At Home Again

By J. P. W. MALLALIEU, M.P.

MY way to the Leeds Road football ground crosses the Beast Market where blackened slums once stood and where today nothing stands because the Council cannot make up their minds. Coarse grass has sprung from the rubble and bright- coloured weeds are firmly rooted in what once were cellars. You might think that a piece of the wild Yorkshire moorland had been translated into the town centre.

You might think that if you had no nose. But on the Beast Market there is no smell of peat or heather nor the clear sharpness of the moorland air. Instead, you smell gas. You smell it even when the air is still. It is acrid. It hits the back of your throat. Those who live in the condemned houses near by say that their food tastes of gas. They also say that if they light a match in their front rooms the explosion rattles windows for miles around.

But to me that smell of gas means football as surely as the smell of a daffodil means spring. .As I cross the Beast Market I begin to think of the two points which Huddersfield will surely collect that afternoon, and when, round the corner, I come upon the gas works itself and savour its bouquet to the full, I feel the tingling expectancy which comes to all football fans when, before the game begins, all is right with the world. .

Unhappily during this season I have been ill in bed. I have not been in Huddersfield since mid-August, not had a sight of Leeds Road, not had a whiff of the Beast Market. So, until last Saturday, I could not feel that the season had really begun—an illusion that was fostered whenever I looked at the league tables and found my beloved but not wholly successful Huddersfield among the leaders. However, on Saturday I decided that, as I had been fit enough to get out of bed and to attend the House of Commons the previous Tuesday, I was certainly fit enough to get out of bed again now to see some football. .

The choice of match was easy. Were not Doncaster Rovers at Brentford ? Was not Doncaster Yorkshire ? Was not their captain the great Peter Doherty who, for several seasons, had stood between Huddersfield and the Second Division ?

There was no Beast Market on the way from my home at Hampton Court to Griffin Park. There was the Royal Palace. There was the house where Garrick lived. There was the cultured Thames at Richmond Bridge and Richmond Green and Kew Gardens and Kew Green with white flannelled cricketers playing in the sun and then the Thames again at Kew Bridge. " Good gracious," I said, " we must have missed our turning. All this can't be the way to a football match."

But then it happened. We crossed Kew Bridge, turned right, and there for all the world to see was the North Thames Gas Board, with gasometer, smell and all. My football season had begun.

It is fifteen years since I first went to Griffin Park. Brentford had just risen to the First Division and had come unbeaten through their early matches. Now they were to face Huddersfield and the whole ground was bubbling.

For the thirty thousand Brentford supporters packed into that ground all indeed was right with the world. The grass on the pitch was greener and the paint on the goal posts and round the stands was brighter than ever before ; and the sun shone brilliantly. Presently officials walked across the green to the terraces and called through megaphones. At once, hundreds, maybe thousands, of small boys were lowered over the heads of the crowd or themselves leaped over the railings like frogs to squat on the grass round the playing pitch. It was like a celebration in a happy family ; but " celebra- tion " is too mild a word to describe what happened when, in the thirtieth minute, Holliday, the Brentford centre-forward, cracked t blinder into the Huddersfield net. I thought for a moment that the roof of the world had lifted. However, it settled down again licely in the second half when Huddersfield cracked two blinders Ito the Brentford net.

Last Saturday the atmosphere at Griffin Park was altogether different. The 1935 dreams of glory faded long ago, for the team are back in the Second Division and have felt the clammy shadow of the Third. There was no deed to spread schoolboys over the grass, for there were open spaces on the terraces ; and the bubbling came only from a group of Doncaster supporters who had travelled all night to watch their newly promoted team stride upwards to still further promotion. The Brentford supporters seemed listless, and I soon saw why.

Right through the first half Brentford played as though the green turf was a quagmire which sucked them into immobility, while the Doncaster forwards flitted this way and that like will o' the wisps. If Brentford had a plan it was to mark Doherty. But as Doherty was now on the wing, now at centre, now at inside, now at half-back, the Brentford planners were left scratching their heads, while the Doncaster forwards shot. At length the planners replanned. They began to mark some of these other forwards instead of just Doherty. Thereat Doherty strode through and scored a beauty. All this, you would have thought, was happiness to overflowing for the all-night brigade from Doncaster. But I detected an undercurrent of dissatisfaction.

It began when a Doncaster player fell in the penalty area and appeals for a penalty were ignored. This merely produced some useful information about the ease with which anyone, even a referee, can get spectacles under the National Health, if only he would learn to sign his name. But when, a few minutes later, a second Doncaster player fell in the penalty area and claims for a penalty were again ignored, Doncaster supporters stopped worrying about the referee's future and began to speculate about his past.

One section argued that he had obviously been picked out of a remand home. But another section argued convincingly that such an obvious criminal would never have been put on remand. He would have been gaoled on sight. Eventually it was agreed that the referee had come from • one of the early penal settlements in Australia. This would explain his turpitude, his ignorance of English rules and his senility. That brought us to half-time.

For twenty minutes of the second half Doncaster combined to slam shots at the Brentford goal. They hit both posts. They hit the crossbar. They forced Newton into a spectacular save. This was Second Division football, but I had seen nothing to equal it all last season in the First Division. Then suddenly Brentford broke away. The ball passed from man to man and there it was in the back of the Doncaster net—and at once the listless and lazy sneering Brent- ford supporters caught again the fire I had seen in them fifteen years ago. They roared encouragement at their team and derision at the Doncaster supporters until it seemed that their throats would burst.

It ended in a draw, and when later in Brentford's hospitable board- room I was sipping something for the good of my health, I felt excited and content. Then they put up the full-time scores of other matches. The sun went in and the glass of whisky in my hand turned to hemlock. For Huddersfield had lost at home and I knew that my football season had really begun.