Bristol City 1894

It’s been grim at the Gate. We lost to Watford and it was grim. Then we lost away to Port Vale which was especially grim and kept feeling grim right up until Sunderland lost to Port Vale on the same ploughed field, at which point it felt slightly less grim, but in between it was really grim watching City lose 2-0 to Coventry, falling apart at the seams with some calamitous defending, keystone cops, whatever the keystone cops actually are (probably a whacky races type policing ensemble, I imagine). So grim, totally grim with one fit centre back and a revolving cast of midfielders and attackers who promise to deceive and loaned in players who can’t get a game and seem no better than the ones shipped out.

Sometimes we go and see Manor Farm. Two weeks ago we were going to go to Vale Park but the pitch was flooded so we opted for Manor Farm instead but the pitch was flooded so we were going to go to Twerton Park but the pitch was flooded so we went home and ate pizza. I took E there a couple of years ago and a player yeeted the ball so high and so far it came down at re-enntry velocity, smoking, with space debris on it, and somehow E caught it and everyone, everyone cheered. At the station afterwards someone said, “you’re the lad who caught the ball! I’ve been going to football for 40 years and I’ve never even had a ball within ten feet of me, let alone catch one!” E lives in hope that one day this once in a lifetime event might happen again.

Non-league is fun. It is unsegregated fun, where you drink your (very cheap) beer at the side of the pitch, don’t get upset if they win or lose, watch honest chaps go in violently hard in the tackle, see a blend of the catastrophic mixed with the sublime, and sometimes, like last season, see a 5 – 5 draw. Here are some photos taken at the Creek. It was a balmy day and the pitch looked a lot better than Vale Park. Oh yes, and 100% the best thing about The Creek is every 30 minutes a train pretty much rolls along the touchline and the driver honks on his way to Severn Beach and back. It’s like a Philip Larkin poem.

They watched the landscape, sitting side by side

—An Odeon went past, a cooling tower,   

And someone running up to bowl—and none   

Thought of the others they would never meet   

Or how their lives would all contain this hour. 

  

I can imagine his curmudgeonly face peering out of the window, seeing something transcendent in the spectacle of the Southern League Division One South, of community and order keeping the chaos away, but only for a moment.