Chapter 277: Play Up I

Maureen put the pencil back in the drawer and shut it. click. She did not look at the figure again, and neither did I.

The team coach left at 7 the next morning. I sat 3 rows behind Sadler with my coat on my knee. Vardy was asleep against the window before we were out of Essex. Kanté was reading a French newspaper somebody had brought back for him.

At Fleet services I went and sat on the arm of the seat across from Sadler.

"I am watching from the away end today," I said. "And I am going home on the supporters’ bus."

He did not look up from the team sheet. "Why?"

"I want to see their end from ours."

"Ted will tell you what he sees whether you sit next to him or not." He turned the sheet over. "You are 8th either way, chairman. Go and sit where you like."

Terraced streets run right up to the back of Fratton Park, and at the main entrance there is a mock Tudor building, black beams on white, older than anybody who works there.

On that Saturday the whole place was dressed for a wedding.

There was blue ribbon on every lamp post. A man up a ladder was tying a bedsheet to the railings with blue string. Somebody had painted the Friday’s date on it, 19.04.13, and nothing else.

"Is it straight?" he said to his mate at the bottom.

"It is not straight."

"It is straight enough." He tied the last knot. "Nobody is looking at the railings today."

A man in a blue shirt saw my scarf and stopped. "You lot," he said. "Boxing Day. You beat us 2-1."

"We did."

"We got soaked in your corner, and you still beat us." He shook my hand. "Enjoy the day. You will not enjoy the football."

Outside the club shop there was a trestle table with a queue 50 yards long. The people behind it were signing up new members of the supporters’ trust and writing their names in a book, with a biro tied to the table on a string.

One of them had a bunch of keys on the table in front of him, and a badge on his jumper that said DIRECTOR in felt pen. He saw me reading it. jangle of the keys as he picked them up.

"A day," he said. "I have been a director for a day. Yesterday I was a man who sold carpets. Nobody has told me which of these opens the boardroom."

"Who has the other keys?"

"About 2,000 people, by the sound of it." He put them in his pocket. "We have rattled buckets for 2 years. This time the buckets got us the club."

On the Friday afternoon, the day before, those people had taken their club over. It had been in administration for 14 months. It had been relegated that week. Nobody on that street was talking about either.

At half past 2 I went round to the away turnstiles with the ticket Priya had sold me on the Thursday.

Ted was already in his seat at the end of a row, so he could get his leg out. He moved his stick when he saw me coming up the steps.

"Orient was a train ride," he said. "This is a long way to come to sit on concrete."

"Sadler said you would tell me what you see, wherever I sat."

"He is right." Ted pointed his stick down the pitch at the Fratton End, a wall of blue at the far end. "I see 18,000 people who have just found out they will have a club next year. We are in trouble, son."

The teams came out at 5 to 3, and the Fratton End sang the Pompey Chimes. It goes to the tune of the Westminster bells, and Ted says it is the oldest chant in football. Somewhere in that end a man was ringing a real bell on the beat, slow. ding. dong.

Then the whole ground joined in, all 4 sides of it, and the noise came down off the old roofs and met in the middle.

"Blimey," said the lad behind me.

"That is nothing," Ted said. "Wait till they score."

The first 20 minutes were ours. Kanté won the ball 3 times in the first 5. Vardy ran on to a ball over the top and hit it low, and their keeper took it on his chest. smack.

"COME ON, TOWN!" Ted shouted at the pitch, both hands on his stick. "That is it. That is the way."

Mahrez went past 2 men on the right and his cross was a yard too long for everybody. groan from our end. Ted banged his stick on the concrete. tock.

On 22 minutes they won a corner.

The ball dropped into the 6-yard box and nobody cleared it. It bounced off Stokes, off one of theirs, off a knee, and over the line. thump of it against the side netting. The Fratton End came up off its seats like a wave hitting a wall. ROAR.

"POMPEY! POMPEY! POMPEY!"

"Told you," Ted said.

3 minutes later a lad in their midfield picked the ball up 30 yards out with nobody near him and hit it. crack. It went in off the underside of the bar. Braithwaite did not move.

2-0.

"BLUE ARMY! BLUE ARMY!" clatter of 18,000 seats as they stood.

"Do something, Town," Kelly’s lad said in front of me, quietly.

I watched our side look for its feet, and it could not find them.

4 of them had signed their names on the Tuesday, and we had all drawn on the Tuesday night. Before that there had been Sheffield. On the Monday the whole town had read their names beside the word late.

Now it was done, and they looked like men who had carried something heavy up a long hill and put it down at the top, and had nothing left to walk on with.

On 33 minutes Pett went forward for a throw-in and did not get back. They broke down our right, 3 against 2, and the last man rolled it into the far corner. swish.

3-0. 11 minutes.

boom. boom. boom. A drum in the Fratton End, and the whole ground bouncing to it. I could feel it through the concrete under my seat.

"WHO ARE YOU? WHO ARE YOU?"

"We are Tilbrook," Ted told them, not loud.

Kelly’s lad stood up and started the tide song. 6 or 7 people sang it with him. It went about 4 words and stopped, because nobody could hear it, not even us.

He sat down again. "Fair enough," he said.

"Tea," Ted said, when I stood up at half-time. "2 sugars."

I went down the steps to the concourse under the stand. Across the end of it there was a fence where the away section met the home one, steel panels with a steward on each side.

On the other side of the fence stood a woman of about 60 in a blue tabard with a plastic bucket. TRUST was printed across the tabard. She was rattling the bucket at the home fans going past for their pies, and most of them were putting coins in. rattle.clink.

She saw me looking through the fence, saw my scarf, and smiled.

"I would not bother, love," she said. "It is done. We did it yesterday. I just cannot put the thing down."

"How did you do it?"

"More than 2,000 of us," she said. "1,000 pounds each. That was the ask. My husband and I put in 2. We had it put by for a new kitchen." rattle. "The kitchen is fine. It was always fine."

"And the rest of it?"

"Some people with more money than us put in more. The council helped with the ground. And on the Wednesday the men who held the ground gave up at the High Court."

The Wednesday. It was the same afternoon my 266 had turned into 105.

A man in a Portsmouth shirt came past and dropped a 5-pound note in the bucket without stopping.

"Thank you, Dave," she called after him. "I will give it to the youth team," she said to me. "Somebody should have it."

"Were you at ours at Christmas?" I said.

"Boxing Day. You beat us." She laughed. "I cried all the way home on the coach. Not about the football."

"What about?"

"About whether there would be a coach to go on next year." rattle of the bucket. "Go on, love. Your lot are 3 down. Go and suffer with them."

The second half had started when I got back up the steps.

"Where is my tea?" Ted said.

"I forgot it."

"Then where have you been?"

"Talking to a woman with a bucket."

"What about?"

"Her kitchen. She put the money for it into her club." I sat down. "She says the old kitchen is fine."

Ted grunted and looked back at the pitch. I stopped watching my own side.

I watched the Fratton End instead, and the old men in their caps along the side, and the trust’s volunteers in their blue tabards on every gangway.

It was a club that had been sold and sold again by men who wanted money out of it, and had just been handed back to the people who only wanted it to be there on a Saturday.

In the life before, I saw what happened to them. They were clear of debt inside 18 months. 4 years from that afternoon they won the division they had just gone down into, and came back up, with the people in that end still holding the club.

Then those same people voted to sell it, clear and climbing, because they had saved it and wanted somebody who could take it further.

At the bottom of the same table that spring, going down with them, was Bury.

In the summer of 2019 Bury were thrown out of the Football League after 125 years. One man’s money did not turn up, and there was nobody else with a vote to stop it.

And in the life before, this little club of mine died on an ordinary Tuesday.

2 years after Bury, a review for the government asked, among much else, for a share at every club held by its supporters, with a say over the ground, the name, the badge and the colours.

I read that review 8 years after that afternoon, and thought it came too late for most of them.

I took my pen out and wrote on the back of my programme. 1 share. Ground. Name. Colours. Borrowing. A seat at the table.

The game went on in front of me. We did not score. They did not need another.

With 10 minutes left the whole of Fratton Park stood and sang the Chimes again, slower. ding. dong.

"Listen to that," Ted said, beside me. "Relegated. Listen to it."

peep. peep. peeeep.