Material Witness

Live sport memories: 1991, West Ham at Villa Park

The lifeblood of live sport is drama - whether it´s controversy, tension or a turnaround in fortunes, it is the capacity for the unexpected and the heightening of emotions that really gives an event its edge. 

If I didn´t know that by 1990, I learned it quickly during the climax of that season´s Five Nations championship and a few months later during Italia ´90, still the benchmark event for World Cup excitement. 

I didn´t attend any of those events in person, but in the year or so that followed, I got my own taste at three truly memorable occasions, the first of which took place on a sunny day in the  Midlands. 

April 14th, 1991 - Nottingham Forest 4, West Ham United 0; Villa Park, Birmingham

It is entirely in keeping with my 40+ year experience of supporting West Ham that the most memorable match I attended was a crushing defeat. 

The 1990/91 season was the first of five I was a season ticket holder at Upton Park. It was, by West Ham standards at least, a good season. As spring 1991 arrived, West Ham were live in two tournaments: battling Oldham Athletic for the Second Division title, and going strong in the FA Cup. If West Ham had lost the semi final 1-0 then the quarter-final win over Everton in a Monday night game might have made the cut here. It was a typically raucous night under the Upton Park lights as West Ham upset a good Everton team with a pair of brilliant goals from Stuart Slater and Colin Foster. 

West Ham faced another good First Division team in Nottingham Forest in the semi final, with Brian Clough engaged in his seemingly eternal quest to land the major trophy that eluded him. Forest had Stuart Pearce, Des Walker, a young fresh-faced Roy Keane and Nigel Clough. West Ham were short of star power. They were captained by the maverick midfielder Ian Bishop, one of the best passers of the ball I´ve seen, and were anchored by Czech goalkeeper Ludek Miklosko, to whose dominance West Ham owed their league position. Slater was the star of the show, enjoying what would prove to be his best season as he later fell short of his immense promise. 

But as we rode north in a train full of boisterous West Ham fans - I spent most of the journey embarrassed for the elderly lady who sat opposite us who had to put up with a lot of very colourful language - we had no idea that it wasn´t a player who would dominate proceedings. 

But 23 minutes into the game, Keith Hackett became the first referee to send a player off with a straight red card for denying a player a clear goal scoring opportunity.

The incident involved a tussle between Gary Crosby and Tony Gale, West Ham´s ´Beckenbaueresque´ centre half. As the ball is played through to Crosby, the two players grapple for a moment and Crosby went down. Even now, with the goal-scoring-opportunity law long established, I´m not sure it would be a sending off offence. (It would almost certainly be an eight minute VAR hiatus).

"I´m not so sure that there won´t be controversy about decision," said John Motson on the BBC´s commentary. "Bobby Charlton is shaking his head." Motson did not reveal why Bobby Charlton was shaking his head.

We had the perfect view of the incident, and from our position in the Holte End, about 85 yards away from the foul, it was very clear that this was an outrageously bad decision. And we howled, all 19,000 of us in claret and blue, and the language would surely have made the old lady on the train blush. 

But Gale was gone and West Ham had to hold out against a better team with 10 men for 67 minutes. 

They made it to half time. And then you can´t help hearing that little optimistic voice that says, "maybe we can do this".

The voice was snuffed out early in the second half when Crosby scored. When Keane made it 2-0 the game was up, although watching the "highlights" now I can see that West Ham were still competing and even creating chances. A Pearce goal finally out the whole thing to bed before Gary Charles added a humiliating fourth. 

But really, none of that is why to this day, I still have such vivid memories of this match, and why I still get goose bumps thinking about it. 

Sometime between the second and third goals, the West Ham fans took over. A chant of "Billy Bonds´ Claret and Blue Army" rang out across the ground and didn´t stop until well after the final whistle. Fueled by the burning sense of injustice and the need to be heard, to do something, it just went on and on and on. 

The energy and the emotion in that crowd was absolutely extraordinary and it felt like being a part of something very special, well beyond a mere football match. The Forest fans celebrated their victory, and we celebrated being West Ham. It was quite incredible.

Of course it didn´t alter anything. Forest proceeded to the Wembley final a month later, another match remembered for something other than the score, in that case an over-excited Paul Gascoigne blowing up his own knee with an insane tackle on Gary Charles. Forest still lost and Clough never did get his FA Cup. 

Researching this piece has told me that I´m far from being the only West Ham fan for whom this is a memorable moment. And also that the controversy lingers. In 2015  you-are-the-ref.com brought Hackett and Gale together to discuss the incident, a video that can be found on Youtube. Gale, 20+ years on, still couldn´t bring himself to shake Hackett´s hand, but did remember the amazing response of the West Ham fans. 

Hackett, who was subject to disgraceful death threats afterwards and is still remembered in West Ham chants, came across as thoughtful and smart. At that time he was still angry with the FA for putting him in a position where he felt he had no choice but to make a decision he didn´t agree with.  

And West Ham, well, the bubbles till blow but the dreams always fade and die. 

 

  

Live sport: decades of great memories. Part One: 1985 to 1986, Reading and Taunton

A recent Twitter post I saw provoked me into thinking about the most memorable live sporting events I have attended. 

Live sport has been a huge part of my life since childhood, when our family were season ticket holders at Elm Park, the old home of Reading Football Club, not very far from where I grew up. Subsequently I became a junior member at Somerset during school days in Taunton: a season ticket holder at West Ham during my early London days when I also swapped Somerset for Surrey (attendance not loyalty) and took membership at The Oval; then at Wasps rugby first at Loftus Road then in Wycombe thanks to the connections of my late great friend Matthew Compton.  

When we moved to Spain I adopted Atletico de Madrid as my team, and enjoyed some great visits to the Estadio Vincente Calderon, before taking an 'abonado' (season ticket) at the new Wanda Metropolitano. 

And then for an extraordinary 18 months between April 2003 and October 2004 I was the Sports Correspondent for the Financial Times and was paid to travel the world indulging my passion. this is somewhat handy because it means that all of these events are already chronicled and in my giant red cuttings books.  

Initially I planned to narrow this list down to the ' top 10' but once I started thinking about it, it became impossible, so I'm going to indulge myself and write about whatever I want. So here we go...

December 21st, 1985 - Reading 4, Plymouth 3; Elm Park, Reading

We watched a lot of matches at the Old Elm Park in the late 1970s and 1980s. Like Dad, my brother and I were born in Reading, and while we also supported Division One teams, we watched our football in Reading. There were, I am sorry so say, few memorable games. Reading drifted around Divisions 3 and 4, winning little and testing the patience of supporters. In the early days I went, the heroes were Richie Bowman, Pat Earles, the goalkeeper Steve Death and central defenders Martin Hicks and Steve Hetzke.  They were not, it has to be said, very good. 

And then came the 1985/86 team, anchored by terrier midfielder Kevin Bremner and with goal-scoring machine Trevor Senior up front. Reading stormed the Third Division right from the beginning of the season, winning 13 games on the bounce. The Club and the town had never seen anything like it. 

This was my first term away at boarding school, and so the first game I attended was during my half term in late October. It was the 14th game of the season, and the first Reading didn't win, drawing 2-2 at home with Wolves. I felt like I'd missed the best party ever. 

My eventual reward for the years of drudgery came during the Christmas holidays. Shortly after half time, however,  it looked like I was Reading's unlucky charm. In my second visit to Elm Park of the season, Reading were 3-0 down. I wasn't going to be allowed back. I didn't want to go back.

But the tide turned and there is nothing like a come-from-behind win. Reading forced themselves back into the match on 65 minutes when Bremner earned a penalty that Dean Horrix scored. Given this match took place 35 years ago, it's fair to say I don't recall a lot about it. But I remember the feeling, as Reading roared back into the match and a crowd that wasn't much given to noise and emotion got right into it. Trevor Senior scored two in two minutes around the 70' mark and then Reading threw the kitchen sink at Plymouth. 

Bremner, one of those players you only liked when they were on your side, was thrown up front, and with about five minutes to go he turned in the winner from a long throw in. 4-3. And that is how it stayed. 

Reading couldn't sustain their first half of the season pace, in which they won 19 of 23 games, winning only 10 in the second half of the season. And the Plymouth game turned out to be critical, as the Royals won the Division Three by just seven points from Argyle. Senior, a very unlikely looking athlete who went on to become the Club's all time leading scorer,  hit the net an incredible 27 times.

The Club's account of the match can be found here, and in 2013 Daniel Harris of the Guardian wrote a great piece, remembering what is still the Football League's record start to a season. 

May 11th, 1986 - Somerset versus Middlesex, John Player League; The County Ground, Taunton

Junior membership of Somerset Country Cricket Club cost me £10 for unlimited access to County Championship and the Sunday John Player league 40 over games. The membership card was a little cardboard book, that at the time I am sure I thought was embossed leather, but almost certainly wasn't. If I recall correctly, the 1986 book was blue. It was my most treasured possession. I couldn't believe the magic of a tiny little book that could allow me access to see live cricket. 

For a Taunton schoolboy, the glamour of Somerset cricket at the time was everything. The team contained the homegrown Ian Botham as well as the incredible West Indian duo of Viv Richards and Joel Garner. They had won one day trophies previously, and if the Championship side under-performed, well what of it?

The County Ground was a about a 20 minute walk from school (a little less if you flouted the rules and took the Chip Lane shortcut) which made getting to games after school pretty straightforward. 

But the best day was Sunday, a long yawning bore of a day for many boarders most of the year, until the cricket season came along. 

So in mid May I trooped down to the ground with a small handful of friends for the 40 over match with Middlesex, a County Cricket powerhouse at that time featuring England stars like Mike Gatting, John Emburey and Paul Downton and a fearsome bowling attack including Wayne Daniel, Norman Cowans and a young Angus Fraser. 

Middlesex batted first, and anchored by the veteran Clive Radley and England 'keeper Downton, they made 196 in their 40 overs. 

I remember precisely none of that. Nor do I remember a great deal of Somerset's reply, in which Peter Roebuck and Julian Wyatt put on 122 for the first wicket. The first memory was of Viv smacking one in the general direction of St James's churchyard on his way to a breezy 19 before holing out, prompting one of our teachers sitting nearby to curse him for his irresponsibility. Surely though this was why people watched Viv bat? Roebuck could nudge the singles. We wanted FIRE from Viv. 

We didn't get much from him that day, but we got it from Both instead. Despite all their wickets in hand and the great platform set by the openers, Somerset stumbled on their way to the total.

It was all very tense and it really did feel like we'd blown it, with Somerset 185-4, needing 12 runs to win, with three balls remaining. Crucially, Botham was on strike. 

With Daniel bowling the fourth ball of the final  was blasted out of the ground for six. I don't remember in which direction. Now the odds were shortening. One more of those... 

Botham swiped at and missed the fifth ball.

Six from one. Daniel with the ball. Botham with the bat. 

For reasons I am sure he may struggle to understand, Daniel bounced Botham.  I do remember where this ball went because it sailed over our heads at deep leg square leg at the Priory Bridge Road end of the ground. Somerset won by 4 wickets. 

We floated back to school after the game, where the kids playing outside on The Front told us they had heard the roar from the ground and wanted to know what had happened.

What had happened was pure Botham. Pure cricketing magic.

I've watched a lot of Somerset cricket since then, including Lords finals and T20 finals but nothing sticks out like that incredible game. 

It all went to hell afterwards. A week later Botham admitted to smoking pot and the ECB banned him for two months. At the end of the season the most almighty Civil War broke out at the Club when it decided to dispense with the services of Richards and Garner to hire the late Martin Crowe (still one of my very favourite players). 

There was not a lot of success in the years that followed. But there was always a seat in the sun - for 10 quid a season, a pint of cider and some banter with schoolmates. The happiest of days.  

The brilliant Somerset blog The Incider wrote a detailed review of the game in 2017. 

 

 

 

 

 

REVIEW: The Lantern Men by Elly Griffiths

This is less a single book review than a reflection on the 17 (seventeen) novels by Elly Griffiths that I´ve read in the last eight months. The books span two series, five decades and (essentially) three counties. I´ve spent time with Griffiths in 1960s Brighton in the company of magicians and in 21st Century Norfolk with archeologists. What the stories have in common - besides a policemen investigating murders - is wit and charm and an easy writing style that made them impossible to resist. 

The journey started in August when I grabbed a paperback off a shelf as I was leaving for a road trip. I don´t recall buying The Crossing Places, the first book in the Ruth Galloway series of books, but it must have been on the shelf a fair while. I finished it in less than 24 hours, and within another day had finished book two, The Janus Stone, an emergency Kindle purchase. It´s difficult to keep that sort of pace up when there is work to be done, but I finished the 11th and (then) final book of the series in late September.  I don´t think I´ve ever gone through a series so quickly. 

So how did I come to fall under Ms Galloway´s (or Ms Griffiths´) spell? Well I guess it´s pretty simple. Pacy writing, credible, likable characters and strong plots are a combination that will always work. Here they match the somewhat unlikely combination of archeology and  policework, along with perhaps an even less likely love illicit love interest between archeologist Galloway and gruff local detective chief Nelson. On top of that that the storylines are underpinned by a little science, mythology and history that give them real substance. And finally much of the action takes place in North Norfolk, an area I have some affinity with (having become engaged on the beach between Old Hunstanton and Holme-next-the-Sea where some of The Crossing Places is set). 

In the end, getting into each book was like settling into a conversation with old friends. In some instances I knew exactly what Ruth Galloway was going to say or think before she said or thought it. 

So it felt like a long wait for book 12, The Lantern Men, which was published last month. Here we find Ruth Galloway displaced from her cottage on the Norfolk salt marshes, having made a career change and moved to teach at Cambridge University. But when bones are unearthed in North Norfolk, and DCI Nelson needs help, there is only one expert for him, and Ruth suddenly finds herself pulled back into her previous orbit. It´s another well plotted and well executed mystery with a healthy dose Griffiths´ trademark emotional drama (Ruth´s love life does not run smoothly). 

For something different, Griffiths also wrote a five book series based in Brighton and featuring mysteries solved by another unlikely combination: Detective Inspector Edgar Stephens and his friend Max Mephisto, one of the most celebrated magicians in the age of Variety.

The two men served together in the war in a secret outfit known as the Magic Men, an intelligence unit using deception to try to fool the Germans. 

It took me a little longer to get hooked on this series - a full six weeks to read the five books - but once I´d picked up the rhythm of them thoroughly enjoyed them also, not least for perhaps the most colourful cast of characters I´ve come across in a crime novel. 

Happily Griffiths is a prolific writer and there are still more books to discover, not least four romance novels written under her real name, Domenica de Rosa. And why not... 

 

REVIEW: The Secret Commonwealth by Philip Pullman

It is cruel to us, this world of publishing. It makes us wait two years for a book, the reading of which is the work of a frenzied day and then the waiting begins again.

Here is is then, the second Book of Dust, the long-awaited, much anticipated sequel to La Belle Sauvage review. And it is a veritable Empire Strikes Back of a novel - a dark, fascinating, disturbing interlude between the heroic adventure of an innocent boy... and the promise of an epic final showdown between good and evil.  

It´s quite different from what came before. As with the Dark Materials trilogy, the leap between books one and two is a leap between adolescence and adulthood. The triumph of La Belle Sauvage,  to some extent, was in its beautiful, dramatic and honest but (largely) quite simple storytelling. The Secret Commonwealth, which in part feels like a travelogue as Lyra Silvertongue and others make their way across land and sea from Oxford to Aleppo, is really a journey of self-exploration, full of philosophy, mysticism and psychology as well as something of a rip through Brexitland as Pullman explores the underpinnings and strategies of authoritarianism.

It´s too simple to call it a coming of age story, not least because both Lyra (in the first trilogy, 10 years prior to the events in this book) and Malcolm Polstead (in La Belle Sauvage, 10 years prior to that) have already experienced such trials.  This is far more adult than that, delving into that uncomfortable and disorientating feeling that most will have when their lives become unmoored from the certainties they have previously lived with.

It´s not an easy book to review without giving spoilers but it largely follows the quest of Lyra, now 20 and an undergraduate in her home town of Oxford, and Malcolm, a Professor at the University, as they separately head east. Both are following a trail laid at first by the murder of a botanist on an Oxford canal bank, witnessed by Lyra´s daemon Pan. They both are also in search of something precious they have lost. Each is also, in their own way, engaged in the business of Oakley Street, the secretive government department set up to counter the malign influence and of the all-powerful Magisterium. In the lands to which they are headed, the once thriving business of rose-growing and the production of its oil is being disrupted by violent incidents, possibly at the Magisterium´s behest. 

The Secret Commonwealth is grand in ambition and scale, deeply atmospheric, rich in detail and, as we have become used to with Pullman, it lavishes care and attention on the development of characters.  As with all previous installments in this story, I suspect a second reading will enrich it, and I plan to do that.

And that will have to keep us occupied while Mr Pullman completes the cycle. 

 

 

REVIEW: The Dry by Jane Harper

The Dry, which earned the Sunday Times' crime fiction of the year title for 2017, is billed as the first in a series featuring Aaron Falk, a Melbourne-based detective. (That's Melbourne Australia rather than Derbyshire, for the 2 per cent of year who immediately thought of an East Midlands murder mystery). 

I hope it is only the first, as The Dry announces Jane Harper as a writer capable of delivering atmospheric plots which pack a sharp and accurate punch.

While Melbourne might be home to Falk, it is not the setting for The Dry, in which he returns home to Kiewarra, the Victoria outback town he grew up in. Falk is reluctantly back in town to attend the funeral of his schooldays best friend Luke Hadler, a farmer who has killed himself and his family in a murder-suicide.  

The rationale given for Hadler's act is the desperate state of the farming economy in a one-industry town brought low by a years-long drought that threatens the very survival of Kiewarra. But Hadler's parents, once almost surrogate parents to Falk himself, don't believe their son had it in him to harm his family. They ask Falk to look into the circumstances around the death. 

Falk is a cop but one whose day to day work involves financial crime rather than vicious murder-suicides with shotguns. Nonetheless, out of sympathy and loyalty to Hadler's devastated parents, he agrees to stick around for a day or two and look into it. 

But even as he quickly comes to the view that there is sufficient evidence to doubt Hadler's guilt, he is also confronted with the shadows of his own murky past in Kiewarra, a series of events that comes to the surface as he begins to unravel the layers of secrecy and tension in the modern town. 

As Harper has shown in her subsequent novels, and in particular The Lost Man, she is capable of creating an incredible sense of place in her writing. The landscape here will be familiar to those who have watched the harrowing scenes of Australia´s recent catastrophic bushfire season. The environment is bone dry in the midst of a record drought, and the oppressive heat and potential consequences create a literal and human tinderbox. You can feel the heat from the page.  But her skill extends beyond that, the characters feel hewn from their environment, many either a sense of menace or  a quiet desperation.

This is a great debut novel, a seething slow burner that unfolds beautifully. 

 

REVIEW: Grown Ups by Marian Keyes

Meet the Casey boys! Johnny: handsome and charming, married to his best friend's widow, the effervescent gourmet entrepreneur, Jessie. Ed: solid, reliable, completely in love with his lovely wife Cara, whose knows her secret problem, but not how to help her. Liam: restless and rakish, giving marriage a second go with budding set designer Nell. 

In Grown Ups Marian Keyes takes us on a breakneck six-month ride through their lives and loves, triumphs and disasters, heartbreaks and joys.  

The anchor of the tale is Jessie Parnell, successful businesswoman and owner/manager of PIG, a cookery enterprise that provides her with enough cash to feed an online shopping habit and to lavish her generous hospitality on the family including a cast of about 10 children) she didn't have growing up. A five star retreat for Easter in County  Mayo, summer holidays in a villa in Tuscany and countless dinner and other parties.

On the surface, of course, everything in the Casey world looks calm and happy. In the depths, however, every character is dealing with one issue or another and as with every family, the tensions ebb and flow, sometimes breaking that surface with dramatic results. 

This is my first Keyes novel - the covers seem to be designed specifically to deter men from buying the books - but after coming to it from a Twitter recommendation, I am pleased to have found her and will be going back. What struck me most about the book was the wit and warmth of the writing. Keyes writes with empathy and compassion but avoids being maudlin. Her characters are convincing and credible, their faults and foibles laid bare, but also their capacity for love and generosity. And she is funny - the dialogue crackles along and will resonate with anyone who has ever taken a moment to sit back and listen to their families. 

Given the verve with which she writes, it would be easy to overlook a well-structured plot that keeps several storylines on the bubble at the same time without getting bogged down in any or losing its thread. 

Grown Ups is entertaining, warm-hearted and insightful and anyone who is interested in people and relationships should find something to enjoy. 

I had the audio version of this book. My heart always sinks a little when the author turns up as the narrator. But here it really works, Keyes has a lively and welcoming voice and her intimacy with her characters and storyline enables her to bring all the charm of the story to life. Brava. 

 

REVIEW: Three Hours by Rosamund Lupton

We are all, unfortunately, grimly familiar with the drill now. You see something on social media, a rumour of something happening in a school far away (usually in the US). 

In the minutes that follow the story migrates from Twitter to the mainstream media where network news programs begin to speculate about what’s going on, using shots from helicopters and live feeds from reporters on the scene who know about as much as you. The situation is either live or contained. There is one gunman or two. Numbers of victims begin to be a part of the story. It is familiar, depressing and seemingly unstoppable. The names of the places live on in a dark pantheon of grief and shattered lives: Sandy Hook, Dunblane, Columbine, Parkland...

In the days that follow the motives of the attackers, their histories, psychologies and political outlooks are analyzed in minute detail. 

In her fourth novel Three Hours, Rosamund Lupton tells the story of a school attack, as it unfolds, from multiple perspectives: the protagonists, the victims in the school, the police officers trying to contain the event, the anxious parents waiting for news outside. But the story also embraces them role beyond the cloistered school, addressing contemporary themes such as our attitudes to outsiders and the pressures of being a modern teenager. 

But ‘tells the story’ really doesn’t do justice to what Lupton has brilliantly, mesmerisingly, so convincingly done in Three Hours.  She takes the reader into the unfolding drama and into the minds of those who are there, not just in those moments where they are contemplating the drama around them, but also the moments and the events that led them to where they are. 

The drama is set in a school on the coast of Somerset on a winter’s day just as the morning is getting started. The school is large set across several acres of woodland with junior and senior schools separated across distances that become significant. The action primarily focuses around three groups of students. One is in the school theatre, about to rehearse a production of Macbeth. Others are in the library. A group of small children are in the pottery barn (It’s a private school!!). 

As the attack unfolds, the headmaster becomes the first victim, shot by one of two attackers, and he is dragged to safety by students who nurse him in the library.

The students are the stars of the book, proving themselves to be courageous, selfless, funny and clever despite their fear and uncertainty. Given the action only takes three hours, Lupton manages to develop the characters of a sufficient number that she can inject their personalities into the narrative and enrich the story with them. (You are likely to want to adopt Molly, the 16-year-old who nurses the wounded headmaster. )

Further drama is imposed on the story by the closing in of the weather as a snow storm limits police visibility and options, placing all the pressure on police psychologist Rose Polstein to uncover the identity and motives of the attackers in order to figure out how to stop them.

This is a breathtaking novel, with as well crafted a plot as I can recall reading. It is also emotional and gripping, the sort of story that is with you even when you’re not reading and that demands you get back to it quickly. But for me it was defined by its humanity, its exploration of what it means to be brave, what it means to be a part of a community, what it means to be good. Read it. 

Currently reading: The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel

Listening to: Bury Them Deep by James Oswald