The First Day of the Season — The Football Fix
There is just something about the first day of the season. A certain anticipation; sometimes built on high hopes for a successful year (not often), the prospect of catching up with old mates and certainly a desire to sate a burning thirst after a barren summer. Less so in World Cup or European Championship years, but it’s still there; the need for the football fix.
And you know what, it doesn’t change with the years; I’m forty- three years old now, and still get the same irrational buzz.
I’m working at home today and I’ve stacks of work to do, but I just can’t get football off my mind — I’m wistfully looking back at first days of the season past.
My first ‘first day’ was at the tail end of the 70’s; we’d just been relegated from the top flight after an appalling season, and I’m ashamed to admit it, but I was quite pleased we were dropping down a level.
I saw this as a chance to rebuild the team around the likes of Clive Allen (who’d shown his potential the previous season with a hat-trick against Coventry to temporarily avoid the drop), a flying winger signed, I think, from Nottingham Forest, called Steve Burke (he looked the business in a pre-season match at Folkestone anyway), the underrated Glenn Roeder and the clean-cut boy from the Boys’ Brigade, Paul Goddard. Stan Bowles and Tony Currie we’re also on the books — it seems a long time ago.
My dad took me along, which was fair play to him as he hated football, to watch the R’s see off Bristol Rovers 2-0. Goddard and Allen doing the business.
Roll forward nine or ten years and it was my first away ‘first day of the season’ - West Ham at a re-developing Upton Park. As I recall the building work meant that Rangers only got something in the region of 400 tickets, and I was lucky enough to snaffle a seat to watch us cruise to 3-0 victory; Bannister and Brock scored, not sure who else, and I believe Tony Roberts had a pretty solid game too.
Clive Allen was playing for Hammers that day with the Rangers fans chanting ‘you should’ve stayed at the Rangers’. A shrug of the shoulders and a sly wink seemed to indicate he agreed.
The match was particularly satisfying as my previous visit to the Boleyn (not a ‘first dayer’) saw us lose 3-0 with a hat-trick from Goddard and a saved penalty from Phil Parkes. The injustice.
During the early 90’s I was playing a lot of cricket, so missed many August matches. I remember listening on the radio — having been bowled for not very many, as usual — to reports of the game at Arsenal (who were probably the defending league champions), and having led through, I think, a Dennis Bailey goal, we were pegged back to a draw in the last minute. My language was, shall we say, ‘just not cricket’.
A couple of year’s later, football had just been gobbled up by Sky, I watched from the comfort of first armchair, in my first house, the first Monday night televised game on satellite. This was another 1-1 draw, this time against Manchester City with Sinton scoring a cracker. Was Keith Curle in the opposition team?
The next few years saw our dramatic decline, and my next memorable first day of the season was in the third tier away at Bury. It was also my first taste of ‘hospitality’, £25 each, and we had tickets in the centre of the main stand, with a three-course meal and a bucks fizz reception in the bar. No arguing with that for northern value!
Even better they had a quiz, and because there were a few R’s with the same idea as us, we were grouped together in one team, and we won the bloody thing! Loads of Bury gear from the club shop, which I think we ‘generously’ left to be raffled.
And the icing on the cake, apart from a 2-0 win (maybe including a goal from Paul Bruce?), one of my great heroes, Simon Stainrod, appeared in the bar as a last minute replacement for another ‘guest of honour’ who didn’t pitch up.
Oh, the licensee of the bar was one Neville Neville.
Great day followed by a large night out in Manchester.
This is certainly not a definitive list of my ‘first dayers’; merely an eclectic selection based on personal memory. I didn’t even get to the balmy day we nailed Blackpool 5-0.
Halcyon days.
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