I really don’t want to gloat, but… while you lot, with good reason, whinge about the ownership of your club and its apparently interminable “transition” towards something or other, I’m wallowing in the reflected glory of an ultimately successful season with Dulwich Hamlet, promoted via the play-offs to the National League South.
In the end, it all comes down to the peculiar predicament of the modern football fan: you win some, you lose a lot. Most of us can only, mathematically, expect sporadic joy and routine disappointment unless you follow one of the ‘big clubs’, in which case you are in my humble opinion a glory-seeking hanger-on and not really a proper football fan.
Our emotional well-being is dependent on a small group of mainly young men over whom we have no real influence and who so long as they get paid don’t really give a sh*t what we think or feel. We are, for the most part, meant to suffer.
In the old days, that offered a valuable lesson in dealing with adversity. Now with the ‘winner-takes-all’ mentality, it just means a monopoly on success for the few and the occasional flutter of excitement for the rest of us. That’s capitalism, which tends to squeeze the joy out of pretty much anything it gets its greedy hands on.
Anyway, for the moment, let me wallow. On a ‘sizzling’ Bank Holiday Monday in South London, Dulwich Hamlet won promotion from the Isthmian/Bostik League for the first time in their 125-year history. Next season they’ll be playing such giants of the non-league game as Bath City and Chelmsford City (yes, clubs ending in ‘city’) and other such glamorous places (‘To Truro and Beyond’ as one placard put it).
The fact that they did it in Tooting, at a ground borrowed from a club heading in the opposite direction, makes for an even more remarkable achievement. A couple of months ago the club was evicted from its own ground in Dulwich by its New York-based private equity owners Meadow Residential, in ongoing dispute with the local council over development plans. Meadow even tried to trademark the club’s name!
This was the fourth season in a row Dulwich have been in the playoffs. The league title and automatic promotion were won by Billericay Town, or rather purchased at a reported cost of £1m in players wages by their waste-magnate multi-millionaire owner with the hard-core support of a few hundred white van men. “F**k off Dulwich Hamlet” was one of their first post-promotion tweets.
This time Dulwich went into the playoffs in second place, which gave them supposedly home advantage, first against a really good Leiston side in the semi (won 1-0) then the final against Hendon, a bit of a ‘bogey team’.
There were 3,500 people there, an amazing attendance for non-league and at a borrowed ground eight miles away from Dulwich. After almost three hours of sweaty football on a bumpy pitch, Dulwich beat Hendon 4-3 on penalties, second only to waterboarding in the catalogue of modern torture. The day after, I renewed my season ticket with a smile; £65 for over-60s, less than £3 a game. Combined with weekends with my first grandchild, due in November, that’ll do nicely.
For me the only downside is that there are no East Anglian teams apart from Chelmsford and the despicable Billericay in the National League South; there would have been Kings Lynn Town if they’d won their own play-off final.
I’ll miss my trips to Lowestoft and Needham Market, where Dulwich always seemed to do well. This season’s 3-0 win at Needham, where Dulwich “oozed class all over the pitch” (according to the Non-league Paper), was my personal highlight. The 3-1 win at Lowestoft, who have just about survived financial disaster and staved off relegation (despite losing their last game 8-0!) was, by contrast, a sad mismatch.
So what if anything can Dulwich Hamlet’s success teach Norwich City? First of all, to restate what should always be blindingly obvious, football is a team game. For as long as I’ve been watching, Dulwich have played a passing team style, with no obvious ‘stars’ (just heroes), and a clear collective joy in playing the game together. That for me was what was so special about the Lambert years at Norwich, an inclusive ethos since frittered away.
For all Stuart Webber’s talk of a footballing “identity” for City, it’s hard to discern one right now. It’s especially hard to see what Daniel Farke has brought to the club, apart from his captain at Borussia Dortmund reserves and a rather curious way with the English language (why is everything a “topic”?). For what it’s worth I think the ‘new structure’ makes a lot of sense, but it needs serious money to succeed, and the club adopted it three seasons too late. They should have gone for it as soon as Lambert left.
Secondly, football success really is a long-term project, based on making the most of your own local circumstances and opportunities. It takes patience, integrity and very good planning, even for a club with unlimited, obscene wealth like Manchester City. Dulwich have been run for nearly a decade by the same management team of Gavin Rose and Junior Kadi, who actually make their living by running an academy that has produced dozens of professional and semi-pro footballers (quite possibly more than Norwich City’s academy over the same period).
It does help that they have their pick of Crystal Palace, Millwall etc. cast-offs from the talent pool of South East London – including striker Reiss Allessani, who a Dulwich source tells me Norwich “played silly buggers with” in the January transfer window – but unlike Norwich they seem to have the knack of actually improving footballers.
I guess that’s what City are aiming towards now, but from what I hear the prospects are not great. The club are just too provincial and out of the way and well, how shall I put it, peculiar. There are reasons why washed-up, injury-prone old pros seem to end up here on lucrative contracts, and why proven managers and coaches don’t.
Having said that, the present Norwich management and ownership seem to be making just about the best of a pretty poor hand. As always a lot depends on context. If and when the Premier League bubble finally bursts over the next few years – what with the insanity of Brexit and the sheer boredom of watching the same ‘big clubs’ dominate every season, not to mention the dawning realisation that English football actually isn’t that good – then a ‘self-funded’ and relatively well-run provincial ‘family’ club like Norwich might be able to take advantage of the knock-on effects down the pyramid.
But again it may be a problem of timing. Sensible, sustainable business practice may have come just a few years too soon in a sport still dominated by dodgy foreign money looking for a quick return. It will all dry up, but not quite yet…
So, for now, you pays your money and you takes your choice: £65 for the season in my case, several times more in yours. I’d far rather be watching Dulwich Hamlet rise through the lower leagues, and hopefully return under fan ownership – when Southwark Council and Meadow Residential finally sort themselves out – to their own redeveloped ground in Champion Hill, than sitting through what you have had to endure this season and more than likely the next one too.
That’s entertainment!
Thought provoking Andy. Surprised you didn’t mention Dialling Jaiyesimi! Old boy of DH and returning from a first pro season at Grimsby to Carrow Road. What do you think are his chances higher up the pyramid?
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Like the Weller reference (again!), Andy, but less so then Brexit comment…. And when all said and done, Dulwich is Division 6 – I think?
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Dulwich Hamlet = hipster football. It’s a p1ss up day out in South Ldn where you can forget about your ‘real team’, nothing more. I’d rather travel up from London to Carrow Road and support NCFC any day of the week than be surrounded by Peckham art students off Champion Hill pretending to ‘like’ being there drinking over-priced craft lager in £5 cans watching a bunch of cloggers punt long balls up the pitch. But good philosophical ramblings. Did you write that on your MacBook in the cool coffee shop round the corner from Dog Kennel Hill?
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Ha! That comment made me laugh because like you I know the Dulwich area too, albeit my knowledge is from some 30-odd years ago. I spent a fair bit of time in the local cop shop – for work, not for questioning. The general environment wasn’t gentrified in those days I can assure you.
Even before then I played for Chigwell against Dulwich College at least twice. By its very nature as a Public School it was an impressive place, even back around 1972. Architecturally it made our place look like Scumbag College.
But don’t forget Norwich has many hipster café bar (and other) venues itself. And a few supporters who adopt that style and attitude at matches as well. Luckily with the size of the NCFC fanbase said hipsters tend to get absorbed into the background on matchdays and have to forget their perceived elitism for a while and join in with the rest of us.
Thanks for the chuckle.
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Jayesimi is still highly thought of at Dulwich, very quick and skillfull, but I’m not sure he’ll break through at Norwich. There are so many ‘promising’ players of his age, including a few already at NCFC. I have a rather depressing theory that what makes you stand out in youth football – mainly the willingness and ability to follow instructions – actually proves a handicap in men’s football, where ‘football intelligence’ and ‘in-game decision-making’ become much more important. That’s why so many fade away, and why so many really great players only actually emerge in their 20s.
I am convinced that Norwich made a big mistake in ‘playing silly buggers’ over Allessani, who Gavin Rose raves about, with the caveat that he needs full-time training, higher-level teams to play in and against, and better pitches. There are also a couple of other players at Dulwich I think would stand out at any level, particularly everybody’s player of a very good year, the winger/second striker Nyren Clunis, aka King of Camberwell, last spotted dancing on Goose Green roundabout in East Dulwich on promotion night.
On Brexit we’ll just have to agree to differ – its effects on daily life, including football, will only become clear when it actually happens (and as an economist I know puts it, we’re paying six quid for a pound of carrots). But it is interesting that Stuart Webber is actually reckoning on it in his forward planning.
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By becoming reliant on EU players and staff. Interesting tactic.
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An excellent read with some very insightful thoughts on the timing of the attempt at self-sustainability.
I can’t claim to know any more about Billericay than you’ve told me in this and a previous article, but I guess you like them as much as I like Ipswich:-)
Well done on the promotion.
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Andy, a very interesting perspective on life lower down the football pyramid.
I guess, irrespective of the level you operate, there’s always someone with more money than you and, ultimately, while it is clearly preferable to have some than not, what’s most important is how you actually spend it.
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Sorry Hillary (and I’ll avoid the obvious jokes about your name, apart from asking after your perennially disappointed brother Hugh…), but I wrote my piece on a wheezing old laptop at home five minutes from Carrow Road…
Hipster football, hmmm. Most of the Dulwich crowd are just ordinary locals like my kids. But the craft beer quaffing, organic burger munching, start up entrepreneur young men with beards, and their money, are very welcome, if occasionally annoying.
You might also find that the quality of football is actually quite high, a long way from the kind of stuff that seems to prevail in the Championship if my last trip to carrow road (v. Burton) is anything to go by…
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Hi Andy
A very good read and I only have one thing to say… footballers are not and never will be heroes, they are overpaid prima donnas.
Heroes, in my book, are Soldiers, Sailors, RAF, Police, Fire Brigade, Para Meds, Nurses and others that do good.
The word heroes is to often used in these modern times and it shouldn’t be used for Sportsmen, Film/TV Stars.
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Hi Alex
Re heroes and actors/sportsmen: Audie Murphy and Bert Trautmann (a paratrooper as well as playing on with that broken collarbone at Wembley) were heroic enough for me!
Plus the sportsmen who graduated to films – Johnny Weissmuller, Bruce Lee, even Vinnie Jones at a push.
Plus there must be several more I can’t recall just now. I get your point though.
Our own Gary Holt did his bit too: albeit as a chef – still working in a confined world of personal danger of course and that alone makes him a hero to me.
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Hi Martin,
Thanks for the reply.
My main point is that most sports people get called heroes and have done nothing to earn that accolade.
Yes, there are many that have done there bit for their countries, and all the civil services (not pen pushers) deserve the accolade daily for their tireless work on the streets.
Calling someone a sports hero just doesn’t sit comfortably with me – being paid to play football or sponsored to run at the Olympics is not the same as putting your life on the line to save someone or for your country.
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Martin,
Murphy, Stewart, Trautmann plus many others served with honour during the WW2 and possibly many unnamed sports stars did in WW1 – they made their name heroic.
John Wayne and many other so-called stars are called an American Hero – like many others he never served, he sold war bonds to pay for the American participation.
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Peter Norman.
Justin Fashanu.
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Gosh we’ve gone down an interesting by way here! I used the much overused term hero with tongue firmly in cheek. I am wary of it in any context, including the military. I once worked, when I was running a social work team, with some ex-soldiers with ptsd, who found it really unhelpful being called heroes….
I have to admit to a childlike admiration, bordering on full-scale man crush, for people who can do things on a football pitch I could only ever dream of – the most pertinent here being Dean Ashton’s goal against Manchester city years ago,, or nyren clunis at tonbridge angels this season for Dulwich (see YouTube).
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Don’t worry Andy I rarely start the tangents but when one appears I seize on it and exploit it. Probably why our dogs are Terriers rather than Labradors.
In terms of football “heroism” I will never forget DH6 against Cardiff in the final game of his initial loan. That tops the lot for me.
Great article and good luck to Dulwich.
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