So, where were we? Oh yes, Norwich City’s season was spluttering to an end and Dulwich Hamlet were heading into the playoffs.
While you lot were looking for hard for any signs of progress in the apparently interminable ‘transition’, Dulwich were winning the playoff semi against Leiston, then the final against Hendon on penalties.
It was a boiling hot May bank holiday Monday, with over 3,500 people in South London hanging on in there through extra time, and finally going mental as Dipo Akinyemi tucked away the Hamlet’s final spot-kick (above). This was a ‘home’ tie at Tooting and Mitcham United’s rather splendid ground, where Dulwich have been playing since their evil landlords (a New York property developer called Meadow Residential) evicted them from Champion Hill, where they’d played for over a century.
The play-off final win got them promoted into the National League South, where it all starts to get a lot more serious. The first few games were a real struggle, narrow defeats against cannier or just plain better teams, but it all started to come together with an away draw at Chelmsford City.
Dulwich are now unbeaten in four, with three wins on the bounce, grinding out results and currently three points off the play-off positions. With the same kind of congestion as the Championship, that still leaves them in sixteenth place, but they’re nine points clear of the relegation places. For a first season at a much higher level that’s pretty good going.
The core of the team has been retained – again a real achievement at this level, where players move clubs at the drop of a brown envelope – with some shrewd additions bringing higher league experience or potential.
The real star is the manager Gavin Rose, who earns his living running an academy which regularly produces successful professionals (the latest are Ethan Pinnock at Barnsley and Erhun Oztumer at Bolton), and handles himself with more dignity and honesty than most of the closed shop of ‘real football men’ who flit around the Championship and the lower reaches of the Prem-thingy.
Rose has that great manager’s knack of coaching the very best out of limited players. I am amazed he’s not been lured away into league football.
The prospects on the stadium are not actually too gloomy either. The developer’s plans are slowly going through the planning process, and a combination of an assertive local council and (amazingly) sympathetic government officials and ministers should see the club back where it belongs in a season or two, with a new bigger stadium and sound finances.
The club still has to survive on much-reduced attendances and income in the meantime, but they’re doing all the right things, not least by winning more games than they lose.
I did my bit by renewing my season ticket (£64 with an over-60 concession) and chucking my spare change into the ’12th man’ bucket when I manage to get to games. This should be a lot easier in future because after thirty years in Norwich we are moving to a smaller house in lovely, leafy Honor Oak in South London, just a ten-minute bike ride away from Champion Hill.
The move was prompted by the realisation over the summer that our three adult kids are not coming back to Norwich. They’re all settled in homes, careers and relationships in Peckham and Camberwell, so if we want to see more of them (and our first grandchild) we have to go there.
We’ve had thirty great years in this fine city (my only regret spending too many of those years on the death star that is Norfolk Social Services), and I wouldn’t live anywhere else in England. But I have to say I fear for its future (and anywhere else outside the semi-independent city-state of London).
We are starting to see the things here that drove us out of London all those years ago: an explosion in the number of homeless people, who now (bless ’em) form a quite distinct and occasionally threatening ‘community’ in and around the place; shops and businesses and restaurants struggling and closing down; a general coarsening in the public atmosphere, which as a cyclist I see most clearly in what are now almost daily altercations with aggressive, angry drivers.
The prospects are not great, with deepening poverty and inequality, the sleepwalk into the catastrophe that is Brexit, the decline in local professional jobs, and a burgeoning drugs problem coming out on ‘county lines’.
I have promised myself a match at Carrow Road before we go, most likely my last one ever. I’ve had an odd relationship with Norwich City. For our first few years in the early nineties, I used to take my young son to four or five games a season (he still considers himself a Norwich fan).
As I’m sure you’re all aware, Norwich were pretty good at that point – Chris Sutton one of the best players I’ve ever seen – but after growing up in Leeds and following United long after I left in my late teens, I found the Carra atmosphere strangely muted. When I heard an old guy say, at the end of the most memorable game of the period (4-5 to Southampton), “Oh well, they need the points more than we do”, I was simply bewildered.
There was a kind of old-world gentility and sportsmanship among Norwich supporters that I now consider rather admirable.
Sooner that than the sullen grumbling or pop-eyed, red-faced fury of the later Chase era and the endless managerial merry-go-round of the 2000s. I used to try to guess the result from the faces coming up Carrow Hill past our house, then gave up when I realised they were always – win, draw or lose – glum.
It was only with the arrival of Paul Lambert that things got really interesting again. I was at the infamous Colchester game, which I honestly found hilarious. I can still see the ball bouncing over that Aussie goalie’s head, fat blokes chucking their season tickets around, and Lambert’s lot scoring apparently at will.
When Norwich poached him, I started going regularly. That League One season was great fun, real football played honestly and enthusiastically, typified by the ‘Buffalo with the feet of a Ballerina’ (to quote a Scandinavian TV commentator on the later 2-2 draw at Everton) Grant Holt. I bought a season ticket, and thoroughly enjoyed the ride through the Championship and into the Prem-thingy.
I still think the full story of the Lambert/Holt era remains to be written. The chairman’s description of “the most impatient man I’ve ever met” and Lambert’s subsequent managerial failures hint at a much juicier backstory than we’ve yet heard.
I don’t think Norwich (or Lambert) have ever really recovered from the break-up (remember the Villa fans joining in with “There’s only one Paul Lambert!”). There were some good times under Hughton, a perfectly competent manager if not a particularly good fit here, but the club gradually sank into the football (and finances) of fear that besets every small-town club after a year or two in the ‘promised land’. I gave up my season ticket next to the directors’ box and saved myself £815. The most recent games I saw (1-1 v Swansea, 0-0 v Burton) were two of the worst I’ve ever seen.
I do hope the Farkelife/Webberlution works out, not least because it represents about the only attempt at sustainable sport and business practice being made in the madhouse of the top two English leagues. If you must have an owner, rather than the democratic mass-membership model in countries with a much healthier professional football cultures like Spain and Germany, wouldn’t you rather have the Smith/Joneses than the crooks and swindlers whose sole interest in English football is the actual or potential TV revenues?
And the breakthrough this season of some serious young talent is what most football supporters want to see. I will continue to follow Norwich from afar; theirs will, as they say, be the first result I look for.
In the meantime, I’ll be a regular at Dulwich Hamlet. Come and join me if you’re ever down that way. It’s a lot of fun, affordable (a tenner a ticket, kids get in free) and the football is far better than you might imagine. But not so good that it becomes utterly predictable and boring like most of the Premier-thingy.
OTBC/Tuscany!
Hi Andy
A good read.
Having lived in Blackpool for over 30 years and once a city season ticket holder (1966 to 1980) I witnessed many good, bad and strange things and was at the fame city got their first promotion to 1st Division at Watford, arrival of Bond and the furst game of Fashanu.
Watched many games at the CR when visiting Yarmouth and could get tickets, and these days try and get to any games that are up here.
We have had a couple of local teams that have been successful in the lower leagues namely Fleetwood 7 consecutive promotions so I am told and now there is a new club on the rise AFC Fylde who gave built a new stadium and gets good crowds mostly Blackpool supportes that will not go to Bloomfield Rd why the Oystons are in charge.
But my first city game was 1957 October for my 7th birthday and still mt first club and at my age will not change.
Have a happy time going to Dulwich
Thanks Alex. It’s good to be reminded how important a part of our lives following football has been. Growing up in South Leeds, very much the wrong side of the tracks, football kept me out of serious trouble, gave me a passion and a purpose, and got me running around from a very early age; something I still do most Sundays.
All my happiest childhood memories are of playing or watching football; it was quite literally a lifeline, a large part of who we were and what we felt we belonged to. That’s what’s made me so sad to see professional football and its fans so ruthlessly exploited by the Premier League/Sky gravy train. These days the fans really are taken for mugs by most owners, managers and players alike; a studio audience at best, a merchandising opportunity most of the time, and an easily disowned mob at worst..
I can honestly say I get far more good old-fashioned fun and excitement from watching non-league (plus regular doses of disappointment and frustration, all part of the psychological and emotional turmoil of being a real football fan). After decades of growing disenchantment, I’ve fallen in love with football again! I even went to see Wroxham recently, very capably player-managed by the King of Spain himself Simon Lappin. A nice little ground 15 minutes by train from Norwich, highly recommended!
Thought provoking piece. I was brought up in Yorkshire, we moved from Norfolk in 1959. But I never supported Leeds, though coached by Collins and Charlton early in Dewsbury early 1964 – me and 100 other young lads. I sometimes sit in the ’59ers stand and feel I am home. Wonderful memories of a 3rd round FA Cup victory over Man United. My Manchester cousins donated tickets, it wasn’t worth them travelling. Right!
There is a huge amount in this article, Andy, a fascinating read! You’ve covered several different topics in there, including the current status of Norwich society and attitudes! The life is being sucked out of the centres of many smaller towns and cities in the current Brexit-plagued times, but it’s a result of many forces, including technology – we live not too far from Yeovil, famous only in that Ian Botham was born there, but with a declining, emptying centre and growing drugs/ youth dislocation issues. Norwich is still extremely dynamic in contrast. My kids in their 20s living at home do 80% of their shopping over the internet, so I’m not surprised that urban centres are declining, though there must be a rise in postal/ parcel delivery and warehouse processing jobs.
All of these trends render important the sense of community a local football club can provide, something which is clearly diminishing amongst the more elite and globalised (in terms of their ownership, management, players, supporters and marketing ) teams. In that sense I can understand the appeal of Dulwich Hamlets, and with them continued success, but Norwich City are still not doing too badly themselves. In all the ongoing debates around our ownership this is why for me it is often easiest to tip the balane back to the devil you know, especially with the growing emphasis on making our Academy work, which as you mention is important for Dulwich too. The Community Sports Foundation is also attempting to play a role with regard to the City’s social issues, by providing opportunities for youth (and others) to engage in sport and other activities.. Hard to see a club that is doing as much in this regard, and thus for me a major reason to keep supporting City.
Hi Michael – thanks for another thoughtful response. As I said in my article, I’ve never really understood Norwich City, not least because they’ve never been the most transparent operation – you never feel you’re getting the full story, and our local football journalists are not the most ferociously investigative… But having said that I do think the present ownership and management are relatively honourable, compared to the shysters and ne’erdowells who’ve bought up most other Prem and Championship clubs, including my hometown team Leeds United (I don’t know much about the present owner but the previous one was a Mafioso). I also think the logic of ‘self-financing’ leads inevitably to fan ownership, which is the only way we’ll ever get our game back at its highest levels.