the unfortunate Johann Lange died at the age of 56 three weeks before the Christmas of 1686 when a stone fell on him as he was digging a hole (presumably in the graveyard).
The baptism of Harm Henke in 1582 was, of course, relatively early in the history of the Protestant Church; it had been only two generations earlier that Luther had nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. Or, to put it another way, it was six years before Philip of Spain sent his Armada into the English Channel. As I looked around the church in Kirchwalsede, its interior neatly decorated with flowers from a recent wedding, I was aware that, even though it had been modified and repaired many times over the centuries, this was still the space in which my great (x9) grandfather had lived and breathed. And it was now, in a different context to Luther, that here I stood.
On the Tuesday, our family researches completed for the time being, we did the tourist run in Hannover. The bus tour took us past the Eriebnis Zoo and out to the Royal Gardens of Herrenhausen. Towards the end of the route we passed the HDI Arena – the home of theBundesliga 1 side, Hannover 96 – the street in front of which is called Robert Enke Strasse.
Robert Enke was a goalkeeper who played for Hannover 96 for five years from 2004. He also played for Benfica and Borussia Moenchengladbach, amongst other clubs, and won eight caps for Germany. He took his own life in 2009 at the age of 32. (The excellent A Life Too Short: the Tragedy of Robert Enke by Ronald Reng, published in 2011, is a detailed and poignant biography).
After the bus tour, I walked back alone to the football stadium, even though I knew that the gates were closed and access was not possible. (This was an obvious flaw in the schedule I had planned: Hannover 96 were not playing at home until the following week). As I returned to the hotel, I attempted to marshal the conflicting themes that the overall visit had generated in the back of my mind.
There is an obvious point about continuity and longevity, even amongst the turmoil and destruction that the centuries have brought to this part of the world. The Rathaus in Osnabrück, heavily damaged in the Second World War, has been repaired to the Late Gothic design of the 1512 original; it was where one of the treaties of the Peace of Westphalia was signed in 1648 to bring an end to the Thirty Years’ War. In Bad Münder am Deister – where my great (x2) grandmother, Anna Perlasky, was born in 1827 – the door of the imposing Steinhof is dated 1721 and names the family who owned the property at that time. Even in theMarktkirche in Hannover, also destroyed in the War and impressively rebuilt in red brick subsequently, the striking triptych at the altar dates from 1480.
The theme of continuity is also evident in the robustness of the family line in Niedersachsen, irrespective of whichever of the various armies – Swedish or Napoleonic or Hannoverian or Prussian – have marched through the territory to claim the land. The local inhabitants – farmers, shepherds, builders, et al – got on with their lives and raised their families and prayed to God and kept going from one generation to the next.
At the same time, I am conscious that there is also transience and fragility. In this respect, although I have mentioned the late goalkeeper of Hannover 96, I doubt that – on reflection – this is an essay about sport at all… If it is, it only reflects sport’s peripheral place in the much grander scheme of things.
Rather, I might suggest that this is principally about connections and relationships and how, against the deep background of the long centuries, there is an inevitable impermanence to our being – whether 32 years for Robert Enke or 56 years for Johann Lange or 84 years for Anna Karoline Borstelmann. We all dip our hand in the flowing stream – some just a finger, others up to the wrist – and, in the rippling of the water, we leave the memories and traces for those that are left behind.
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September 2018
An Ordinary Spectator 