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Crystal Palace, 1965

‘Just try it, Gonby,’ said Billy Penk, (Gtr, Vox), ‘Come along, see what he’s got to say. He’s a cool guy – really. He’ll take you places you never knew existed.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Norman Payne (Bass & Vox), ‘He’s fab.’

I lit a Woodbine. The Gladstone, I decided, was really going downhill. Though no more than a hundred yards from the Cowshed, the football conversation was disappearing quicker than the ears of the clientele beneath their untended Beatle mops. Something was happening, and I didn’t know what it was, and neither did Mickey Jones.

‘But I want to go somewhere I know exists,’ said Mickey, not for the first time, ‘I want to go to Sydenham.’

‘The colours! The feelings! It’s beautiful….’

‘But this place is better, man! The colours! The feelings! It’s beautiful…’

‘Gold’s the only colour I need,’ said Mickey, impatiently, ‘And there’s nothing more beautiful than a ball in the back of the net. Whatever it is you lot are going on about, you can count me out.’

‘Where are you going?’ I asked him, as he put his empty glass on the bar and turned to go.

‘The Fox. I can’t be doing with all this.’

The door slammed firmly behind him. Without the cash to get down to London, he’d been hoping to persuade The Selves to drive to South London in Billy’s Mini Van. But The Selves were much more interested in pushing at the boundaries of musical genre and consciousness.

‘Do you want another pint?’

‘Ar – goo on then.’

‘What are you ‘avin, Norm?’

‘Springfield. And get some change for the fake machine, will yer?’

‘This yogi doesn’t warn against booze and snout then?’

The Selves were in the North Street area to attend an event given by the yogi Amardeep, who was gaining a reputation among the musicians and artists of the town as a kind of gatekeeper to higher consciousness, in addition to his reputation as a pleasant and conscientious porter at the Low Level station.

‘Sounds like we’ve piqued his interest, Norm.’

‘Mr Green… Mr Green…’ sang Norm, with Billy joining in on harmony, ‘Mr Green steps into the Time Machine….’

‘What the hell was that?’ I asked.

‘Never mind. We’re…’

‘Go on…’

‘We’re looking for a new sound. The boy girl thing…; we think it’s getting a bit…’

I looked at the two of them, in their flowery shirts and high waistbands, wondering briefly whether they might not be ditching the ‘boy-girl thing’ for the ‘boy-boy thing’. But no, it seemed largely an artistic search. In addition to longer hair, they were experimenting with longer songs and longer solos. Lyrically they seemed intent on making complete fools of themselves. I quite liked some of their early stuff but I wasn’t going to stand in the Ship and Anchor listening to grown men saying how they were “stuck in Horseley Fields with the Dentist Blues again.”

We finished our pints and headed to the Red Cross Street Infant School, where Yogi Amardeep was holding his class.

As the class commenced my first thought was a pale irritation that I had worn my best suit, for, while the synthetic fibres of The Selves’ sta-prest trousers had a certain amount of give in them, my three-button cotton ensemble was much less flexible. The jacket rode up during the Mermaid, and I was in danger of splitting the straight inside leg during Warrior 2. Billy and Norm maintained expressions of serenity and distance, while, for the first twenty minutes or so, I found myself getting increasingly irritated by the swami’s exhortations to incremental discomfort, and his insistence on breathing (like I wasn’t going to do that anyway). The Gladstone didn’t seem such a dump anymore, and I remembered with nostalgia the sulphurous aroma of the Springfield Bitter and the sticky texture of the lino in the public bar.

At first, I distracted myself with thoughts of tomorrow’s game. Knocker and ‘Ernie’ Hunt had been in imperious form that season, and with Wagstaffe and Wharton feeding them and McIlmoyle we looked promotion material on our day, yet all of that striving, all of that desire, and the wonderful unbeaten run during October and November might still come to nothing. Why were we even in the second division? The horrifying memories of shipping five goals at Goodison, Upton Park and the Hawthorns the previous season returned with a sickening clarity, and I feared I might be overcome by sadness.

‘Think only of your breathing,’ said the yogi, ‘You are here, now; not elsewhere..’

How was I going to get to South London? The Flying Squadron had cancelled due to the weather forecast, the Speleologist Squadron never ventured south of the Thames due to the lack of underground tunnels, and the Chapel Ash Non-Motorized Mechanical Touring Party had left early that morning, due to the constriction of Sid Dawes’ muladhara chakra.

Then the saddest of all thoughts, the second-place finish in 1960, the single point that separated Wolves from winning a hat-trick of titles and the first double of the modern era, loomed over me like the shadow of a great devil. I wanted to damn Bob Lord and….

‘Do not follow your thoughts. Watch them only.’

I opened my eyes and the yogi’s face was before me, speaking at once to the whole room and to me personally. At this distance, the kindness in the eyes and the smiling lips shone out through the bushy beard. His white turban was impeccably neat.

From then on, I began to focus less on the Wolves and the possibility of ripping my clothes, and more on the moment. My breathing became deeper, and my muscles more flexible. I didn’t once look at Billy or Norman. The sweat soaked my Double TWO shirt.

‘Now we adopt the savasana position. We lie like a corpse. Feel the blood flow through through our whole body. You are breathing. Your thoughts are happening, but your thoughts are not you. You are apart. You watch your thoughts, as you might watch motor cars pass in the street, or ducks and swans upon the canal. You are breathing.’

In, out. In, out. Air filled me. Air was released. I was conscious of the inhalation, conscious of the exhalation, but it was as if I was only a spectator. Not only. I was the breath, the inner tube that filled with the breath, the leather case that held the tube, the stitching that held the panels of the case. The air filled me, light and hard; I could rise. All around me were eyes, and arms, legs, grass…; cold air, mud, the hoarse cries and whistles of the players, officials, public, and the uninterested pedestrians of the street outside the ground. I was at one with these things, part of a single beautiful whole that contained a single moment of a game, and all the history, culture and collective learning that went into the game and its enjoyment. Within me and without me there was football.

Outside of the inner tube, the case, the stitching, my body, the assembly hall of the little school, I was rising up into the air. I could see over Birchfield Street and Molineux Street into the South Bank, then further south, to the Hawthorns, Villa Park, St Andrews, Highfield Road, the County Ground, Northampton, Kenilworth Road, Vicarage Road, Wembley, Loftus Road, Craven Cottage, Stamford Bridge, past the gasometers and power stations of South London into Selhurst Park, and I was then at once inside the stadium, a ball kicked, headed, parried and punched, feeling only the pressure of motion, no pain outside of it, a part of the universal consciousness, beyond sport, beyond emotion, beyond all of the human and animal clamour and longing, and yet part of it too, the tiniest drop of ink in the sports pages and a ball being picked out of the net by John Jackson. Everything was easy and simple. Everything was as it should be, in its place, peaceful and lovely. Nothing mattered, not even the Wolves….

I pulled myself back from the brink. ‘You all right, Gonby?’ asked Billy Penk, as I jumped up from the parquet floor and looked around me.

‘I’ve got to go,’ I said.

‘Relax,’ said the yogi, ‘Everything is peaceful.’

‘Peace? Love? What’s that all about?’ I asked, slipping my shoes back on, ‘Peace and Love ay gonna get us out the Second Division. Am you comin’ tomorrow or not, Billy?’

Positively North Street

There was some uncomfortable shuffling around the room, the sound of people’s chakras being popped and squeezed.

‘Ar, all right. But I want to stop at Denmark Street and have a look at guitars.’

‘Come round mine at eight; we’ll get the train.’

I stepped out into the cool evening air, and let the material world flow into me again. The weightlessness and detachment had been bliss for a while, but I needed a pint now, the certainty of dominoes, the mathematics of the dartboard. It wasn’t a negative feeling, but quite the contrary. I was feeling good about our chances tomorrow, and happy at my place in the bustling borough. Passing the Gladstone and heading uphill towards the Fox, you could say I felt positively North Street.

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Chelsea 1907

Yeah, it was the smoke. The smoke….

Of course, there was plenty of it around: the railway lines to the east and north of the ground, the power stations at Lots Road, Fulham and Battersea, the gasworks at Sands End and the dozens of small factories around the area, plus the odd indulgent domestic chimney in what was a mild Spring. But among the fumes and vapours of industry, a whole other smell was reaching us, whose molecules spoke a language of health and vitality, among the smoky ciphers of waste, spent energy, entropy. Wordless, Stan Critchley and I followed the little plume rising to the south as frozen, as frozen nomads might approach signs of a village.

Football – professional football, real football – was still a Northern game, then; Woolwich Arsenal were the only top-flight London team, and if Chelsea gained promotion (which they could do that very day, depending on results elsewhere), we would have only one guaranteed trip to the capital to look forward to next season, yet I always felt that football’s future was tied up with London. Perhaps it was the finals we’d lost at Crystal Palace and the Oval, great glamourous events with huge numbers and press coverage; perhaps it was the public transport, so bold and efficient; perhaps it was the verve and modernity of the city…; there had never been a clearly defined source for this feeling, but it was persistent, and as we trudged towards the little shack at the south of the ground and joined the patient queue of people that were not curious but rather expectant, blasé about the delicious smell cutting through the smog and soot of the air, I thought this feeling might be taking a concrete form.

‘A, ha-ha! You silly norvern plonka!’

Ahead of me, Bert Sanderman was hyperventilating, while a small object steamed in his hand and a smaller piece steamed on the floor.

‘By struth,’ he said, ‘that’s bloody hot!’

‘Let’s have a look,’ Stan called to him. He walked towards us, showered with sarcasm and ridicule from the rest of the queue.

‘Smells lovely,’ I said, shuffling forward with queue. ‘Steak and kidney?’

‘I shink so,’ said Bert, still in some discomfort, ‘Cor really tashte it — isht rea-y ho’’

Finally it was my turn, and I paid my penny halfpenny and strolled back to rejoin Dicky and Jack in the North Stand as the teams came out for the second half.

Pie? Hot? At a football match?

‘What y’ad, lads?’ asked Jack.

‘Pie,’ I replied.

‘Pie? Hot? At a football match? That’s unbelievable!’

We stood inhaling watching and inhaling the vapours, fighting the temptation to sample with any further senses in fear of what happened to Bert. Only after Chelsea’s third goal without reply did I try around the edges, and allow myself this miraculous taste of home-from-home. When would we have pies at Molineux? Surely it wouldn’t be long. I knew that I had seen the future, and a glimpse of the enormous commercial potential that the game held. Trust London. It was bound to be London.

The Smoke. Always the Smoke.

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Derby St Lukes, 1884

As we all know, every single Wolves fan born before 1986, as well as quite a few born afterwards, was present at the F.A. Cup First Round replay versus Chorley, in 1986. Yet whenever you meet a Wolves fan who claims to have been at the game, you automatically assumes that man to be a liar and a fraud. The truth, I suspect, lies somewhere in the middle, and I also suspect the cognitive dissonance that this occasions within the Wolves psyche has had a greater impact than any trauma resulting from the defeat itself. Legions of fans who were simultaneously there and not there, distraught and unconcerned, bricked by Bolton Wanderers supporters and curled up on the G-Plan sofa watching Brookside; a Railway End full of Schrödinger’s Cats cowered into submission by Mickey Mouse in black and white: it can’t be good for the soul.

There was a time, however, when it was possible to have a quasi-infinite away following without the metaphysics. In 1884, thanks to a 0-0 draw in Blakenhall, we were scheduled for our longest trip yet for a competitive fixture: Derbyshire, and our former namesakes, St Lukes. What trailblazers we felt!

There had been excitement the previous year, of course, when competing in the English Cup for the first time, but the draw (which was regional in the early stages) had only taken us as far as Wednesbury. Now we were heading out as far as any of us had ever gone, to cross the county’s mysterious eastern border. The thrill of anticipation the previous year was nothing in comparison; physicians were actually diagnosing “Cup fever”, confining people to their beds when they babbled too fondly of reaching the Oval or “knocking over all the skittles.” Jack Dudley’s wife called Dr. Slaughter out three times in a week, and was forced to pawn the mangle to pay for the sugar-coated pills he administered with gloomy indifference.

Men shouted, drank, smoked tobacco…

There was no question of anybody in the town whatsoever missing the fixture, and the efforts and meticulous planning made by the Corporation and by private individuals to get people to the game would not be seen again in Britain until the evacuation of Dunkirk. By canal, road, rail and air (this being the inaugural mission of the Flying Squadron), hundreds of thousands of people would be crossing Staffordshire to follow the boys in red and white. The Seisdon Rural District made similar arrangements, as did a number of parish councils and church groups. The scouts pushed a number of invalids all the way there in bathchairs donated by various sanatoria and workhouses. Many fans, became hysterical during the journey; some left their carriages altogether and were never seen again. Inside the Peel Street ground early arrivals kissed the rope around the edge of the pitch. Later arrivals glided over heads onto the roofs of nearby houses. The Flying Squadron, made a landing on top of people’s heads. Women fainted. Children cried in fear and awe. Men shouted, drank, smoked tobacco.

Wolves lost 4-2. The fever subsided.

But everyone was there. Woman and children, young and old, living and dead (people swore they’d seen lost loved ones, religious icons, the ghost of Lady Wulfrun herself…). It was a reference for the town forever. Nobody was ever doubted when they said they’d been at Peel Street. Anyway it was just assumed that you were. Perhaps for the last time all Wolves fans were as one, although Amos Graves began a foul-mouthed tirade about George Worrall’s “lack of ideas” on the way home, and by the time we reached High Level station many were convinced the club was slipping into terminal decline.

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Wednesbury Old Athletic, 1883

‘Excuse me, young ‘un,’ said Wednesbury’s decrepit Olden George to our inside right Arthur Lowden, as the players took the field, ‘Would you mind taking me arm? I’m not as steady on my legs as I used to be.’

‘Ar, no problem,’ said Arthur.

It was my first visit to Elwell’s, but I’d nurtured a soft spot for the Old ‘Uns since the late seventies, when they’d triumphed over Stafford Road in two Birmingham Cup finals. With Staffordshire and Wednesbury Charity Cups also to their name they represented a formidable obstacle in Wolves’ first ever F.A. Cup tournament, on paper at least. In the flesh, however, they were considerably less impressive. The flesh was dry, wrinkled, and cracking in prominent places.

‘It’s me war wound,’ Olden George went on, ‘Me leg gets very stiff in this weather.’

Olden (or “Holden” as the records have erroneously remembered him), was a veteran of Sevastopol, and wore a Balaclava to keep out the mild winter. Arthur guided him to the halfway line and took up his own position, while the rest of the Old ‘Uns made their own doddering ways to the field, usually with the help of a Wolves player. The goalkeeper, slouched over Ike Griffiths’ brawny shoulders like a caveman’s leathery cape, could hardly place one foot in front of the other. “Kent is spent!” said Amos Graves, always fond of a rhyme or a pun.

‘Ar,’ said I, ‘And there’s less of Morley than there should be.’

We watched Jack Brodie wheel a shrivelled, balding man into the centre-half position. ‘His name’s “Byrne,”’ said Amos, looking pleased with himself, ‘and he doe look far off cremation.’

We racked our brains for more puns…

We racked our brains for more puns, but none came. It was time to move the conversation along.

‘So this lot beat Mitchell St George’s five-nil in the last round? How old must they have been?’

Wednesbury had its own way of doing things – we’d already seen some evidence of that. The public bar of the Horse and Jockey had been filled with six-to-thirteen-year-olds with dogs on their laps talking about work, grumbling about politics and swearing loudly at their parents when they mithered them for crisps, while geriatrics pored over schoolbooks in the snug. I’d pushed past the cherubic foreman of a local steel works and a seven-year-old signalman at Bescot Yards to get served by a barmaid so young she had to stand on a stool to pull pints. The conversation had been shrill, and it was a relief to hit the fresh air, where a drunken nine-year-old sought satisfaction from a workmate over a spilt pint.

‘Scrap! Scrap! Scrap!’

It was nearly time for kick-off, and latecomers were flooding to the Oval, many of them in their cups. Another argument looked like it might come to blows, this one concerning a ten-bob wager between tipsy toddlers. A circle formed, with the children shouting ‘Scrap! Scrap! Scrap!’ until the referee’s whistle reminded them why they’d come to Elwell’s and they gathered around the pitch instead.

As expected, Wolves took the lead early on when Brodie rose above the hunched shoulders of Morley and Nicholls to nod home a cross from the industrious Jabez Griffiths. Brodie doubled his tally and Wolves’ lead ten minutes later, via a blistering shot that flew between the posts and well beyond the crowd; a six-year-old instructed a middle-aged man and his dog to retrieve it. The man complained but set off anyway. Some of the home fans had tears in their eyes at this point, one or two calling for their mummies. ‘Not fair!’ shouted one little ginger urchin from the Wood Green Road side, ‘You should rethpect your elderth! You’ll be old like Mr Morley one day.’

‘It’s a game!’ Tommy Blackham shouted back, arms akimbo.

‘It is getting a bit physical, son,’ said Olden George, availing himself of a puff on the ginger urchin’s pipe. ‘I could do with a little bit of help from you if it’s not too much to ask.’

On the other side of the pitch, Alf Davidson appeared to be receiving a similar petition from their outside left. By the centre circle, Jack Baynton was tying Wednesbury’s right-half, Hubert.

‘It’s just mannerth,’ said Ginger, his pink tongue lisping through a missing front tooth, ‘You rethpect your elderth.’

Tommy looked over at Jack Brodie. The captain shrugged his shoulders, then conferred with Jack Baynton. By the time the man with the dog threw the ball back on the pitch there was a full team meeting had been concluded.

‘Play up, Polite ‘Uns!’ shouted Amos Graves, his big beery breath steaming in the cold.

The referee blew his whistle for play to resume, and the Wolves players set about trying to help the Old ‘Uns wherever possible. A firm hand to the elbow so the winger didn’t lose his balance while sending over a cross, a boost for the centre forward when rising to meet it…; Wednesbury’s efforts were fully supported by the visiting team, always with a kind smile and a doff of the cap. ‘Play up, polite-uns!’ shouted Amos Graves, his big beery breath steaming in the cold. Wednesbury managed to scrape one back before half-time, keeper Ike Griffiths allowing Bayliss a second chance after his first shot failed to reach the goalline.

Things got worse for Wolves in the second half. First our full-back Tommy Cliff controlled a long ball some eight yards out and then stood back so that Bayliss could shoot unhindered, Griffiths clapping the ball across the line. Then Cliff and Mason combined to carry Tonks horizontally to meet a low cross from Roberts with his head, even helping him raise his arms in celebration afterwards. The coup de grâce came when the full-back, Nicholls, with a Wolves inside forward on each arm, began a surging run from his own half with ten minutes to go, reaching the Wolves half with five minutes to go and slotting past Griffiths with the last kick of the game. Final score: Wednesbury Old Athletic Club 4 Wolverhampton Wanderers 2.

Though disappointed to be knocked out of the cup, we had to agree that the older side had won, and when players and supporters convened at the Queen’s Head afterwards, there were no hard feelings from Wolves, and only a little disorientation and lack of confidence when walking among the home side. I asked two-goal hero Bayliss whether the Old ‘Uns wouldn’t be better off pursuing less physical interests.

‘Way did start off as Wednesbury Literary and Athletic,’ he replied, taking a sip of his half of mild and adjusting his dentures with his tongue, ‘But the young ‘uns were too busy to teach us how to read.’

‘Don’t you learn that at school?’ I asked.

‘Doe learn anything. The pupils car control the class.’

Though our dreams of visiting more exotic locations in later rounds had been dashed, it was nevertheless an enjoyable Saturday, all in all, and great to see the boys displaying such good manners. Unfortunately, increasing professionalism in the game meant that Wolves’ way of doing things was getting left behind. In the very next round, Aston Villa resorted to hiding some of the Old ‘Uns’ spectacles, creeping up behind defenders and shouting, and pointing and laughing when forwards couldn’t get up after being tackled. Though a player was cautioned by the referee for excessive use of the word ‘Grandad,’ these tactics were generally successful, and soon adopted by clubs throughout the South Staffs, North Warwickshire and beyond. And the times were changing for Wednesbury too: within just a couple of years, children would be forced to study before they were allowed near heavy machinery, and pub brawls were enjoyed only by the over-fourteens.