Illustration by Matt Littler
Returning to non-League after 2020’s enforced absence heightened the senses of matchday, as told in this extract from the new book The Silence of the Stands
By Daniel Gray
5 December 2022
For those of us consumed by football, there is no merrier stroll than the walk to the game. None of us strut to the shops, the railway station or even the pub with the same expectant and gullible air. Heads up and looking forward, with gallant strides we move towards the ground in a harmonised matchday pace.
Early on, in the town centre, we decipher our fellow travellers via far subtler clues than coloured hats and scarves. They have a gait that other wanderers do not, pulled as they are towards a three o’clock appointment with applause and grumbling; they have some place to be. In those rotten days of lockdowns and sealed turnstiles, every afternoon amble “Just to get out of the house” felt especially aimless. Now, those turnstiles were chirping again, Sirens luring us in with their industrial lullabies.
In Lancaster, a steady infantry undertook the 2.45pm gallop towards Giant Axe. On the railway bridge, they talked of last night’s curry and tonight’s telly in lullaby-soft Lancastrian accents that could dissuade wasps from stinging. Their gentle tones matched their club’s pleasing, sweet nickname: the Dolly Blues, deriving from a locally produced washing tablet whose colour was said to resemble the team’s shirts. The somewhat less benign Giant Axe, meanwhile, is so named because, when viewed from above, the neighbouring wall that guards the sports and recreation grounds the stadium sits within resembles, well, an axe head. It added a false aura of intimidation to what was an amiable and hospitable place to watch football, as if a Cotswold village newsagent had decided to employ two doormen called Mental Mick and Terry Three Fingers.
We flocked towards rink-a-tink Tannoy music once again, our noses seduced by the gathering vapours of fried food. At the entrance to Giant Axe, a next-game board with the rusty thin legs of an elderly ostrich advertised today’s encounter with Basford United. I adore these contraptions with their permanent home-team names in bold letters and their spaces on to which visiting team details, fixture dates and kick-off times can be hooked, slid or stuck.
Across the entire land, no ground’s board is the same as the next’s. Each has its own size and shape, colour scheme, typefaces, varying amount of information and sponsorship logo. There is no uniform location for one, and they are scattered in car parks, on club shop walls or among overgrown grass in a corner of the ground that time and maintenance men forgot. The very best are visible from an adjacent road, so that we might encounter them on some humble Thursday afternoon and feel a frisson of excitement about a matchday yet to happen. We may merely be passing through, and the fixture advertised may be impossible for us to attend, and yet still there is a faint tingle or a pleasant moment of distraction. These are the cinematic neon “NOW SHOWING” displays of football.
Some next game boards offer embellishments beyond the basics of V and KO, details that tell us about club and place. This was the case with Lancaster City’s, a lofty specimen in four shades of blue whose italics seemed to ask us politely to “Come and Support The Dolly Blues”. A broad white strip at the board’s foot gently advised the visitor of Giant Axe’s finest offerings: “Traditional Real Ales – Draught Lager and Bitter – Dolly’s Diner – Tea & Coffee, Pies & Peas, Chips & Curry”. It was a splendidly northern smorgasbord and in the mentally vulnerable, wobbly-bottom-lip world of autumn 2020, it felt like a cheerful wave from a stranger on a train. Had it mentioned gravy, I would have cried.
In the Giant Axe car park, tyres rolled over gravel and flying loose chips made the sound of cap guns being discharged. People in blue scarves smiled at one another and said things like “I didn’t know whether to bring a big coat or not. It’s that kind of weather” and “It can’t make its mind up, can it?” Behind the West Road End terrace, a club office had been fashioned from a freight container. A glance into its doorway revealed a man in a flat cap, trench coat and smart suit. On his right arm he wore a khaki canvas haversack. He looked as if he’d popped by in 1943 to follow up an accusation of ration book fraud and never left.
As turnstiles rattled and ratcheted, two stewards were charged with taking supporters’ temperatures via small plastic guns. Three attempts at scanning my forehead failed. “I think that means you’re technically dead,” said my own steward tester, before smacking the gun a few times on her wrist. Eventually, I was nodded through and into a corner of the Axe.
Players thumped warm-up passes across the broad and bumpy pitch and fans nodded their greetings and found their usual spots on three terraces and in their grandstand seats. Almost every wall, fence and barrier was painted in home colours, a cheerful, sentimental blue resembling that found on a school exercise book. By the catering hatch, kids jangled pocket-money change while calculating what they could afford. The hatch had a gleaming and ample tea urn and Walkers Crisps in baskets, such a welcome and honest WRVS cafe ethos in a Starbucks world.
By a corner flag in north Lancashire, then, I was reacquainted with the joyously dizzy feeling of arriving to find a ground and its plotlines laid out in this manner. There is usually almost too much to take in, an excess of intrigue. I feel giddy, something I used to become embarrassed about, as if grown-up joy should be mild and caused only by work promotions or good restaurants. Now I embrace this passing exultation, which should be the case with any pastime that can chisel such emotions from the supposedly mature heart and allow you to eat and drink things that other adults left behind in adolescence. Across the country in these places, Space Raiders and Tizer are an acceptable snack and that is to be celebrated.
The Silence of the Stands: Finding the joy in football’s lost season is out now from Bloomsbury. Order direct from WSC – subscribers save £2
This article first appeared in WSC 427, January 2023. Subscribers get free access to the complete WSC digital archive
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Tags: Lancaster City, Non League, Stadiums