crinklybee

What do we get for our trouble and pain- Whalley Range

25 minutes to 3 last Saturday afternoon and, it suddenly coming apparent that I may have a couple of free hours to play with, I jump onto the scooter and point it in the general direction of South West Manchester.  10 minutes later I'm pulling up in Whalley Range, an expansive and leafy, if largely featureless ,suburb whose main claim to fame among the population at large is to have been immortalised in a celebrated Morrissey lyric.   Among aficionados of non-league football (most of whom, let's face it, have a stack of old Smiths 12 inches weighing down the shelves in the attic and so know very well which celebrated Morrissey lyric we're talking about) Whalley Range has a further raison d'etre- it is the home of Maine Road FC of the North West Counties Football League (Division One).

 

As the name suggests, Maine Road were founded by supporters of Manchester City who up until they uprooted themselves to a charmless new stadium somewhere in the Eastside four or so years ago, used to ply their trade from a ground (it wasn't a stadium, it was a ground) just up the road in Rusholme (which is another suburb immortalised by Morrissey, but we digress).  Even though City have moved away, the connection lives on; the tiny non-leaguers' ground (it's hardly even a ground, just a ramshackle collection of railings and bus-shelter sized stands hidden away behind the gardens of the baywindowed semidetachedness of this part of Manchester M14) is done up in slightly neglected looking sky blue paint.

Against this backdrop, the Maine Road team- decked out in an all-sky-blue kit that my friend and fellow non-league aficionado Dominic correctly identifies as being most redolent of Manchester City circa 1981 (Peter Barnes/ Gary Owen/ Paul Power), emerge onto the playing surface. They do so to the least fanfare I have ever witnessed at 5 to 3 on a Saturday afternoon, which is saying something, as I'v been to Glossop North End and know exactly what an absence of fanfare looks like.  Hell, at least at Glossop the crowd manages to make it to the touchline in time for kick-off- here, by contrast, as the players of Maine Road and their opponents Bacup Borough trot out onto the pitch, they clearly outnumber the paying public by a factor of at least two to one.

I'm about to entertain Dominic with the old one about the sparsely-attended fixture where the names of the spectators are announced before kick-off for the benefit of the players when from somewhere beyond the corner-flag emerge... the spectators.  An unmistakeable aroma of Boddingtons Best Bitter emanating from their mass reveals that, in the finest traditions of non-league football supporters everywhere, they have remained in the Clubhouse until the last possible moment.  Now they saunter around the perimiter of the pitch, settling into comfortable spots around the paint-spattered railings in the manner of suburban cats emerging into a springtime garden after a generous lunch of prime Whiskas.  The referee- who looks about 23, it's getting downright depressing the way even the officials look like they could be my young cousins nowadays, blows his whistle in a pleasingly officious manner, and we are underway.

During the early exchanges (as I am contractually obliged to describe the first twenty minutes of any football match) the visitors remind us why they are a bunch of hard lads from the wilds of industrial Lancashire and the home team are a set of suburban softies, some of whom quite possibly have a stack of old Smiths 12 inches weighing down the shelves in their attics.  It's men against boys out there, and when Bacup left winger Roscoe (the very name is redolent of sheet metal and, I don't know, furnaces) once again leaves Road's full back trailing limply in his wake, it seems only a matter of time before the home goal is breached.  Sure enough on the very next sortie down the near flank a cross from the touchline is met with indecision bordering on ennui by the Maine Road backline, who have clearly been reading too many difficult European paperbacks.  Borough forward Collier (he really is called Collier, I'm  not just making it up because it sounds rugged) shows no sympathy for such effete dilly-dallying, and wades in with a precise header which reverberates convincingly against the stanchion.  

Half time is reached with the visitors steadfastly maintaining their advantage, and for all bar the last minute of the second spell it appears their finely-poached 32nd minute strike will be the difference between two otherwise well-matched outfits.  And then- just as the crowd (it's not really a crowd, just 62 people arranged in an irregular rectangle in the manner of well-sated suburban cats) are thinking of meandering back towards the clubhouse, Maine Road score an equaliser.

And it's a cracker. Midfielder Luke Mack, who has spent the previous 89 minutes jinking across the midfield in a photogenic but absolutely inneffectual manner, inexplicably takes it upon himself to pick up a loose ball, advance determinedly 10 yards forwards, sashay effortlessly past two astonished visiting defenders, and lash the ball into the far top corner from fully thirty-five yards.

The crowd - if you can call 62 people arranged cat-like across suburban railings dreaming of Boddingtons a crowd, which of course you can't- go slightly crazy.  Three seconds later the referee (there have been few stoppages, and in any case he has to be home for his tea) blows the final whistle, and all 62 of us immediately stop going slightly crazy and meander off for a quick ruminative pint of teatime Boddingtons.  We have plenty to ruminate on, not least a cracking North West Counties League (Division One) encounter which has ended:

Maine Road 1 (Mack, 91), Bacup Borough 1 (Collier, 32).   Attendance 62.  Man of the Match Stephen Morrissey (Whalley Range). 

 

 

 

 

 

Polishing the big mirror

It's now the best part of a year since the fateful Tuesday night when I hobbled off the five-a-side pitch with a knackered back.  The efforts of no less than three physiotherapists (the two NHS ones both Australians; I don't know what it is about Levenshulme that that particular branch of antipodean medical science finds so attractive) have proved largely fruitless in restoring full mobility to my person.  Equally in vain was the series of summertime liaisons with the old Chinese acupuncture lady of Stretford Arndale, although these at least proved more culturally intriguing than the rather strained conversations about Test Match cricket that I used to engage in with the Australian spine-botherers.  During the backroom consultations in the Arndale the old Chinese lady would insist that my lumbar difficulties were caused by malfunctions in energy flow, and something else which the old Chinese lady's assistant would only translate as 'dampness in the bones'.  I used to nod along to this talk gamely, which these wily operators would take as their cue to charge me £12 for a packet of attractively -packaged but not particularly effective painkillers. 

Still, the inconclusive experience with the tiny needles and the ginseng (and the heatlamp, and occasionally something very stingy that may have been tiger balm) was not about to cause me to reject Eastern medical wisdom outright, and so when I came across an article in the Independent swearing by the beneficial effects of Tai Chi on bad backs, my curiosity was once again piqued.  A couple of weeks later a whistlestop recce of the coffeebar noticeboards of trendy Chorlton threw up just the thing I was looking for; an evening Tai Chi class running in a Church Hall situated right in the middle of my commute home.

And so now, my Tuesday nights, which I used to spend hurtling around the five-a-side pitch in an angular manner, occasionally crashing sidelong into the walls, have become rather more sedate affairs.  Up in the chilly church hall the instructor (not an old Chinese lady but a savvy thirtysomething Mancunian lass in a Bench tracksuit top, whichI initially found slightly disconcerting) puts a handful of us through our smooth but surprisingly tricky paces.  The rest of them have been coming for a while, and are a bit better at following the leader's movements- but they are patient with me, even during the balancing on one leg exercise which tends to end with me toppling over and grasping onto a radiator for dear life. 

And I am getting better- hell, last week I even managed to remember to breathe in and out correctly while combining both arms in a move the instructor rather charmingly dubs 'polishing the big mirror'.  The slowmotion Charlie Chaplinesque walk we do at the end- all pointy toes and baggy trousers- also passed off without incident.  Back at home I've been practicing my favourite moves, and am hoping to impress next week with the one where you look like you're aiming a bow and arrow, also the one where you breathe deeply in (or is it deeply out, I can never remember) while miming the casting and retrieval of a herring net.

I know what you all want to know though- what is all this mirror-polishing and herring-fishing doing for my back?  Well I am pleased to report it is doing a surprising amount, and I think we may conclude that those Chinese octogenarians who we spy from the upstairs windows of early morning buses, striking vaguely martial poses behind the bushes in municipal parks, are quite possibly on to something.  For the small consideration of a fiver weekly I am feeling for the first time in a long time- well, if not exactly fit again then at least not entirely crocked.  Fit enough to make that long-promised cameo appearance on the five a side pitch?  Well, I'm saying nothing (largely because several people who read this would gladly lynch me if I ever made serious overtures about a return to helter-skelter Tuesday night action) but let's just say I've dribbled a ball a couple of times round the kitchen when nobody has been looking and neither of my legs have fallen off as a result.  After the year I've had, I'll take that as a step in the right direction.