16 JANUARY 1953, Page 12

Sporting Aspects

THE WALTHAMSTOW WAY By J. P. W. MALLALIEU WHEN you cross the London and North Western viaduct and look down on Stockport in the evening, lit with those soda lights, you think of an illuminated graveyard. But Stockport was and is for me the gateway to civilisation, for there I used to shake, and still shake, the dust of Southern trains from my feet. There I joined a local whose wheels I knew had touched the dust of Stalybridge and Greenfield, and might, for all I was certain, have touched the hallowed dust of Delph. Stockport was and is, for me, the gateway to home.

Then there is the County. They are an unfashionable side —that is, a side who never reach those heights where they are drawn at home and all else is added unto them. Without money—" when I first went to that cloob," said Fred Westgarth to me one day. " we not merely did'nt own a player. We didn't own a pail and broom " (and I wish I could write for you the way he pronounced the word" pail ")—without glamour without surprising or even premeditated success—they never have had a real run in the Cup and, in the League they have hovered betweeh the Second and Third Divisions—Stockport County have yet played good football through the years and have evoked that passionate, deep-rooted native support which sets the rattles whirling, even in alien London, even against ruddy amateurs. More than that for me, they once sold Lythgoe, a great centre forward, to a Club which at the request of the Spectator's. Editor I must not mention on this page more than twice a month.

On my right is Walthamstow Avenue—and I have checked with the programme to see that I have not spelled the place wrongly. This takes me almost as deep as Stockport. I used to hate leaving home. I went to boarding-school when I was under eight and went on going to boarding-school until I left the University of Chicago at the age of twenty-four (thereafter until I got married, I merely went to bed and breakfast, with Stockport my fortnightly reminder that warmth and lovingness still existed in a hard world). Except for my first and last terms at a Prep. School and for my last term at a Public School, I was near to tears when I said goodbye at the last second of my holidays. But I do remember one other time when tears were easily banished. It was when my eldest brother, who was driving me away to the station, suddenly said : " Well, I was right. The Corinthians did beat Blackburn Rovers."

The date, possibly, was 1929: but then I am bad at dates. Perhaps that is why I was unhappy about the idea of leaving home for school. Anyway, I think that, in the Fourth Round of the Cup, somewhere about that date, Hegan shot a goal. I think that in that match my present colleague in the House of Commons, Hubert Ashton, was playing—I wish he was playing now. I would then sign on tomorrow for that club which is an Official Secret. I know that the•Corinthians' victory drained the tears from behind my -eyes.

Mind you, even at that time, I did not altogether hold with those amateurs. There had been , that game when a Corinthian full back had deliberately handled and so prevented a certain goal, and the Corinthian captain had ordered his goalkeeper to stand aside and thus allow the opposing penalty kicker to score without even a gesture of opposition. , This, I thought, was carrying noblesse oblige too far.. Supposing the wretched kicker had kicked the ball over the bar, as sometimes happens. What an ass he would have looked I- No gentleman wants to make another gentleman look an. ass. On the other hand -no gentleman wants his opponent to score a goal—at least not until his own side has scored several. On this matter I could not decide whether the Corinthian captain was an ass or just pre-Potterite. However, as on Saturday I made my way. to Walthamstow, I decided that in Amateurs v. Professionals (in football, and with one exception) I was on the side of the Amateurs even if their ground was in the South. This decision was confirmed by one look at the Amateurs' ground, which is flanked on its two sides by those .knock-here-and-just-see-what-reception-you- get houses which were popular with industrious artisans in Queen Victoria's time, and is bounded at the ends with bleak, six-storied, cement flats or with annexes to modern factories. That ground looked as though it could do with a cheer. But indecision returned when, after looking at the ground, I went to eat my sandwiches and- drink a glass of beer in the nearest pub, and the nearest pub was suddenly invaded by men and women who had rattles and familiar voices, and the nearest pub suddenly became home. Oh goodness ! All that was missing were fields of corn ! My beloved Yorkshire ! How- ever, one rule in public life is " Take a decision and stick to it " (see Lloyd George). I had decided to back the Amateurs, and I stuck to it, even after I had seen from the programme that their colours are both light blue and dark blue—which is obvious nonsense.

But it was nonsense no more when I had seen the Amateurs' football. During the first half those Amateurs played -like professionals—I have no higher praise than that—and though some of their supporters behaved like professionals and booed —they, obviously, were types who would never be allowed to rise to the position of cashier—most of them behaved like amateurs. After their side had risen, easily and deservedly, to a two-goals lead, they listened with complete equanimity to Stockport comments on the antecedents of the referee and with only the slightest raising of an eyebrow to Stockport comments about Sham-Amateurs." Matters, however, were otherwise in the second half.

Then Stockport began to play like professionals while Walthamstow began to play like bank clerks who had been prevented from training last week because of evening rain. Then, too, the Walthamstow spectators round me changed their status. As Stockport pounded the Walthamstow goal I saw bank-managers break their umbrellas; and when, fifteen minutes from the end, Stockport deservedly scored, I heard bank- managers use language which, so far, they have not used even to me. By and by came that final whistle, and with it that flood of emotion, that flood of compassion which turns men back into themselves and beyond themselves.

Walthamstow bank-managers suddenly saw in Stockport County men who earned their living from the game, who in the Third Round of the Cup desperately needed a big gate to keep themselves alive, but who had to be content with a bare 10,000, men who desperately needed victory, who fought for victory against the ticking clock, but who, when defeat came, were still content. Stockport County saw in Walthamstow men who, literally with their own hands, helped to level and prepare their own ground. They saw a club for whom a man called Lewis played and, while playing, earned 126 international caps, for whom this same Lewis played so long that his own son same up to play in the same team, for whom this same son, drat him, had been playing against Stockport that very afternoon and had made both the Walthamstow goals, while the Walthamstow programme was ominously proclaiming-that yet another generation of Lewises had arrived the previous Sunday and would undoubtedly be playing for Walthamstow in sixteen or so years time.

They saw, as I did, not only a football team: They saw the players coming into the board-room after the match and drink- ing milk out of bottles, saw them thereafter having their tea so quietly that you'd think that a referee would never need to blow his whistle at them, saw them playing darts so noisily thaL-frou needed not a referee but the Brigade of Guards to keep them quiet, saw them dancing with their wives or sweet- hearts so happily that both a referee and the Brigade of Guards would be entirely superfluous. For Walthamstow is not just a football- club. It is a club.