Today I’m on my way to work there.
* * *
The worst winter of the twentieth century begins on Boxing Day 1962. The Big Freeze. Postponements. The birth of the Pools Panel. The Cup Final put back three weeks. People will die in this weather today. But not at Roker Park, Sunderland. Not versus Bury. The referee walks the pitch at half past one. Middlesbrough have called their game off. But not your referee. Your referee decides your game can go ahead –
‘Well done, ref,’ you tell him. ‘That lot down the road call off anything.’
Half an hour before kick-off, you stand in the mouth of the tunnel in your short-sleeved red-and-white vertical-striped shirt, your white shorts and your red and white stockings and watch a ten-minute torrent of hailstones bounce off the pitch. You can’t wait to get out there. Can’t bloody wait –
Sleet in your face, ice under foot and the cold in your bones. A stray pass into their penalty area and a sprint across the mud, your eye on the ball and your mind on a goal; twenty-eight this season already. Twenty-eight. Their keeper is coming, their keeper is coming, your eye on the ball, your mind on that goal, the twenty-ninth –
Their keeper is here, your mind still on that goal, his shoulder to your knee –
Cruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuunch …
The roar and the whistle. The silence and the lights out –
You are on the ground, in the mud, your eyes open and the ball loose. Twenty-nine. You try to stand, but you can’t. Twenty-nine. So you crawl –
‘Get up, Clough!’ someone shouts. ‘Get up!’
Through the mud, on your hands and on your knees –
‘Come on, ref,’ laughs Bob Stokoe, the Bury centre-half. ‘He’s fucking codding is Clough.’
On your hands and on your knees, through the heavy, heavy mud –
‘Not this lad,’ says the referee. ‘This lad doesn’t cod.’
You stop crawling. You turn over. Your mouth is open. Your eyes wide. You see the face of the physio, Johnny Watters, a worried moon in a frightening sky. There is blood running down your cheek, with the sweat and with the tears, your right knee hurting, hurting, hurting, and you are biting, biting, biting the inside of your mouth to stifle the screams, to fight the fear –
The first taste of metal on your tongue, that first taste of fear –
One by one the 30,000 will leave. Rubbish will blow in circles across the pitch. Snow and night will fall, the ground harden and the world forget –
Leave you lying on your back in the penalty area, a zombie –
Johnny Watters bends down, sponge in his hand, tongue in your ear, he whispers, ‘How shall we live, Brian? How shall we live?’
You are lifted onto a stretcher. You are carried off on the stretcher –
‘Don’t take his bloody boots off,’ says the Boss. ‘He might get back on.’
Down the tunnel to the dressing room –
You are lifted onto a plinth and a white sheet. There is blood everywhere, through the sheet onto the plinth, down the plinth onto the floor –
The smell of blood. The smell of sweat. The smell of tears. The smell of Algipan. You want to smell these smells for the rest of your life.
‘He needs the hospital,’ says Johnny Watters. ‘Needs it quick and all.’
‘But don’t you take his fucking boots off,’ says the Boss again.
You are lifted off the plinth. Off the bloodstained sheet. Onto another stretcher. Down another tunnel –
Into the ambulance. To the hospital. To the knife.
There is an operation and your leg is set in plaster from your ankle to your groin. Stitches in your head. No visitors. No family or friends –
Just doctors and nurses. Johnny Watters and the Boss –
But no one tells you anything, anything you don’t already know –
That this is bloody bad. This is very fucking bad –
The worst day of your life.
* * *
Off the motorway; the South West Urban Motorway. Round the bends. The corners. To the junction with Lowfields Road. Onto Elland Road. Sharp right and through the gates. Into the ground. The West Stand car park. The kids hopping up and down on the back seat. No place to park. No place reserved. The press. The cameras and the lights. The fans. The autograph books and the pens. I open the door. I do up my cuffs. The rain in our hair. I get my jacket out of the back. I put it on. My eldest and my youngest hiding behind me. The rain in our faces. The hills behind us. The houses and the flats. The ground in front of us. The stands and the lights. Across the car park. The potholes and the puddles. This one big bloke pushing his way through the press. The cameras and the lights. The fans –
The black hair and the white skin. The red eyes and the sharpened teeth …
‘You’re bloody late,’ he shouts. Finger in my face.
I look at the press. The cameras and the lights. The fans. The autograph books and the pens. My boys behind me. The rain in our hair. In all our faces –
Our faces sunned and tanned, their faces pallid and wan …
I look this one big bloke in his eye. I move his finger out of my face and tell him, ‘It’s got nowt to do with you whether I’m bloody late or not.’
They love me for what I’m not. They hate me for what I am.
Up the steps and through the doors. Out of the rain and out of the press. The cameras and the lights. The fans. Their books and their
