Feeling Leeds by Raiford Guins

Author:Raiford Guins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pitch Publishing
Published: 2022-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

17

Remember, remember the third of January

JERMAINE BECKFORD’S goal against Manchester United in the FA Cup third round in 2010 is legendary. The perfect cup fairytale: League One team bests Premier League giants. The Theatre of Dreams turned nightmare. Multimillionaires crestfallen by wage packets. Upstart manager taking the Knight of the Realm. The gulf in class, club status, turned on its head. A beguiling, old-school long ball shocked the reigning champion’s defensive high line.

They finish second in the top flight that season. We’d finish second in the third tier. Over 40 teams separated ‘us’ from ‘them’. They go into Europe the following season; we’d enter the EFL Championship to finish seventh, just a few points off the final play-off place.

Nine thousand travelling Leeds United supporters witnessed Beckford’s goal that Sunday. The rest of us were jumping, jostling, singing, shouting, hugging in front of television screens the world over. I watched at Nevada Smith’s in NYC that morning. The pub was dominated by Leeds, each supporter quietly creeping in, on their own or in small groups, to become united in voice as the match pressed on. Photos were taken afterwards. Numbers exchanged. Some supporters, over from the UK on holiday, others local, and accustomed to east coast kick-off times. The moment stretched out, replayed in conversation, retold round after round. Morning passed into a great day. Becks’s goal lives on.

I won’t bemoan having to watch matches in a pub. We play the hand dealt, occasionally cheating. For supporters like me, ‘going to the match’ was a subway journey on a balmy January morning to emotionally cross the Atlantic. The experience of watching in a pub can never be a substitute for attendance at a ground. Impossible.

I am currently without a local pub in Bloomington, Indiana. I watch with my family, text with friends during matches.

Sad, but alas, my current reality. When living in NYC, watering holes like Nevada Smith’s (now permanently closed) and Smithfield Hall injected the cultural lifeblood of matches, though, given our league status during the period of 2008 to 2016 when I lived in NYC, not always Leeds matches. Champions League games at Smithfield Hall provided a schizophrenic experience, and probably still do, when the early rounds of the competition were divided up across the pub’s different large plasma screen televisions.

I would join my Swedish friends to pull for the Allsvenskan side Malmö FF, perpetual underdogs against all competition in the league. If I had a second team, it would be the Blue Ones. The three or four of us had our regular corner table with a printout taped to the bottom of the television announcing ‘Malmö FF v Juventus’ or ‘PSG v Malmö FF’. I even took my son out of nursery school early to attend these midweek matches to help make up the numbers, and to have him drink in the atmosphere (only apple juice) at an early age. I have a photo of him eating an apple on the E Train and waving a Malmö flag to bemused onlookers.

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