HOW DOES ‘FEVER PITCH’ STACK UP?

I don’t read much. Only two books – both football – from start to finish in one sitting since ‘Janet and John’ at Infants’ School.

Last year, the biography of top non-league manager Geoff Chapple lasted from tea-time till Newsnight. Not because it   was compelling, just short. At 7,000 words, more pamphlet than proper book. Author Clive Youlton did excellently within that limit. But given that Chapple managed my team, Kingstonian, and that I knew a number of the book’s protagonists, it simply wasn’t enough.

In 1992, though, I read Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch. Because it was, and remains, the best football book ever written. The opinionated nature of some of the book lends an added and continuing fascination. As does the timing of its original draft and publication, just months before the new Premier League and SKY TV’s big-money purchase of the rights to show lots of it live. Which changed everything. So, occasionally, I return to its pages, asking myself the question which adorns the top of this page.

Nothing has changed more, of course, than Hornby’s beloved Arsenal: “Our reputation as the most boring team in the history of the universe is not as mystifying as we pretend, he wrote, adding: “…no matter that…the dazzling Limpar (plays) for Arsenal…just as Van den Hauwe represents Spurs and the brutish Julian Dicks represents the Hammers.”

But marvelling at what has changed, even in fifteen years, since any non-fiction book’s publication, that’s easy. On Fever Pitch’s very first page, Hornby refers to: “…July…when there is no club football of any kind.” How could he know that Arsenal would spend consecutive seasons relying on July’s Emirates Cup for silverware (and what twisted imagination could dredge the Inter-Toto Cup as UEFA Cup qualifier from its depths, after its creation as a mere filler for summer pools’ coupons)?

It’s the seeds of the modern-day which are worth examining. They’re all over this book. Even a jokey aside about the then Arsenal manager George Graham appearing in his dreams has a spooky resonance: “I catch him stealing and I wake up feeling diminished” he admits, neglecting to mention the bespectacled Scandinavian called Rune, probably because he didn’t think him important at the time.

There’s the premature ageing of football crowds. Admission prices at Arsenal increase thirty-two-fold between 1970 and 1991, while train fares expand a mere ten-fold (a prophetic ‘When Saturday Comes’ article in March 1991 notes: “a terrible nightmare of soulless all-seater stadia where £20 was the minimum admission price…maybe I’d just seen the future.” No maybe about it, mate).

Hornby concludes: “It is not possible for most kids to find (the money) every other Saturday. If I were twenty years younger, I wouldn’t be an Arsenal supporter in twenty years time…if I’d been unable to go in my teens it’s unlikely that my interest would have sustained.” With so few kids at Premier League games today, this has happened. The knock-on effect on future football support is to be feared.

The new fan-base? “…with this new lot, I’m not so sure.” Ground redevelopment costs were being transferred to Arsenal fans via their fledgling Bond scheme (“entry to the North bank will cost a minimum £11,000 plus the price of a ticket. Even allowing for inflation, that sounds a bit steep). And his view that the resultant new breed of fan “won’t tolerate failure” has been borne out by the empty seats at may mid-table Premier League clubs (see the second half of ‘Match of the Day’ most weeks for details). A problem only now being addressed by re-examining ticket prices – and even then only in the wake of a TV deal which has moved the decimal point to the right in clubs’ incomes.

Even before SKY, “the behaviour of the Football League…resembled that of the mythical convent girl.” Kick-off times were moveable feasts even at ITV’s behest, with the last train from Sunderland to London leaving “before the game finished” on one occasion Hornby reports. A friend told me a special train was laid on for fans that day. But since the double whammy of rail privatisation and SKY schedules, Hornby’s scenario will surely have happened many times.

And how resonant is this, Middlesbrough and Blackburn fans?: “In the end, however much they mike up the crowd (there’ll be no) atmosphere whatsoever because there’ll be nobody there; we’ll all be at home, watching the box.” Or in the pub, watching the big screen.

“This poignant little gesture would have cost them a few bob, so they scrapped it” he wrote of lifting post-Heysel matchday alcohol bans. How many initiatives have since foundered on the same principles? Alas, Hornby’s Hillsborough ignores many of the lessons he’s taught us thus far. Doesn’t spoil the book – I’ve never fundamentally disagreed with better-written arguments – but in viewing the Taylor report’s all-seater stadia recommendations as the panacea for football ills everything else is dismissed.

Did he think clubs – with their bond schemes et al – wouldn’t use Taylor to fleece fans for more money? All-seaters would exclude the “traditional core of support.” Clubs “will charge more.” Fans won’t “be able…to take kids.” All criticisms levelled in the book, now dismissed as “whinges rather than cogent objections.”

His “either…or” mentality grates. Arguers for safe terracing are “neurotically sentimental”, ignoring the word ‘safe’ in their arguments. “If clubs close down” because “necessary” changes are too expensive, “…so be it. Sad (but) no reason why clubs should endanger lives.” There is no alternative? Balls when Thatcher preached it. Balls here.

Like all good writers, though, he leaves the best till last. Citing European nations (out-of-town stadia, better facilities…higher prices) as examples to follow, Hornby notes their lesser obsession with lower-league football, concluding – and do sit down for this: “The First Division takes precedence and the football climate is the healthier for it.” Dear God.

Obviously, though, Fever Pitch stacks up superbly. Unfairly pilloried for football’s gentrification (a process recorded in its pages, so clearly pre-dating it), it remains the best football book ever written.

‘MotorMurph’ is written by Mark Murphy

Entry Filed under: MotorMurph Column

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