SPECTATOR SPORT
Springtime ups and downs
Frank Keating
The Cup Final is all tinselly window- dressing and commentator Motson's awe- struck nasal superlatives. The poignant back-parlour stuff of a soccer romantic's reality is contained in the ups and downs of the League at the season's end. For many, relegation of their football team is far more harrowing than the death of an auntie. So sorry and all that, but it is no bad thing that Milwall and Charlton have been ditched. Eight London clubs in the First Division was far too many. It debased the buzz of the local derby for a start. Liverpool and Rangers are champions of England and Scotland. What's new? When they started hogging everything, a pal of mine sighed to Bill Shankly that he was making Liverpool teams much too predict- able. 'Aye, smart laddie', rasped Shanks, as predictable as Joe Louis — predictable at knocking big men to the floor.' What nobody could foresee was promotion to the Second Division simultaneously for the two Bristols, Rovers and City. Never happened before in any town outside London. When I was on the old Evening World I used to spend alternate Saturdays watching the reds and the blues. They were both pretty hopeless, but dead keen. I should have been a Rovers man as they were a Gloucestershire team — City were across the Avon, and Somerset. But Ashton Gate had a stand called the Keat-
ing Stand — built in 1923 with the proceeds of the £3,000 transfer of a mid-field dyna- mo called Keating — and I used to stand underneath it, blushing and watching the great John Atyeo careering about. I'm delighted — actually, in Soccer- speak, the word is 'chuffed' — that Exeter City went up from the Fourth. They've got the darlingest little ground in the land. Do they still call their grandstand the Cow- shed? But not overchuffed about Grimsby Town going up with them. Funny how the tiniest thing can put you off a team for life. Some years ago I had occasion to ring the Grimsby ground. I spoke to directory inquiries. Yes, she said, the club had five numbers, which did I want? She listed various sections, till I interrupted, 'That'll do, I'll have their Information Service.' 'Sorry', she said, 'that one's ex-directory.' Oldham Athletic have been the team of the English season, playing boldly and vividly in both cup competitions. The scrubby, hillocky mill town on the edge of
the Pennines, usually sooty grey-green and grimy Victorian red-brick, has been painted all over in the team's colours of royal blue these past few months. Not, alas, that they won a cup in the end. Oldham did win a rugby league cup 63 years ago. Since then, as far as I disco- vered, nowt. Except — and there is a proud plaque in the town centre to prove it: 'Winners, 1983, Greater Manchester Best-Kept Bus Station'.
In Scotland it was not the year for the New Testament prophecy to come to pass. I mean soccer's only sacred mention Matthew XII 42: 'And lo, the queen of the south shall rise up.' They were again down among the dead men of the Second Divvy, I'm afraid. Where is Queen of the South, by the way?
I wonder, too, in the springtime ups and downs, how fared those two favourite sides of mine in the Edinburgh Sunday morning league. They were made up of workers from the old Milanda Bakery — and called themselves, of course, Inter and AC. The same kick-about league also sported a side called Crystal Phallus, till the burghers got wise and banned it. And in London's Maccabi League, southern section, I hope the exotically named Athletico Neasden had a good season. Not to mention that team of Spanish waiters in the Battersea Park League — Apparent Madrid.
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