On The Road With Romford – Part Three – Norwich United

Supporting a football team is not all about winning trophies. Sure, that’s what all clubs, and all of their fans, want, but realistically only a handful of teams are every likely to win the Premier League or the FA Cup. In fact, at all levels there are only a few teams that will realistically challenge for silverware. The rest may dream, but for their fans it isn’t always about winning pots, it’s about the memories.

Going to football is not just about the ninety minutes in my view. I would hate to just go to a game, watch it alone and go home again. Football is for me, as much about meeting friends, and sometimes the trip, if it’s an away game.

As a diversion from current events, I thought that I would take a trip down memory lane, and revisit some of the away games that I have experienced watching Romford. In this third part, we are back in Norfolk.

If Romford’s trip to Wroxham in 2013 (featured in the first blog in this series) has passed into Boro folklore, then the trip to Norwich United on Tuesday 10^th October 2017 is very much the stuff of legend.

The fact that Romford had to make a 200-mile round trip in midweek had arisen because on the Saturday when the fixture was originally scheduled, Romford had been involved in an FA Cup tie against local rivals AFC Hornchurch. Midweek trips of this sort of distance can be problematic for teams at Romford’s level, with players having to get time off work to travel, and so it was that when players and supporters gathered to catch the coach, the thinness of the Romford squad was noticeable. There were a bare twelve players available so when the team was announced, the subs bench consisted of one regular player - Ben Clarke – plus manager Paul Martin and his assistant, Mark Lord; the combined age of the bench was 117 years!

The age of Romford's subs at Norwich was worthy of a photo opportunity that appeared in the next home programme.

Norwich United’s ground at Plantation Park is only seven miles from the centre of the city, but the location is rural and on an autumnal Tuesday evening, not the most inspiring. The ground, like many at this level, is quite basic with cover on one side, a clubhouse and changing room building behind one goal, and open fields behind the other and along one side. Romford’s only previous visit had resulted in a 4-1 defeat, given this, the thinness of the squad and the club’s league position did not fill Boro fans with optimism.

The game was between the two bottom markers in the Bostik League North. Norwich United had just four points to their name from ten games, while Romford had just one more, but the home side would have been quietly confident that they would be able to lift themselves off the foot of the table on this evening.

It may not actually be the case, but it always seems to me that the moment Romford set foot in Norfolk they concede a penalty (Boro conceded three penalties in their first two visits to Dereham Town, for instance), and after fifteen minutes at Norwich, the referee was pointing to the spot (rather too eagerly in the view of some Romford supporters). Norwich’s Henery sent Boro keeper Stephen Reynolds the wrong way with his penalty.

Romford had a goal ruled out for a foul on the Norwich keeper (Boro fans were of the opinion that the Norwich goalkeeper had brought the foul on himself by rushing from his line and running into a Romford player), and then had a penalty appeal waved away when Vlad Sighiartau was brought down. To add insult to injury, Sighiartau was yellow carded.

There was no little grumbling and groaning among the Romford supporters at half-time, about the penalty that was given, and the one that wasn’t, and the goal that was ruled out. A certain amount of hostility towards the officials was festering, and even though indignation at the performance of referees tends to abate in the cold light of day after games, this was a display of refereeing which no amount of hindsight could throw into a favourable light.

The antipathy towards the officials grew during the second half as Romford were denied another penalty claim and various, sundry 50/50 decisions seemed to go against them. With limited options to change things from the bench – the only regular player, Ben Clarke, was introduced in place of Vlad Sighiartau after 67 minutes – it seemed, as the game entered the last five minutes, that Romford would slip to the foot of the table. Three minutes from time, manager Paul Martin brought himself on to replace Connor Hammond. Paul Martin had played for Romford’s reserve side more than ten years previously before taking up the role as first assistant manager, and then manager of the stiffs. He took over as first-team manager in 2008 and guided Romford to the Essex Senior League championship in his first full season. He had not played for the first team before (or since, come to that), so even most loyal of Romford supporters were doubtful whether his introduction could, or would salvage anything from the game.

If memory serves me correctly, Paul Martin made three contributions, the last of which – as he was keen to point out to us supporters after the game – would prove crucial. His first contribution was to concede a free-kick, his second was to take one. His third came off the ball, as he implored Romford striker Nick Reynolds to shoot for goal as the game entered stoppage time. Reynolds shot, Norwich keeper Wilton saved, but the ball escaped his grasp, with Boro midfielder James Ishmail bearing down on him. Collectively, Romford fans held their breath. Ishmail got to the ball first and fired the ball into the net. Cue – as they say – pandemonium!

Skipper Danny Cossington leads his team off at the end. Manager Paul Martin is on the right.

Boro manager Paul Martin praised the fans for their support in the local paper that week, and we gave the team a rousing reception as they left the field. Any uncommitted spectators – and maybe some Norwich fans – in the ground probably wondered why we were virtually delirious having picked up just a point against a team as poorly placed as ourselves. There was huge relief involved, and as most football fans will know, a point -especially one gained against the odds, can be as satisfying as a win. Drawn games are like that, some are as rewarding as victories, some as deflating as defeats.

The coach deposited us back in Romford in the early hours of Wednesday, and for a few days there was room for optimism, but Romford lost the next three and were soon bottom of the pile, a position they shared with Norwich United and, for a brief spell, Cheshunt for the rest of the season. The final week of the season saw Romford trail Norwich United by six points with each side having two games left. Two defeats for Norwich and two wins for Romford saw Boro pull off The Great Escape and avoid relegation by a single point.

That final week deserves a chapter of this blog all to itself, but in the final analysis, this point on an autumn evening in Norfolk was crucial in keeping Romford up, and its memory will stick in the minds of all the Romford faithful who were there.

Strange Days

These are strange days: We live in unprecedented times. In the UK, only those Britons who lived through the Second World War can have experienced anything comparable, and if anyone had said at the end of January, when the first two cases of the coronavirus were detected in the UK, that by the beginning of April we would be confined to our homes except for essential shopping trips, work, and exercise, we would have found it hard to comprehend, but here we are.

How much longer we remain in this situation is anyone’s guess, although I would suspect it will be longer than the more optimistic estimates, especially as there still remain many people who are not taking isolation or social distancing sufficiently seriously. Many people are still travelling when they need not, and many have jobs that require them to commute however, I wonder how worse off we would have been had this pandemic struck thirty, forty years ago, or more?

In particular, had this pandemic happened during the 1970s, how would we have managed? The 1970s were a time when the UK was frequently short of something or the other, whether it was bread when the bakers went on strike, or potatoes when the harvest was blighted by bad weather, or oil when OPEC introduced an embargo. Along with power cuts, there was always seemed to be a shortage of something (see The 1970's: Part Two - Strikes, Shortages, and Substitutes).  In those days, empty shelves in the supermarkets made us shrug our shoulders and improvise.

Had 1970s Britain had to go into lockdown things would have been different from today in many respects. The biggest difference is driven by the internet, and it is largely thanks to that that even before this pandemic, 1.5 million Britons were working from home, and that figure will have increased significantly in response to coronavirus. In the 1970s, working from home was not an option except for a tiny minority. Given that many jobs that are now made easier by automation and computerisation were heavily manual during the 1970s, most employers would have expected their staff to carry on regardless in that era. For my part, having started work in 1976 and working in branch banking, there would have been little scope for me to do anything other than my normal job, in my normal place of work, and having to use public transport to get there.

In the 1970s cash was king. Most shopping transactions were complete with notes and coins; those that weren’t involved a different form of paper in the shape of cheques. In recent years we have become used to debit cards, Chip & Pin, and now contactless methods of payment, which is just as well since most shops are now only reluctantly accepting cash due to its potential as a means of transmitting the virus. Even before coronavirus, I had pretty much converted to paying with my phone except where that wasn’t an option and I currently don’t have a single banknote to my name, while all of my coins are quarantined.

If we had ended up in lockdown fifty years ago, we would not have had the number of diversions that we have today. We had just three TV channels (Channel 4 started broadcasting in 1982), and there was very little worth watching before early evening anyway. No streaming services, no videos or DVDs. No social media; really, we can have no complaints today about having to spend time at home, and we have no reason to be bored.

As is the case with almost every aspect of it, the internet has been a force for good, and not so good in these times. Apart from enabling people to work from home – including broadcasters, with radio and TV shows being recorded from kitchens and living rooms up and down the country – virtual exercise classes are being shown on social media. Ten days ago I’d not even heard of Zoom, but my wife has been logging on to it daily to join in with various classes being run by our local YMCA. We did a virtual pub quiz the other day, along with about 16,000 other people, and of course, Facetime and other video messaging services have been a boon for people who are self-isolating and thus estranged from family and friends.

But the internet would not be the internet without the negative, and social media highlights and amplifies this. Twitter is the worst for this in my experience, both in terms of original posts and the reactions to them; much of the content at present is extremely pessimistic about the prognosis of the current pandemic, and as ever, Twitter seems to attract the sort of person for whom logical argument and civilised debate can never replace abuse and ignorance in any conversation.

In fairness though, I did have some very civilised Twitter exchanges with people I know only through that medium on my birthday this week. In fact, social media made my birthday a much more convivial experience than it would have been otherwise, as apart from my immediate family, I didn’t see anyone. Having said that, that’s actually not that unusual!

For all its faults though, the internet is invaluable for keeping us up to date with news from official sources – and the not so official ones. In the 1970s we were limited to a daily newspaper and TV and radio news broadcasts, and if we think back to the Falklands conflict in 1982, the news we got from the frontline was heavily censored. Today, for good or ill, the official news we get is subject to a great deal more scrutiny, although as ever we must apply a good deal of scepticism to all that we read, whether it is the source or the critique.

Boredom and too much time on our hands browsing social media on the internet may mean being inveigled into doing quizzes, or answering those seemingly innocent questions that ask things like, where did you go on the first flight you took? Or, who were the first band you saw live? Or, the name of your first school, first pet, or the road you grew up in. Or, perhaps take the name of your first pet and your mother’s maiden name to make your movie star name. Do any of those things sound familiar? They ought to because those are the sort of things that your bank asks as security questions. Just for fun, why don’t you share a picture of your credit card, and post the three-digit code that’s on the reverse as well? Then we can all check back this time next week and see whose bank account was cleaned out first.

Coronavirus is a storm that we all hope and pray will soon abate. In the meantime all we are being asked to do to make sure we ride it out is stay indoors, watch TV, read books, play games, catch up on odd jobs, and chat with our friends and family (in person with those we live with, online with those we don’t). We don’t have to take to an air-raid shelter at night, and we don’t go to sleep wondering if we’ll have a house to live in the next morning. It’s not a big price to pay, so stay at home, and stay safe!

On The Road With Romford – Part Two – AFC Sudbury

Supporting a football team is not all about winning trophies. Sure, that’s what all clubs, and all of their fans, want, but realistically only a handful of teams are every likely to win the Premier League or the FA Cup. In fact, at all levels, there are only a few teams that will realistically challenge for silverware. The rest may dream, but for their fans, it isn’t always about winning pots, it’s about the memories.

Going to football is not just about the ninety minutes in my view. I would hate to just go to a game, watch it alone and go home again. Football is for me, as much about meeting friends, and sometimes the trip, if it’s an away game.

As a diversion from current events, I thought that I would take a trip down memory lane, and revisit some of the away games that I have experienced watching Romford. In this second part, it’s off to Suffolk.

The merger of Sudbury Town and Sudbury Wanderers in 1999 resulted in the creation of AFC Sudbury. Unlike many clubs with the prefix AFC, Sudbury’s stands for more than the normal Association Football Club; it actually stands for Amalgamated Football Club. 

Romford’s Reserves had played Sudbury Town during the 1960s, but neither Romford’s first-team nor reserves ever played Sudbury Wanderers, and before the game that features here, Boro had met AFC Sudbury just twice.

When Romford travelled to Sudbury on 4^th September 2010 for the first league meeting between the clubs, Sudbury would have felt themselves favourites. The two previous meetings between the sides had both gone their way. In 2005, Boro had travelled to Sudbury in the FA Vase at a time when the home side were something of experts in the competition, having reached the final in each of the previous three seasons, although they had been beaten on all of those occasions. On the day, Sudbury proved too strong for Romford – then an Essex Senior League side - and ran out 4-0 winners.

The sides next met in the FA Trophy four years later in a game played at Romford’s then home at Aveley FC. By now, Romford had been promoted from the Essex Senior League to the Isthmian League, and AFC Sudbury had gone up from the Eastern Counties League to the Southern League. But while Romford were in the Isthmian League’s second tier, AFC Sudbury were in the Southern League’s top division and they proved to be too strong for Boro. Having taken a 2-0 lead inside the first five minutes, AFC Sudbury led 4-0 at the break and eventually went home 7-0 winners.

By 2010, restructuring in non-League football had seen AFC Sudbury moved to Romford’s division of the Isthmian League, but while Sudbury were considered to be among the favourites for promotion, Romford’s ambitions were a little more prosaic. Being one of the few – if not only – sides in the division not to have any sort of playing budget, Romford would consider merely staying in the division as success of sorts. This would hold true for all of the ten years that Paul Martin managed Romford in the Isthmian League. Glenn Tamplin’s involvement with the club from November 2019 changed that, of course with the club finally having the opportunity to pay players.

Arriving at Sudbury in September 2010, the first thing that Romford supporters noticed was that the old clubhouse and changing rooms had been replaced with a brand new and very impressive facility (as shown in a page from Sudbury’s programme that is reproduced here). Those of us who bought a programme would have noticed the comments by the editor when referring to the previous meetings between the sides, specifically that “you would fancy us to score some goals today.” That is the sort of comment that can come back to bite you, and can do the opposition manager’s team talk for them. Even if the Romford players were unaware of it, the ethos that manager Paul Martin always instilled in his sides was that they had nothing to fear, even against supposedly better sides, and so it proved.

Some pages from AFC Sudbury's programme, including the comment from the editor that came back to bite!

On a sunny and very pleasant late summer afternoon, AFC Sudbury had decent early chances with goalkeeper Adam Rafis having to make a good save from Sudbury’s Russell Malton, who then fired over the bar, but it was Romford who drew first blood when Richard Oxby’s low free-kick found the net in the 16^th minute with the Sudbury keeper apparently unsighted.

It was 1-0 to Romford at the break, but 2-0 after 49 minutes as Toran Senghore took advantage of some dithering in the home defence to intercept a back pass and slot the ball home. Stung by this, Sudbury responded, hitting the woodwork, while Kevin Neville cleared one off the line, Rafis made vital saves and James Ishmail made an important tackle to deny them a goal.

Having drawn Sudbury’s sting, Romford scored twice in three minutes. First, after 77 minutes, Andy Edmunds hit the sweetest volley you could imagine after a Sudbury defender had half-cleared Duane Miller’s cross, and then after 80 minutes Miller and Senghore combined to set up Edmunds for his second to make it 4-0

Andy Edmunds volleys Romford's third goal.

The fans cheered Boro off the pitch and the players applauded the fans; it was one of those afternoons that all football fans will know and savour when it’s experienced, going away from home to play a fancied side and getting a stunning, and unexpected result. And in subsequent seasons, Romford have had some similarly outstanding results away from home, including three more wins at Sudbury, with two 3-1 victories and one by the more remarkable score line of 6-3. If there’s one thing that is normally guaranteed when Romford and AFC Sudbury meet, it’s goals; in twenty-one games in all competitions between the sides there have been 86 (an average of just over 4 per game), and on only eight occasions have one side or another failed to score.

Romford's players leave the field to a rapturous reception.

Aside from this memorable trip, five years later in 2015 I made it to Romford’s game at Sudbury in unusual circumstances. Every July or August, we have a family holiday at Center Parcs in Elveden, but in 2015 when we had booked it, the opening day of the football season had not been fixed. When it was, it coincided with our trip to Center Parcs. As my very good luck had it, Romford’s opening fixture was at Sudbury, which just happens to be a mere 30 miles from Eleveden! Boro’s 5-2 defeat that day wasn’t the result I’d hoped for, but at least I got to the game!

How the Romford Recorder reported Boro's win

Win, lose, or draw I’ve always enjoyed trips to Sudbury, it’s a pleasant ground, the people there are nice, the welcome is always warm, and the two clubs have a good relationship. One day very soon, I hope to see Romford play there again.

On The Road With Romford – Part One – Wroxham

Supporting a football team is not only about winning trophies. Sure, that’s what all clubs, and all of their fans, want, but realistically only a handful of teams are every likely to win the Premier League or the FA Cup. In fact, at all levels there are only a few teams that will realistically challenge for silverware. The rest may dream, but for their fans it isn’t always about winning pots, it’s about the memories.

Going to football is not just about the ninety minutes in my view. I would hate to just go to a game, watch it alone and go home again. Football is for me, as much about meeting friends, and sometimes the trip, if it’s an away game.

As a diversion from current events, I thought that I would take a trip down memory lane, and revisit some of the away games that I have experienced watching Romford, and to prove that it’s not just the wins that create memories, this first one is from a snowy night in Norfolk when Romford took a bit of a pasting.

Wroxham, on The Norfolk Broads, is a nice place to visit when the weather is good. I’ve been there on a boating holiday on The Broads back in 1975, and went there again for lunch en route to Norwich last summer. 

When Wroxham were promoted to Romford’s division of the Isthmian League in 2012, I had hoped that Boro would get to go there either right at the start, or right at the end, of the season so that I might be able to combine a few days on the water with going to the match. No such luck; during the five seasons that the sides shared a division, every trip to Wroxham was between October and early March.

In 2012, Romford were scheduled to go to Wroxham on the Saturday before Christmas, but the weather put paid to that, and the game was rearranged for Tuesday 5^th February 2013. As was the norm for trips of that distance – it’s 120 miles from Romford to Wroxham – there was a coach organised for players and supporters (more normally, players and supporters travel to games independently).

With snow forecast, it was with some trepidation that we set off for Norfolk on an evening that now has a firm place in Romford FC folklore.

As the coach approached Ipswich the first sprinkling of snow began to fall and by the time we reached the outskirts of Norwich it was beginning to become quite heavy. Phone conversations with both the home club and our counterparts from Thurrock FC, who were on their way to Lowestoft, suggested that it was touch and go as to whether either game would be played. Thurrock's trip to England's most easterly town proved to be in vain with a snowbound pitch ruling out any play, while a number of Football League games, and Leicester City’s FA Cup tie against Huddersfield Town also succumbed, how would Romford’s game fare?

There was much speculation on the coach as to whether we thought the game would be played, and by the time we got to Wroxham, a bit later than planned, at about 6.30pm, it seemed from a call from the home club’s secretary, that the game was off.

We arrived at Wroxham’s Trafford Park ground to see a pitch covered with a light dusting of snow and the referee disinclined to allow the game to proceed. Given that we had just travelled 120 miles, we were all reluctant to turn around and go home, so the kit was unloaded and everyone trooped into the clubhouse while Romford’s manager Paul Martin and his Wroxham counterpart discussed the state of the pitch with the referee, who fortunately (albeit reluctantly) gave the go ahead for play to start. It has to be said that his agreeing to start the game came with the proviso that he would abandon proceedings if it got farcical. As it happened, the snow relented and what remained was just a fine dusting that got trodden into the pitch as the game progressed; if there was any reason for the game to be halted it would have been that the pitch became increasingly waterlogged.

Selected pages from the match programme

It was a very cold night, and that, combined with the fact that the game had been doubt, probably made up many of the local supporters’ minds and convinced them that a night in front of the TV was preferable. As a result, there were just 75 in the crowd, with about twenty of those from Romford, some who had been on the coach, and some who had travelled independently.

As football matches go, this was not one to enjoy from a Romford perspective. Wroxham took the lead after 23 minutes and made it two just before half-time. Romford had a goal disallowed just after the interval, but that was as good as it got as Wroxham scored three more to win 5-0, although their last came in the 66^th minute.

A rare moment of pressure from Romford (Blue & Yellow stripes). Photo: TGS

Romford goalkeeper Atu Ngoy fell ill towards the end of the game, and had to be replaced, with striker Nick Reynolds taking over between the posts. Romford’s substitute for Ngoy was assistant manager Mark Lord, who extended his own record as Romford’s oldest player at the age of 46. He later went on to break his own record again when he came on as a substitute, aged 48, against Redbridge in 2015.

Having applauded our team off with numbed hands, we repaired to the clubhouse to warm up, although whether having a cold beer was a good idea is moot. As is so often the case in non-League football, the hospitality from the home club was first class and the food that they shared with us – sausages and bubble & squeak – was most welcome. Wroxham was one of those places that was always a pleasure to visit, whether we won, lost or drew, and despite the distance I’m sorry that they got relegated in 2017; we may not get another chance to go there.

At the end of that freezing cold night in February, we all got back on the coach and went home, it would have been after one o’clock by the time I put the key in the door, after a 240 mile round trip and a 5-0 defeat, but a night I won’t forget, one of those trips that despite the result, make following a team memorable.

What I Want For My Birthday

I’ve been wracking my brains for something to write about that isn’t in any way related to the coronavirus, but frankly, it’s difficult to think about much else at present. I’ve got some ideas, but somehow, they all seem trivial or inappropriate right now. When I started writing this blog, I said that I saw it as cathartic, and creating structure. That’s even more true now, writing is quite therapeutic, even if the content isn’t groundbreaking.

It’s the same with everything else at present. My enthusiasm for reading or watching TV has nosedived; I’m finding it very difficult to concentrate. When I pick up a book, I read a couple of pages, realise that I’ve not taken much in, and put it down again. Because of that, I’ve decided to try reading only books that are set in either some alternative reality or in the distant past. It’s difficult for me to read about the world as normal as it was a couple of weeks ago. Given the popularity of dystopian or post-apocalyptic fiction, one wonders how well those genres are going to do in the coming years after the human race has lived through something more normally confined to the pages of a book. My major solace at present is listening to old radio comedies on the BBC Sounds app, although I am looking forward to the new series of Friday Night Dinner that starts tonight on Channel 4.

One thing I have been reading a lot about in online forums and social media is how the football season should be completed. There’s been lots of debate, lots of different opinions and eventually The Football Association took the plunge this week and announced that football at Steps 3 down to 7 and at grassroots would not finish this season, which would be treated as null and void. Cue much opposition, although this would have been the case whatever the decision. We await a verdict on how the Premier League, Football League, and National League (Steps 1 & 2) will conclude. In many ways, the debate about all this is a welcome distraction from what is happening all over this country, and all over the world, but I can’t help but look at it disinterestedly. It’s purely academic when we don’t know how long we are going to be confined to quarters.

My TV diet in recent days has been documentaries and quiz shows, both of which are well separated from the current reality, although when the host of a game show asks a contestant what they would do if they won that day’s cash prize, and the answer is that they would like to take an extended tour of Italy, reality immediately intrudes.

I’m diverting myself by playing Scrabble on my iPad, and I dread to think how much my screen time has gone up in the last week. I really ought to do something more useful, but find it difficult to raise the enthusiasm, unlike my wife, who is undertaking a major reorganisation of her belongings. Earlier this week the contents of the wardrobes were all over the bedroom, currently the hall is strewn with books and stationery, and yesterday the living room floor was covered with knitting needles and other paraphernalia. I’ve been roped into helping by putting up hooks and carting unwanted items out to the garage preparatory to it going to a charity shop, and I suppose I ought to take the opportunity to have a good old clear out of all the old tat that I’ve accumulated – the CDs that have not been played in years and won’t ever be again, and the clothes that I no longer wear for one reason or another. But I don’t have the enthusiasm.

I have a Facebook group and a Twitter account where I post scanned images of old football programmes, together with some blurb about the game in question, and that keeps me occupied for an hour or so each day, although since the study – where the desktop PC and the scanner are located – has become Val’s domain, and is now the major focus of her reorganisation regime, I have to synchronise my scanning with the time that she spends in the lounge with her laptop linked up to the TV, participating in online exercise classes. Generally, I think that Val has adapted rather better to this period of confinement than I have.

I’ve barely been out for a week. I went to the local pharmacy to pick up a prescription the other day; that entailed queuing outside as only three customers at a time were allowed inside, and a similar arrangement was in place when I walked up to my local Co-op supermarket the other morning. Limited stock available, with very little fresh fruit or vegetables, and of course no toilet rolls.

I really ought to go out for a walk – practicing social distancing of course – but again, I simply don’t have the enthusiasm.

At some point in the next couple of days I’m going to have to venture to a supermarket as our supplies of vegetables, fruit, bread and milk are running down, but having seen the images of the queues to get in, I’m not filled with any great desire to stand with my trolley, even at a safe distance from other shoppers, to try and replenish our stocks.

I feel extremely sorry for people who still have to travel to work, especially since public transport has been cut back, making social distancing for commuters quite difficult, to say the least. And of course, my admiration for the doctors, nurses, carers, and other health care workers who continue to do such a marvellous job in very trying circumstances knows no bounds. There are however, plenty of people still travelling whose work could not be described as vital, and there are other people who seem to be treating the restrictions put in place by government as optional, or not applicable to them. Scenes of people flocking to the coast last weekend, and congregating in parks, or taking trips to the countryside for walks cement the impression that for many, coronavirus is something that only happens to other people.

At present, I’m finding it difficult to look forward to anything, even my birthday, which is coming up soon. My family will confirm that I am not an easy person to get presents for (even I would struggle to get inspiration to buy me one), and this year I care even less than usual. There is something I’d like, however. As the late, great, Ian Dury once said, "All I want for my birthday is another birthday."

The 4 AM Curse

The time I find hardest of all is four o’clock in the morning. It’s the time at which I frequently wake up and brood. At 4 am I’m awake enough to struggle getting back off to sleep, but insufficiently rested so that I know I will feel tired by the middle of the afternoon.

Lying awake at 4 am, my mind starts to torture me. It’s bad enough at the best of times, my mind runs riot with hypothetical disasters from which I feel I will have to extricate myself sooner or later. Or, my thoughts take me on a journey featuring all of the greatest embarrassments I have experienced. Only at four in the morning am I likely to remember, in excruciating detail, some shame from half-a-century ago.

At present, things are worse than normal. My mind tricks me with temporary amnesia when I first wake, and the problems we currently face only slowly dawn on me. Then they occupy virtually my every waking thought until I go to bed, however many hours later that may be.

I remember vividly that in 1993, when June – my first wife – died, suddenly and unexpectedly, I would have no trouble getting to sleep (stress can do that), but would wake at all hours and, at first, have a vague feeling that something was different and wrong. Then the enormity of it would hit me. It’s the same now, except with one very important difference.

When June died, my world caved in. Bereavement hits you hard and suddenly, in the same way as a terrorist atrocity or a natural disaster (whether we are directly involved or not). The shock is immediate. Quite the opposite is true in the case of coronavirus (unless you have it, or know someone who has it, of course), but there’s an impending feeling of doom, a sense that the hammer is about to fall. They say that terrorists only have to get lucky once, the security services and the police have to be lucky all of the time, and that is how I feel about coronavirus. Every time I go out – and as well as the supermarket, I’ve ended up in B&Q and Ikea in recent days, and with a sense of foreboding on each occasion – I feel that I’m shortening the odds on my catching this thing.

While the Government has stopped short of telling pubs to close (Edit: Since I wrote this, the Government has announced that pubs, cafes, and restaurants are to close), they have counselled people to avoid them. But Stanley Johnson, father of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, said on live TV that he had every intention of ignoring his son’s advice, and would be going to the pub that evening. That sort of attitude – and that of college kids continuing to party during Spring Break in the States, or British holidaymakers in Spain ignoring the state of emergency that has been imposed there - shows that voluntary measures are hopeless in this sort of instance. There exists a belief among these sorts of people that either they are invulnerable, or that the rules simply don’t apply to them.

I get the very distinct impression that many British people would not take kindly to draconian restrictions of their rights to do precisely what they want, and that banning assemblies of large groups, of closing the pubs, or limiting the right to movement, would all be treated as affronts. The population seems to have split into the ultra-cautious on the one hand – latex gloves and face masks while stripping the shelves bare in Tesco or Asda – to the carefree, potentially reckless souls who make no concession to the circumstances. Me, I’m somewhere in the middle, lurching uncertainly between despair and hope – and you know what they say about that in a different context – ‘despair I can deal with, it’s the hope I can’t handle’.

I should probably avoid social media, which is doing nothing to calm my anxiety. Twitter is especially bad. I’ve seen some dire predictions (including some from people working in the NHS) to the effect that a perfect storm is brewing; these posters are especially scathing of people who continue to use public transport, go to the gym, and socialise in pubs and restaurants. And to all those who shrug their shoulders, say they are fine, and blithely carry on as though what is swirling around us is no more inconvenient than a mild cold, remember – you may feel fine now, but you may be carrying the coronavirus, and by the time you know, how many people may you have infected?

There are even those who deny that we are facing a pandemic. The Washington Post features a lengthy and depressing article about coronavirus deniers who see the current state of affairs as a left-wing and media driven conspiracy aimed at bringing down President Trump, and claim that because they know no one who has contracted the virus, it is a hoax. Unless these people believe that governments and media outside the US are conniving in this, the theory holds no water, but there again they probably do believe that. The fact is that many people prefer to believe conspiracy theories than the truth if that truth is inconvenient to them, and that doesn’t just apply now.

I know no more than I can read, hear, or see through various news channels. How much is accurate, how much is speculation, and how much is downright bollocks, I have no idea. What I do know is that I don’t know how much I don’t know, and I certainly don’t know if I’m going to wake up one morning with a sore throat, start coughing and fall ill. And if that happens, I don’t know how many people I have already infected. And the thing is, if that happens to you, you won’t know either.

There’s not much I can do about going to supermarkets, or pharmacies (I had to collect a prescription yesterday, and the pharmacy staff were all wearing masks, enforced a six-foot exclusion zone, and allowed only three customers in at a time; they are taking this seriously). Clearly, social distancing is important, even if you think you are healthy.

But when Boris Johnson suggests we avoid socialising by going to pubs, and his father vigorously poo-poos it, you have to wonder if we are going to hell in a handcart. Wetherspoons boss Tim Martin – who is not a renowned epidemiologist to the best of my knowledge – weighed in by saying that pubs should stay open, and that there has been 'very little transmission of the virus in pubs.’ Now, I’m not normally one to agree with Piers Morgan, but he is spot on here, about people going to pubs in general not just about Wetherspoons.

I love pubs, but at present I shall be avoiding them scrupulously.

End piece: I wake up: It must be about 5.30, I guess. Wrong, it’s 3.54 – here we go again.

Bill Shankly v The Coronavirus

The late Bill Shankly’s much-quoted remark, that football is a more important matter than life or death, seems grotesquely inappropriate right now. With the world gripped by coronavirus, worrying about football, or any other sport for that matter, seems trivial.

The fact that all over the globe, football leagues have ground to a halt has provoked the press and the general public to speculate on how the 2019-20 season will be concluded, or whether it will be abandoned, and there are times when I get frustrated by the blithe manner in which matter is being discussed, as though this coronavirus thing is a minor inconvenience, and that there is some definite end date in sight. At other times, however, I realise that as a diversion from the almost universally depressing news and the sometimes hysterical postings on social media, trying to work out what will happen with the football season is therapeutic and diverting.

The English Football League (EFL) have today (Wednesday, 18^th March), announced that “in order to protect competition integrity” (how the EFL love that phrase, they use it to justify everything they do, whether it’s popular or not) they intend completing this season’s competition. The critical question here, of course, is when? The EFL season is supposed to conclude on 2^nd May but currently all matches are postponed, and while they are slated to restart on 4^th April, few think this is practical. (Edit: Since I wrote this, The Football Association has agreed that the current season can be "extended indefinitely" and the Premier League and English Football League have extended the suspension to 30th April at least).

The Premier League have, along with other European leagues, agreed with Uefa a target of completing their programmes by 30^th May. That seems equally as ambitious and just as impractical as the EFL’s 2^nd May deadline. Lower down football’s pyramid, non-League football, in competitions such as the National League and below, the final day of the regular season is 25^th April, with play-off matches following hard on that day’s heels. Even were these leagues to restart on 2^nd April, some clubs would be faced with having to play thirteen games in twenty-one days. In the past, when there have been fixture backlogs caused by the weather, and this season has been particularly blighted by the rain that has seen clubs like mine, Romford FC, have eleven games postponed due to waterlogged pitches, The FA has always refused to extend the season. In the unlikely event that football recommences in April, they will have little choice to extend unless they take one of the other proposed options that have been mooted to finish the season.

The pitch at Brentwood Town's ground, which Romford share, has been a sea of mud since November

The options that have most frequently been offered up in deciding how to treat the 2019-20 season are: Declare it null and void; Have the current league table as the final table; Conclude the season at some future date; Calculate the final placings on a points-per-game basis.

There are pros and cons to all of these ideas, and Uefa’s plan for what we might call elite football may not be suitable for leagues below the EFL, or even below The Championship. Come the end of April, many players are out of contract, and in non-League football especially, grounds are not always still available. Extending the season will inevitably mean delaying the start of the next if for no other reason than pitch maintenance work needs to be done, otherwise next season will be even more at the mercy of the weather.

Freezing the league tables now might be just about justifiable in those where matters are nearly settled anyway – Liverpool’s lead in the Premier League is virtually unassailable, for example, and every team in that division has played 28 or 29 games – but in divisions where promotion and relegation hangs in the balance and teams have played wildly differing numbers of games, it would be more difficult to accept. Take the BetVictor Isthmian League’s North Division, where clubs have between nine and thirteen games remaining. At least in that division the title looks nailed on to go to Maldon & Tiptree, but any number of clubs could qualify for the promotion or relegation play-off spots; it would be unjust to use the current table to determine the final positions. A more equitable method to calculate the final placings would be on a points-per-game basis, although this might disadvantage clubs who have relatively easy games remaining.

The BetVictor Isthmian League North table as it stands...

...and  how it would look on a Points-per-Game basis

It has been suggested that the Premier League may play remaining fixtures behind close doors over a short period at a select number of grounds, but with the conditions that caused football to be suspended in the first place looking unlikely to abate any time soon, that may not be possible in the short to medium term; Uefa’s date of 30^th May remains overly optimistic in my view. That option may not be viable to non-League football, where the idea that this season is concluded whenever is practical, even if that means a hiatus until September and playing the remaining games then, with a  revised format for 2020-21 then introduced, has a good deal of support.

All of the proposals for the conclusion of this season and the format for the next assume one thing however, and that is that whenever football starts again, all of the clubs, and players who are currently in stasis, are able to start playing the game again. For players, even training is on hold – all of the county Football Associations around the country have put a block on it – so a period not dissimilar to pre-season would be required for players before the leagues could start again.

More significantly however, is the question of which clubs may not survive this hiatus. National League side Barnet, and League One club Gillingham have both issued statements to the effect that their futures are uncertain due to the financial implications of the coronavirus, and they are just the tip of the iceberg.

Gillingham chairman Paul Scally fears for the club's future.

More gruesomely, the non-League game may be hit by a double whammy. Not only are many clubs going to find themselves in perilous financially dire straits, the demographic of the people who run and support many of these clubs overlaps significantly with the sector of the population that is most at risk from coronavirus. Brutally put, some clubs may find themselves lacking the people in the administrative roles that they rely on most when football starts again. If – and it’s a big if – the elderly, whether healthy or not, are asked to self-isolate for the periods that have been suggested (12-16 weeks), but football recommences before that elapses, a lot of clubs – who rely almost entirely on volunteers – will struggle to find people to fill key roles.

At least non-League football can be enjoyed while still practising social distancing.

Given the situation we find ourselves in fretting over, or merely pondering on how the football season will be concluded may appear inconsequential. Football may not after all, be a matter of life or death, but it can take our minds off the things that are.

Into The Unknown

Although I wasn’t around to experience The Phoney War, the eight months that followed the declaration of World War Two in September 1939 up until the German invasion of France and The Low Countries in May 1940, what we are living through in the UK at present has to be a little similar. Coronavirus (Covid-19) is out there, some people have had it, and of those, most have recovered but sadly, some have died.

What is happening in the UK is likely to follow events in other European countries, especially Italy, and as I write this, the Government is preparing to introduce bans on mass gatherings and ask the over-70s to self-isolate for four months, even if they have not been infected.

Already the majority of football matches have been postponed and concerts cancelled. This ought to have been a busy week for me, with four football matches, three concerts, and a BBC recording to go to in eight days. As it transpires, all of the football is off, and two of the concerts have been cancelled. I’m in two minds about whether to go to the other one or the BBC show. There is no definitive advice on the subject really; going to a concert or show and eliminating all risk of infection is nigh-on impossible, although the risks can certainly be mitigated. Because of my age and the fact that I have high blood pressure, I may be slightly more at risk than some other people. The fact that one of the drugs I take for my high blood pressure could increase that risk, and potentially make the infection more potent, is another factor to be considered.

In Italy, some games have been played behind closed doors, in England the Premier League chose to suspend fixtures.

Having said that, I still have to go to the supermarket, which is probably just as risky as going to a gig attended by just a couple of hundred other people, or going to a football match with a similar crowd. Yesterday in Tesco, there were people openly coughing, or coughing into their hands; the possibility of getting infected there is as great, or greater, than anywhere.  

Lots of the shelves in the supermarkets are bare, of course. Toilet rolls, soap, hand sanitizers, and dry pasta have been widely reported to be in short supply, and yesterday you could add bread, eggs, meat, and cereal to that list. There also seemed to be less in the way of fresh vegetables and fruit than normal. Friday afternoon in Tesco was like Christmas, with trolleys laden and queues at all of the checkouts. It is understandable, and even if people are not panic buying, if every customer buys just a few extra items, the shelves are soon going to be stripped. It concerns me, however, that by buying more than normal, shoppers are depriving others of essentials, and equally that some of the items they are buying may end up being thrown away, unused and wasted.

I managed to get some toilet rolls on Friday from one of our local shops – I actually got them for my elder daughter, whose work and other commitments have made it difficult for her to get to the shops before things sell out – and as I was walking home, it occurred to me that if I was going to get mugged, then it would more likely be for the toilet rolls than my wallet. Lo and behold, the very next day it actually happened to a chap in Haringey.

It is understandable that people are buying stuff ‘just in case’ and the empty shelves are being caused simply by increased demand, not problems in the supply chain. We are perhaps fortunate that the Covid-19 outbreak has not coincided with an event that might have caused delays in goods reaching the supermarkets (yes, no-deal Brexit, I do mean you).

Predictably, there has been much on social media (especially Twitter) suggesting that Covid-19 may be used as an excuse to delay Brexit negotiations, or Brexit itself. Frankly, at the moment Brexit, HS2 or any other long-term project (controversial or not) probably needs to take a back-seat while we sort out how we are going to get through the next few weeks and months. The idea that the over-70s may have to isolate themselves for sixteen weeks suggests that coronavirus is with us for some time to come. Neither Brexit nor HS2 is a matter of life or death, Covid-19 is.

In the same way, discussions around how the Premier League – or any other league for that matter – will deal with a long-term suspension of activity is not as significant as dealing with the matter of coronavirus itself. Whether the season is considered null and void, or if the current league tables as they are, are considered the definitive outcome, or if some other solution (final table calculated on a points-per-game basis for example) is used, pales into insignificance if we all have to self-isolate for weeks or even months.

There have been some kites flown about how coronavirus started, for example, is it man-made, whether there is a vaccine that is being held back, whether Dean Koontz (or even The Simpsons) predicted it, etc, etc, etc. Inevitably, these theories go hand-in-hand with the idea that governments know more than they are telling people; in some ways, the opposite may be true, governments know less than they are telling people. I say that because with coronavirus we truly have taken a step into the unknown. There is no precedent in my lifetime for what we are facing at present, so inevitably policy is being made on the hoof and why – as we have seen in the world of sport, where the Premier League and the Football League cancelled fixtures, but the National League did not – there has been some 

inconsistency in approach.

It has been claimed that Dean Koontz predicted Covid-19 in this book.

What is happening is unprecedented, and the situation is changing quickly and frequently. At the moment, it all seems a little unreal, weird, and unsettling. Even when all this is over, I don’t think we’ll ever be the same again.

Perhaps Gary Has A Point...

Apart from advocating the idea that replays should be abolished in the FA Cup, Gary Lineker also recently came up with the idea that non-League teams should kick-off the competition in the Spring, i.e. by now we should be approaching the end of the Qualifying Rounds for next season’s FA Cup. Both of Gary Lineker’s ideas are predicated on benefiting Premier League teams of course, the teams with the biggest and best squads in English football, but who somehow find the prospect of possibly playing one additional game in the period between early January and late April an impossible burden.

As someone who supports a non-League side, I find the complaints of Premier League clubs about fixture congestion highly amusing. Come the back end of the season, many non-League clubs – the majority of whom have players who work full time in addition to playing football – are playing three, or even four games every week. For instance, in 2000-01 season, Romford played 23 games in the last 65 days of the season, and in 2013-14, played 20 in the last 56 days. In 1997-98, Redditch United played on 9 (yes, nine) consecutive days to make up their fixtures. Jurgen Klopp and Pep Guardiola would probably not even be able to comprehend those sorts of statistics!

The FA have already acceded to the demands of the Premier League clubs by switching Fifth Round ties to midweek and doing away with replays from that point onwards, so I imagine that if enough people put forward a convincing enough case for non-League sides to start their FA Cup campaign in February or March, I actually believe that they would listen. Now you may think that the idea is a non-starter – I certainly did, for at least two very important reasons – but then I thought about how it could be made to work, and am convinced that it could be, not that I think it is a good idea, though. After all, it is easy to think of reasons why ideas won’t work if one is fundamentally opposed to the idea, far more thought provoking and rewarding to come up with ways in which a thing could be made possible, regardless of its merits.

The first reason why Lineker’s idea ought not to work is that entry into the FA Cup is based on where clubs are in the National League System (that’s football below the Football League, i.e. National League down to county leagues)[1]. From the 2020-21 season, with the expansion of Steps 4 and 5, there will be no Step 6 sides in the FA Cup in future, (although the number of clubs entering is staying about the same) since those that would have been eligible will have been promoted to Step 5.

Since no one knows which Step a particular club will be in until the final league tables are compiled in April or May, it would be impossible to identify all of the clubs that would be eligible to enter the FA Cup. Similarly, the Step at which a club plays determines which Qualifying Round they enter at, and again that isn’t known until the end of the season. But that is all old-fashioned thinking, there is a perfectly feasible solution based on the principle that rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men. The wise men of The FA could set their rules aside and base qualification and exemptions on the basis of the season before. This would throw up an anomaly or two, for instance starting next season’s FA Cup in February 2020 would have meant that last season’s National League champions Leyton Orient would have to be treated as a non-League club, while Notts County, relegated from League Two, would count as a Football League side, even though they have now swapped places. The number of teams affected by a change of this sort is actually quite small, and will even itself out over a couple of seasons. Some years it would benefit some teams, in others it would disadvantage them.

A more valid reason for not going down this route is the weather. We have seen this season what devasting effects the weather can have on the football programme, in non-League football at least, and it isn’t the first time. Clubs are already hard pushed to fit their league games in when it comes to February and March, adding FA Cup ties into the mix clearly won’t work. Or would it? It might mean that league cup competitions have to take a back seat for a season to fit the games in, but if we began with the idea of the FA Cup for 2021-22 starting in February 2021, then frontloaded the fixtures in 2020-21 so that clubs had played 75-80% of their league fixtures by the end of December instead of the 55% that would have played by Christmas had they all been played on their scheduled dates, then dates would be freed up in the second half of the season to get the FA Cup qualifiers played. Getting the bulk of the league games played before the poor weather starts would have the added bonus of reducing fixture congestion in the last couple of months of the season.

Frontloading the fixtures and playing the FA Cup qualifying rounds in Spring would mean that for clubs eliminated in the Extra-Preliminary or Preliminary Rounds of the competition, February and March might now have a blank Saturday or two, but this would allow league games to be re-arranged, and of course in winters like this one, not having a game scheduled might actually be a good thing.

The rationale behind all of this must be to get the Premier League clubs into the competition earlier in the season; the Third Round would have to be played in September or October for the change to benefit them. As an alternative, the FA Cup Qualifying Rounds could be condensed. At present they are fortnightly, but if they had been played weekly this season the First Round Proper could have been played as early as 21^st September, the Third Round could feasibly have been on 5^th October. In fact, with the right sort of attitude, we could get the whole FA Cup done and dusted by mid-November!

I’m not serious of course, since just as the attitude that because something has always been done a certain way it can never be changed should be challenged, the idea that because a thing can be changed, it should be changed has many flaws. That said, I hope that no one from The FA ever reads this, it might give them ideas!

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[1] Wikipedia has a comprehensive explanation of how the National League System works: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_League_System