EASTWOOD TOWN v CORBY TOWN, July 2008... Pre-season...

Eastwood: Livin’ On A Prayer…

Oxbridge students would have loved Coronation Park. Each end of Eastwood’s football ‘stadium’ was protected from the outside world, or ‘real life’ by long, metal bicycle sheds. Rectangular slim concrete slats filled one corner, the nearest to the Chewton Street cul-de-sac but the uppermost section had been taken down and discarded at my feet, affording rather an unobstructed view of the playing area.

Coronation Park, 2008...

An arts festival was taking place behind the length of the ground which housed the smaller of two stands and it got into full swing as the match began. Eastwood Town FC however, was yawning, stretching and awakening to a new Unibond Premier League season but there was no match programme… Horror! “Not for a friendly” I was told, quite adamantly. I decided to design my own team sheet when I reached home, even though it was going to be awfully difficult to find out the players’ names. It’s what I do… 

Behind a bike shed...

A new ‘physio was being introduced to an ancient chap in a blazer and club tie, who was doddering on stumbling feet, the ‘shop’ contained a youth feeding himself and he motioned my enquiry to a smiling adult, who had no idea how much a replica shirt would cost me. He suggested a tenner. I agreed. I asked about the price of a polo-shirt. He had no idea. He suggested a fiver. I agreed. I had a tenner but no fiver, only a £20 note and small change. I mustered £4. He accepted. I left. Confused.

The tea-bar failed to open until ten to three, when mushy peas began to appear in trays with pies. My half-time cup of coffee looked and tasted like melted Camp Coffee-flavoured ice cream. I bought a 20p sweetie mix too, manually bagged by an Eastwood lady. It was that kind of day. And more mushy-pea delicacies were spooned into drinking cups for the locals to feed on, not quite the famous Old Trafford watercress sandwiches but more colourful and intriguing. Green, in fact. So very green.

Exposed? Coronation Park? Surely not? Must be way above sea-level then… The wind powered up the considerable slope and the groundsman must have been hibernating still, for his lawn needed attention. A cat, two anteaters and three badgers were hiding in midfield, an area generally bypassed by the Eastwood and Corby Towns. The main stand looked out of character, compared to the two hunched bicycle sheds at the ends, with its cantilever roof and black and white, badger-like seats. Two people were sitting in there when I emerged from a disabled lavatory, where I had tested the local plumbing and draining systems to the full and so I joined them in the cold and windy conditions. A stern faced young fellow sat glowering and the girlfriend of one of the Corby midfielders read a magazine but I noticed that the seats were filthy, covered in stubborn dust, dirt and dregs and really, the cleaners ought to have been disturbed from hibernation too, so that members of the public could sit down in some sort of comfort. The young lady offered me a tissue. I blackened it. As I sat there, I truly believed that I had died and was waiting in Purgatory, where I had been given a vision of what football lay before me in a cold hell, as punishment for thankfully relinquishing my season ticket at Aston Villa.  

Grandstand...

Players warmed up, disparately, then I noticed a chap brandishing a reporter’s spiral notebook with some importance. He had managed to secure a list of Corby’s players from their manager and was brandishing it at me! He had seen me writing and felt threatened, I reckon! But he had been privy to the line-up, I hadn’t… I approached him at the tea-bar and although he would not let me see his list, he dictated the names to me, complete with some explanatory spellings! I was mildly amused by his secretive behaviour but I was very surprised that he had no idea who would be playing for Eastwood… However, he joined me in the grandstand at five to three and proudly dictated the Eastwood starting eleven too… He mentioned that right-back Asher had played for Hucknall, I mentioned Steve Burr and he agreed that Steve was a nice chap; “A schoolteacher, wasn’t he?” Er, no, actually; postman, driver of heavy transport, but teaching? Hmm, wait until I tell Steve, I mused… I hoped that the chap would go away then, so I ignored him. He did. I sighed. I remained in hell.

As the game neared its kick-off, a live band began to belt out “Livin’ On A Prayer”. I was. Not quite Bon Jovi, but this was Eastwood. Then a young man wearing a cowboy hat walked past the grandstand, but he was not quite Clint Eastwood either, brandishing a long stick in one hand and a dog's lead-chain restraining a brown animal in the other. Maybe he was aiming to walk his dog in the park and had entered through the wrong gate. Later though, I noticed him feeding near the tea-bar with his left hand plunged into the innards of a badger puppet… I felt so normal. So much so that my badger-puppet still accompanies me to all non-league games to this day...

The cowboy and the badger...

Then a contender for oddball of the day appeared wearing a replica Eastwood shirt beneath his jacket; he was around sixty years old. His wife was too. Her clothes had been purchased in a Nottinghamshire ladies’ wear shop in 1954. During the second-half of the game, the chap suddenly bellowed in a definite Nottinghamshire accent: “Cum on yew Badgers!” At this point I nearly urinated inside my jeans……

The tiny seating area opposite contained up to 70 chairs, maybe spares from the main stand, possibly used by sponsors and guests, if indeed there ever were any. I felt I must investigate that side of the ground sometime, for it offered a real photographic opportunity. And still the music and merriment emanated from the field beyond, still people walked past the stand, caressing cups full of mushy peas. Green ones. Very green.

Not the best of views through the dugouts...

The intriguing far-side...

The game was badly spoilt by the wind, plus too many substitutions and at times, it resembled the bull-run in Pamplona. Lots of men running in lots of directions, lots of aimlessness and lots of shouting, lots of wind-affected anomalies and lots of brute force, lots to admire then… Yep.

The bull-run begins...

And then it was over and the wind blew and I had two decent goals to recall and I didn’t know who was who and there was an oddball and his wife and I didn’t like his back-pack and I took a photo of him and his retro-wife and I went home and I had my tea and there were no mushy peas and I was returning on the Monday and there was a hole in the metal, like a viewing hole in a prison door and I had escaped…

The hole in the gate, where the eyes looked in...

I lived the prayer...