Absent Heart
By J. P. W. MALLALIEU, M.P.
ET it began so well ...
When I fed the rabbits, the sun was as high as it can go in January, and the frost on the lawn was melting. The whole morning seemed to glisten. So it should; for this was the shiniest morning in the football calendar, the Third- Round-of-the-Cup morning, when the big clubs come in for the first time and those little clubs which have insinuated them- selves through earlier rounds think they are going to knock the Brylcreem off their betters.
Whdt a morning this always is ! The earlier rounds are important, no doubt, to those who habitually engage in them. But no one else bothers. We just notice when, say, Blyth Spartans and Tranmere Rovers fail to reach a decision at their first meeting; fail to reach a decision, after extra time, at their second meeting, and have, in all, to play 300 minutes before they can tell which of the two is to be slaughtered in the Third Round. The other restlIts cause about as much stir as a maiden over in a Test Match with India.
But the Third Round is real. You get the clash of the great, like Newcastle and Aston Villa. You get the minor local " Derbies " like Brentford and Queen's Park Rangers. Above all you get the babies against the giants, like Scunthorpe against the Spurs or Workington against Liverpool—and presumably Tranmere Rovers were playing somebody too. How we all hope that these babies will repeat the fairy story—and well they may if they are playing on their own ground. These baby teams sometimes have baby grounds which cramp the giants; and on'these baby grounds there are sometimes baby hillocks and baby valleys which upset billiard-table players from the First Division. How everyone laughs when one of the giants comes a cropper, when Arsenal falls to Walsall or Sunderland gets stuck at Yeovil. That's all part of the Cup. Anything can happen. So the morning of the Third Round glistens, even when, as often happens, you can't see a yard in front of you for fog. There was no fog for this Third Round. The warmth of the sun had made even rabbits lazy. At any rate, they had not bothered to burrow into my lawn. After feeding them; I sat in the sun and wondered idly which team I would back that afternoon. Usually I pick North v. South, but I couldn't decide which was which from Brentford (of Brentford) v. Queen's Park Rangers (of Shepherd's Bush). I should have to get these two sorted for me by Mercator himself. I plumped for the Rangers, only because their manager, Dave Magnall, used to play for Huddersfield, and because their inside right, Conway,Smith, not only played for Huddersfield himself, but is the son of- the late Billy Smith who for twenty years almost was Huddersfield.
Leaving my rabbits to the sun, I set off by car for Griffin Park. Most English football-grounds are so hidden by terraced. red-brick houses that you would think the game was some sort of sin, to be kept from the notice of the police and the churches. But on a Cup Tie day there's no disguising them. Those three mounted policemen trotting up the street —I'll bet they are not defending the Brentford gas-works: and those newspaper . bills, tied round lamp-posts, advertising all the sport—they're not always showing in back streets: nor, I any sure, are those elderly men with walking sticks, who wait hopefully at corners and beckon cars. These are the pointers to a football-ground which even Dr. Watson could not have missed, and if you follow them, as I did, around midday. you will find the little queues, rubbing their noses against closed gates. which are the final proof without which Holmes never closed his mind.
Little queues ? I was surprised myself. But the older I get, the more I become like Dr. Watson. So I drew no sensible conclusion. After circling the ground and finding only little queues, 1 assumed that there would be no difficulty about seeing the match. So I left my car in the care of one of those old men with sticks, and went into ' The Griffin ' for a sandwich and a glass of beer. In the pub I discovered that this cup-tie was " ticket only "; and I had no ticket.
I appealed to the landlord. No go. The landlord appealed - all round the bar. No go. The landlord's son, aged ten, announced that he had a ticket but made it clear that that was no go either. Then someone remembered that, twenty minutes ago, the local butcher had had a spare ticket. „;The landlord rang him up; the ticket was still spare; the landlord's son trotted off to fetch it, and I was in. I was among strangers in The Griffin % but if you are a real football fan and meet other real football fans you are among strangers no more.
I was able to pick my place, on the rails, right behind ons of the goals. The empty stands had all the hollowness of a main-line railway-station in the early morning, so that the rattles and the shouts of the men who, quite seriously, on this January morning, were selling ice cream echoed against the corrugated iron roofs. But, hollowness and ice cream notwithstanding, I , felt warm in expectation. I remembered the first time, 32 years ago, that I had stood directly behind a goal. Within two minutes of the kick-off my Huddersfield had fired a beautiful, new yellow ball into that goal and had almost blown the net away. 'I thotight cosily of Huddersfield playing an easy match, - 190 miles away, playing an easy match which might even at the eleventh hour provide the spark to light them home.
" Ladies and gentlemen, it is exactly 60 minutes to the kick- off." The echo from the loudspeaker seemed dulled, and I noticed that the ground was beginning to fill. By the time the loudspeaker announced: " Ladies and gentlemen, the kick-off will be in, approximately, seven minutes. Will people standing on the gangways move away ? there was no echo at all, and, so far as I could see, nowhere for the people on the gangways to move away to. I myself had been edged from the rails, politely but effectively, by four small boys. who unscrupulously used their lack of height to play on my better feelings. How- ever, I could still see, and anyway was spellbound in those magic moments which immediately precede the launching of a' cup-tie.
Yes, the day had begun well.
The game itself cast no spells—except, perhaps. on the players. Brentford won 3-1, which pleased the four boys who had stolen my place on the rails; but I was really waiting for the half-time scores on the board at the far end of the ground and for Sports Report with the final results on my wireless at home. In the meantime I watched the Brentford goalkeeper, Gaskell, who kept his watch some five yards in front of me. Gaskell had a busy afternoon. Someone, it seemed, had left tiny bits of straw in his goal-mouth, all of which had to be picked up and placed carefully in the back of the net. Gaskell lumbered up and down, shoulders bent, eyes on the ground, picking up these bits. When, at last, the place seemed tidy, he stood on his six-yard line and stared gloomily at the far goal, realising, no doubt, that in the second half he would have to begin tidying all over again. Even now his eye would detect stray bits of straw. He would dart at them and take them disdainfully to • the back of the net. These salvage operations were seldom interrupted. Indeed, when Gaskell dived to a sudden shot from Rangers, I believe he was really after another of those straws. I shall ask him to train at our house until the carpet- sweeper is repaired. - Half-time came and went with the score satisfactory 190 miles away; and, by and by, I was home for tea and the time was half-past-five. I do like Sports Report. The two Davies give their reports like over-bright uncles telling fairy stories to moronic children; and the man who reads the League results continuously tells people that Huddersfield Town have lost. But this evening I waited calmly, even tolerantly, for the inevitably satisfying end to a satisfying day. I was even unruffled by my children, who were in a teasing mood and kept shouting " Vote Conservative " or, alternatively, " Up Cambridge." Then, quite suddenly, I was alone in the world. The wireless crackled with the uncontrollable laughter of millions, my children cheered and my rabbits began a large- scale excavation of my lawn, while I began to pick little pieces of straw from the carpet and put them in my hair. For the B.B.C. (Psychological Warfare Department) had just made the following announcement: " 11,uddersfield Town 1, Tranmere Rovers 2." Yet it began so well ...
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