Hugging Strangers by Jon Berry

Author:Jon Berry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pitch Publishing
Published: 2020-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

We reach the promised land and create some memories

AS TONY Blair metaphorically licked George Bush’s bottom and began to propel us into a disastrous war which has cast a shadow over the world since, Blues started to play in the Premier League. We were all prepared for the worst in both football and global geo-politics. A good mate at work snidely suggested that I enjoy my Premier League holiday and I wasn’t confident enough to refute the idea that it might be anything more than that. We were both wrong. We lost our first two games, away at the Arsenal and at home to Blackburn, and at that point we were in the bottom three. It was the venerable Liverpool manager Bob Paisley who once advised us that it was foolish to look at the league tables until you needed an overcoat, so that early position didn’t count. And after 24 August 2002 we never again entered the relegation places. It’s true that for some time we bumped along very near the bottom, but we also had all the fun we had hoped for and more … much, much more.

We were to have an early shot at the neighbours. Six games into the season and at home. For reasons only they could fathom, West Midlands Police allowed the game to be played on a Monday night just as the fat controllers at Sky had decreed. For most of us, particularly those who lived some distance from the ground, this meant the usual organisational arrangements for getting there after work. For others, not as constrained by inflexible wage slavery, it meant getting the day off and drinking yourself into a stupor. The evening of 16 September is engraved, very deeply, into the minds and memories of all who were there.

If you’re unfeasibly impatient, you can use any old digital source to find out how the league table finished that season. Bear with me for a while though. The Villa had started the season with a couple of wins and three defeats. By the time we played them we had mustered our first win, against Leeds, and had drawn away at both Merseyside clubs; five games, five points, having played both Liverpool and Arsenal away. So far, so good. A point a game might just be enough to stay up – even though that didn’t turn out to be the case in 2002/03. If you happen to use a well-known internet encyclopaedia you can also glance at another table – the newly established and universally ignored Fair Play League. We finished rock bottom and that is something about which those of us who even knew about it were very proud. Blues in 2002 were a tough old bunch and Bruce, who always acknowledged that Birmingham City was a working-class club with no frills, nurtured and encouraged this rough, musketeer spirit in his team. We bloody loved it.

And for a brief time in September 2002 we also loved our neighbours’ manager, the genial and widely traduced Graham Taylor.

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