Bristol City 1894

Middlesborough is a long long way from anywhere. I’ve been looking to visit for some time. I have no interest in the place, which in my head consists of a Greggs outlet store, a delapidated shopping centre that doubled up as the setting for a George A. Romero zombie satire on consumerism, and a single strip of bike lane painted onto an arterial trunk road. I was only interested in the ground.

My Mum lives much nearer to ‘Boro than I do, which is to say, she still lives two hours away, but it’s nearer than 5 hours, so I kindly offered to visit for her birthday and mother’s day, which just so happened to coincide with Bristol City playing at the Riverside. What are the chances? And what better way to celebrate both occasions than with a trip to Britain’s first post-Taylor report stadium to see the perennially promotion-chasing ‘Boro take on their hoodoo team? Exactly. A wise choice, mother. To be fair, she loves a football match and is a Bradford City season ticket holder, on account of grandad Ian’s brother having played for the Bantams over three hundred times.

Bristol City have been on a terrible, wretched run of form; capsized by injuries and untimely sales of our best players; Mehmeti and Vyner. There are reasons behind the sales, but a sense of doom has enveloped the club in the past few weeks, with a string of three straight losses. I almost thought about not going, instead just going for a walk along the coast, getting some fresh air, not thinking about football, or Bristol City. All week I thought about not going. But on the day, the magnetism of an away trip pulled me along the M5 and up north. The sense of hope, despite everything, a hope underpinned by terror of the abyss, of a massacre, of Tommy Conway scoring a hattrick.

Tommy Conway is the panto villain. He gets booed relentlessly. The away fans sing about him all the time. There are a couple of beautiful lyrics; “Do Do Do, Conway is a wanker”, which scans well, and another ditty which is even more offensive. It didn’t have to be like this, he was well liked, one of our own, brought up in Bath, came through the academy. I think even after he left it might have been ok, if he hadn’t had a total lapse of judgement and decided, on a beautiful crystalline evening under the lights, in a playoff dogfight, to score in front of the City away end and then run over, shush the fans and stick his fingers in his ears.

Which was pretty inflammatory, to be honest. And after one goal, maybe a bit hasty. When George Earthy knocked in the second for Bristol City, rounding off a beautiful win, he did the same gesture, and achieved legendary status in a few impulsive, beautiful moments of elation.

And that’s the thing about football, and these moments, it’s the fact in a few short seconds it provides you with an outlet for emotions you don’t get to experience elsewhere, and it’s to do with the collective, there is a primal force at work.

It’s safe to say I wasn’t expecting any primal emotions or elation to take hold on Saturday. Only frustration and the managing of expectations, and trying not to swear in front of mother. this was the format for large parts of the game, certainly the first half, where City had lots of the requisite tenacity, but not much technique, and were about as threatening as a stray rizla paper on a dark night blowing across your path. When ‘Boro scored midway through the second half, it wasn’t a surprise. It was mildly annoying. I was pleased it wasn’t Conway. I prepared myself for the outcome, a narrow defeat, which actually wasn’t that narrow because we probably could have lost 4-0.

I watch a lot of football. I watch it until the end, staying in the ground. Over a season we might see about thirty matches, and in those matches, maybe one of those might finish with a late goal, or even better still, an injury time goal. There is something utterly irrational about the injury time goal, the one that transforms a result, either into a win, or a loss into a draw, which then feels like a win. I think it’s because you’ve rationalised the outcome, accepted that you’re going to have to walk out in front of baying, cheering fans over there somewhere, with their bank of terrible chants, but essentially, their banda machine version of exactly what we would do.

(interestingly, the banda machine is also known as a spirit duplicator, which sounds like a band name if ever I heard one).

I wasn’t ready, I didn’t think it would happen. I was still there, because I was 7 hours from home, and the idea of coming all that way and then leaving three minutes before the end seems strange. And Mum was quite chilled out. And Vitek came up for the corner, somehow dragged two markers away and let Randell hurtle in like an asteroid, before heading the ball so fucking hard and so directly that there could never be any doubt that this, this was a goal.

And we went bananas. Mum went bananas. I lost my voice. And it felt like a win. Walking back through the pallid ‘Boro hordes I had to resist the desire to sing, “It’s happened again, it’s happened again, Tommy Conway, it’s happened again”.