Footmanship
By J. P. W. MALLALILU, M.P.
IHAD not come to look at the view; but Home Park almost took my mind off serious business. Most professional football grounds are tatty. Their corrugated-iron grand- stands are cheerless; their pitches, by this time of year, are grassless, and their immediate surroundings, at all times of year, are hopeless, consisting as they usually do of murky, red-brick, back-to-back houses into which the sun can never shine. Among such, Home Park stands alone. It stands, not upon some obscure mud-flat a dreary tram- ride from the station, but on a hill almost in the centre of Plymouth, and it is surrounded, not by houses or gasworks, but by green playing-fields. When on Saturday I first went into the new stand which has risen from the ashes of the Blitz, I looked across the pitch to the standing terraces on the far side and, beyond them, to a long line of trees gently sloping down the fields. There had been rain in the morning, but now the sun was shining, so that trees and grass sparkled with freshness. . I sat down in my seat; and while the season's greatest crowd assembled and burbled below me, I revelled not only in the tingling expectancy which comes to me anywhere just before the kick-off, but also in the delight of a rainbow-patterned sky and of seagulls coursing down the wind. But, as I said, I had not come to look at the view. I had come, mainly and as usual, to see that Huddersfield Town acquired two points: but I had also come to counteract, as best I could, the support which I knew would come for Argyle from the most vigorous, whole-hearted and partisan family of football-supporters that it has been my good luck to know. The family Foot is notorious wherever Plymouth Argyle play, i.e., usually in the Third Division (South),* and, sure enough, this Saturday at the entrance to the stand were the six male members with a tolerant smile on their faces and an eager, grasping look in their eyes. There was father Isaac, ex-Minister of the Crown, ex-Lord Mayor of Plymouth. When, on the eve of an election cam- paign, one of his sons told him that he had just met his opponent and found him pleasant, Mr. Isaac Foot looked at him anxiously and said : " My boy, I hope you did not commit yourself to a clean fight ! " Mr. Foot prepares, in the same spirit, for a football-match. Then there was Dingle, also ex- Minister of the Crown, and now famous as an advocate, preparing to investigate the life-story of the referee and to lodge an objection if the man was born north of Bristol. And there was Mac, the Governor of Jamaica, professing beneath his cool official manner some slight anxiety that at the last minute Huddersfield might refuse to face Argyle and would go to the pictures instead. Finally, there were John, Michael and Christopher, who kept mentioning to each other in louder than normal voices that Argyle's reserve forward line was composed of internationals, that the first-team centre-half not only wore a beard but was in every other way an exact replica of Francis Drake, that Argyle had not been beaten at home since September of 1951 and that, so they had heard, defeat followed by a long train-journey home to Yorkshire could be a dis- spiriting business. I bore these assaults with what equanimity I could muster. I was glad that, once in the stand, I was separated by a whole row from these bandits. There, to soothe me, were the seagulls, the grass, the trees and in the distance the backcloth of clean grey houses and a glistening sky.
• To all but Huddersfield writers Plymouth is at present third (out of twenty-two) in the Second Division.—Ed., Spectator.
Then the game began. When Huddersfield plays I can be neither still nor silent. When Huddersfield scores a goal tend to mention the matter to the crowd, even though 33,000 people have already noticed it for themselves. When Hudders- field has not just scored a goal, I tend to advise it how to, even though 33,000 people prevent this advice from reaching the proper quarter. Such behaviour can be irritating to my neighbours, especially if they happen to be directors of the rival club. It says much for the hospitality of the West that on Saturday I was not pitched over the ledge of the stand into the crowd below. For, almost from the kick-off, it was obvious that Huddersfield were on their best form, and my exuberance mounted accordingly. By half-time we were leading by two goals to nil, and my attitude to the Foots as we drank tea in the interval was one of cautious malice. The caution was induced not, of course, by any wish to spare their feelings, but by the knowledge that only a few weeks before Argyle had been 3 down to Rotherham and yet had won 4-3.
I felt how well-advised my caution had been when, after ten minutes in the second half, the Argyle team and the great Argyle crowd suddenly roared to life. No particular move, no flashing incident, began it. But one moment the game was flowing for Huddersfield before a near-silent crowd and the next moment Huddersfield were rocking on their heels and the crowd was in full cry. For ten minutes this went on, while I writhed and groaned, knowing that if only Argyle scored now that crowd would go mad and sweep its team to victory. But slowly, very slowly, the storm abated, the tip-toe crowd sank back exhausted on to flat feet and Huddersfield came again with First Division majesty.
During the last ninety seconds of the match, when even I was certain we could not lose and pretty sure that we had won, I prepared a number of preliminary comments which I would make to those Foots. The full exposition I would leave until later in the evening. I approached them purposefully in the tea- room, and they at once said, in unison, " You are much the best team we have seen here for years. You thoroughly deserved to win."
Well, I ask you ! It's quite fair to say : " You are much the best team we have seen here for years. What a pity your centre-half is so dirty," or " You are much the best team we have seen here for years, but both your goals were offside ! " Then you know where you are. You are in the accepted atmos- phere of football fanmanship. But to say : " You are the best team " and not add that the referee is a criminal, that, even though it failed to score, Argyle had all the play, that, alternatively, it was obvious to everyone that Argyle was saving itself for the cup, is not merely grossly unfair. It is sportsman- like. It so upset and moved me that I nearly said : Well, I hope Argyle get their two points back when you come to Huddersfield."
However, wiser counsels prevailed..
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