The Next Great Footie Pundit
Last night, I woke up at 2am and was utterly and completely awake. All done with sleep.
I’m sure it had nothing to do with the Red Bull from the Chelsea match. With nothing to do, and very little open, I started scrolling through the different trains available that morning, looking to see how far I could go and still get back before my evening League One match in Stevenage.
Which is how I ended up on a 5:30 train to Edinburgh this morning. The first two hours were absolutely lovely, watching the sun rise over the English countryside, the young lambs with their mother ewes, and the small villages. At one point, I laughed out loud, involuntarily, because how is some of this even real?
Then the train got to Newcastle, and went from nearly empty to completely full. A man asked to switch seats with me, offering me his window seat for mine, so he could sit with his partner, who was next to me. Before I could agree, another man said, “Cheers, mate”, hopped in the window seat, opened his laptop, and spent the whole ride hunched over it, with his arm braced against the window. He could not have blocked the view more if he tried. He only took his eyes off the laptop so he could make work calls. So much for the view of the coastline in the quiet car, I guess.
We got to Edinburgh on time, and I had a little over an hour to explore before my return train. I wandered through many different closes, doing a lot of zigzagging back and forth, never getting far from the train station, for fear I’d get distracted and lose track of time.
I stopped into a shop for some postcards and the shopkeeper insisted that if I had no time for anything else, I should take a look at St. Giles Cathedral. It was free, and a five minute walk, so I headed over there and wandered around for another ten minutes or so before heading back to the train station and boarding my train south to London.
Thankfully my return train was less crowded, the quiet car was mostly free of work phone calls, and I grabbed my window seat without any issues. More beautiful fields, flowers, and lambs, plus I got to actually see the coastline this time. I made it back to London with time for a quick nap before catching the train for a short trip north to Stevenage where I was seeing Stevenage FC host Birmingham City FC.
The context for this match is…I have very little. I chose this match because it was apparently the only match happening in all of England on Thursday. This is League One, which, if you follow Welcome to Wrexham, spoiler alert, Wrexham currently plays in as well.
Birmingham City FC got relegated to League One last year, with some drama attached, and they have already confirmed they will bounce back up, as well as their place as league champions, with several matches still to play.
Stevenage are solidly in the middle, 14th out of 24. There was a good chance that they would lose today, like most teams that have faced the formidable Birmingham City this year.
Tom Brady is a minority owner of Birmingham and wow, I don’t like that guy. So, it’s go Stevenage for me!!
The train north was actually the same train I took 12 hours earlier to Edinburgh, on the LNER service, but with a much earlier stop, just 20 minutes north of the city. Or it would have been, if I hadn’t napped too long. I woke up, threw my jacket on, and caught the Thameslink instead.
The path to the stadium wasn’t completely obvious, or walkable, so I hopped in a taxi. The first thing the driver asked was “There’s football today? On a Thursday?” I told him I hoped so, or else it was going to be a round trip back to the train station. There didn’t appear to be much else happening in Stevenage otherwise.
He got me nervous though, so I breathed a sign of relief as we got closer to the stadium and I saw the telltale markers of a game to come: the Birmingham supporters coaches, red and white scarves on necks walking the same direction, and young men in black puffer jackets with the haircut that makes them all look like alpacas.
I almost didn’t go to the match, if I’m being honest. Walking to the train, on the platform, on the second platform, after I realized I was on the wrong Thameslink, and even once I got all the way to Stevenage.
What was I doing? This was going to be my seventh of ten matches on the trip, did I really need that many? Beyond that, I knew nothing about Stevenage. Every other match, I had an opinion and knowledge of at least one of the teams I was seeing. I felt like an interloper, a faker. A football tourist. Which to be fair, I am.
But I went, and I’m glad I did.
My turnstile was at one end of the pitch, but my seats were just on the other side of the halfway line, right behind the benches. Which meant, in this stadium, I had to wait for the stewards to collapse the players’ tunnel to cross to my seats. Lamex Stadium isn’t much, an old stadium with a capacity of 7,200, a little bigger than where I was the night before, but still much smaller than most of the stadiums I’ve visited on this trip.
I found my seat, between three pairs of young boys with a parent each. Two of the pairs were friends and clearly came to all the matches together. The boys, we’re going to call them Jack and Ollie, who I’d wager were around 10 years old, rivaled the best footie pundits in the game, as well as Statler and Waldorf.
They were old enough to have some comedic timing, but young enough still to be unselfconscious. I’m not sure where they learned their heckling from, because Jack’s dad and Ollie’s mom were more the happy-clapper types, not the hecklers. Though Ollie’s mom, who we’re going to call Mel, had her moments.
I was expecting a bloodbath. Birmingham don’t really belong in League One, their relegation the previous season was what happens when you have too much celebrity and not enough skill. Still, most of their matchups over this season felt unfair. Apparently Stevenage’s manager felt the same, because Jack pulled up the lineup and saw that he sent out a back five lineup, an extremely defensive lineup.
At kick-off, it felt like the whole stadium was braced for impact. But five minutes went by without Birmingham scoring. Then ten. Then the confidence grew on the Stevenage side, as did the sound. I learned that they call the team “Boro” which makes sense because “Stevenage” doesn’t fit in a lot of songs. Boro even had a few counter-attacks and periods of possession.
Honestly, after 20 minutes of really fun, scoreless play, it started to look like the match could go either way. The only disappointment of the first half was some truly atrocious match officiating. All Birmingham had to do was look at the ref to get a call in their favor. Mel said it was endemic to the league, and I don’t doubt her after what I saw.
But I need to pause and tell you about Jack. I adore Jack. Jack has the rizz, I think. If Jack had read me for filth the way he was reading the ref and Birmingham players, I would simply go into hiding forever. Some highlights:
“You should join the diving team! You’re already a pro”
“Even Neymar would have been embarrassed by that dive” (trust this is brutal)
“You’re supposed to pass to your own team, mate”
“Oy ref, do you need to borrow my dad’s glasses?”
“Oh my god, ref, you got one right! Two in a row and I’ll give you a standing ovation” (he did this too)
I was cackling. Literally the best match commentary I’ve ever heard. I would buy tickets just to listen to Jack. Ollie was really great with the “Yes, and” to Jack’s calls and just gassing Jack up in general. The two of them had a grand old time and just brought me so much joy. At one point, Mel tried to reign Jack in and I was worried she’d succeed, but it became clear this was part of the weekly performance, and Jack was undeterred.
In the second half, the battle continued back and forth, with Boro looking better with every minute of confidence from not conceding. The defense was strong, and Boro were making some strong attacks too. They won more corners and got off more shots than Birmingham.
With twenty minutes to go, both teams made 3 substitutions but it didn’t change much of the game. There was a moment when an outfield Boro player fully punched the ball, maybe by accident, in the 18 yard box, and the ref didn’t see. It was, or at least should have been, an obvious penalty, without a doubt. Once it was clear that all the officials had missed it, the Boro crowd was laughing while the Birmingham crowd was livid. I cackled myself. Considering how many poor calls went against Boro in the match, it felt like a bit of justice, but if I were a Birmingham fan, I would have been livid too.
Then with fifteen minutes left, one more sub from Birmingham turned out to be the difference. About 3 minutes later, the sub, Alexander Cochrane, hit a low rocket from outside the 18 yard box, with the Boro keeper’s view blocked, and it went in the bottom right corner.
This is when I discovered why the rest of the people around me and the three son-parent pairs had been pretty quiet: they were all the Birmingham support staff. They jumped up clapping and celebrating.
A few more forward attacks from Boro and then the match was over. It was disappointing that Boro didn’t at least get a draw, they certainly deserved it for how well they performed against the league champions. But hey, at least I didn’t witness another 6-0 match against the team I was supporting?
Now someone get Jack an agent, we need this kid on Sky Sports.
Count:
7 matches
7 full days
29 train rides on 11 services