Hello, Hello, Good To Be Back!

Last night, I was at the farewell party for the Black Lace imprint. It was great to meet people who I haven’t seen, in some cases, for the thick end of 15 years (and to discover that, the odd receding hairline aside, no one has really changed), but I made an early exit because I want to be refreshed and ready for the big kick-off and the kind of early start I’ve forgotten about in recent weeks. I really need to let our new kittens know that on Fridays I like to get a decent night’s kip, because one of them decides it will be fun to climb all over me with tiny, needle-sharp claws to the fore at three in the morning. Grrrrr...
Still, I discover when I get to St Pancras that I’m in slightly better shape than Jenny, who’s on painkillers for a back problem. There are a number of Wednesday fans milling about, on their way up for a home derby against Barnsley. ‘Well,’ I tell Jenny, ‘you might have got a bad back, but they’ve got a bad side.’ Ba-dum tish! Mind you, if today’s game against Accrington Stanley is as poor as the one at the DVS in March (which only feels like five minutes), watching it with the help of some kind of anaesthetic might be the best idea!
Clarkey joins us and we find our seats on what’s a really packed train, though it does thin out when all the Leicester fans get off. Out of the three of us, he’s the most excited about the start of the season. I’d be more enthusiastic if the opposition were different (sorry, Stanley, but it was a dog of a game), but maybe the adrenalin will kick in as it gets nearer to three o’clock.
At Sheffield station, Jenny gets a text from Phil to let her know he’s heard a rumour that there’s a tram strike. As we’ve just watched one go past on the opposite platform, that seems unlikely; he’s probably been listening to the type of person who claims to be ‘in the know’ on the Rotherham messageboards, or who sound off on public transport (Jack Lester and Billy Sharp signing for us – yeah, that happened, didn’t it?). She lets him know there’s no truth in it and we’ll see him in the Fat Cat. The beer garden is full of more Barnsley and Wednesday fans, basking in the Shalesmoor sunshine, but we manage to grab a table and slap on the SPF30 as you can’t be too careful. Phil joins us, as does Mick Walker, who’s making a weekend of it. Jenny and I leave the pub earlier than usual as I have to meet up with my dad, who’s got my new season ticket. He’s late, as he’s got a lift from Gordon, who sits with us, and they’ve been stuck in traffic, but it gives us the opportunity to spot more people we haven’t seen for a while – or since the Exeter game, at least.
Once the vital documents have been handed over, Jenny and I go off to put up the flag. There are already two in place, and someone sitting alongside them in what would be the logical place to stick ours. ‘Perhaps we can ask this chap to move,’ suggests Jenny. ‘This chap’ is actually Drewe Broughton, sidelined for the next few weeks with a broken toe. He’s amenable to moving, explaining that he’s been sitting here for the pre-season friendlies, which have been flag-free – and he’s also a lot less scary in training gear than he is in a suit!
Jenny explains that we’ve travelled up from London, as we do for the majority of matches. ‘Tell me about it,’ says Drewe. ‘I was coming up from Milton Keynes all last season. How was the M1 today?’
‘We don’t drive,’ Jenny replies. ‘We travel on the train. You can’t have a drink if you’re driving.’ I can’t take her anywhere, though if any of the players have ever taken the trouble to read the London Millers programme notes in the past they may well have already gathered the impression that we’re all boozers and reprobates!
What makes this conversation all the more surreal is that it’s being conducted with a backdrop of small girls in leotards, queuing for their run-up to the vaulting horse in the gym which is built into this part of the stand. You really wouldn’t get this at Old Trafford on a match day...
There definitely is a buzz around the ground (well, the occupied quarter of it anyway). Three of our close season signings, Tom Pope, Kevin Ellison and Nicky Law, are in the starting line-up, but the changes don’t stop there. We’ve got a new matchday announcer – or, more accurately, an old one: Richard Lee, who did the job for several years back at Millmoor – and we no longer run out to Queen’s ‘One Vision’. Instead, we’ve gone hardcore drum n’ bass, as I believe the young folk call it, with Pendulum’s ‘Propane Nightmares’. Whatever we use, my dad’ll still think it’s a row.
Accrington have made changes, too – some of them enforced due to the match-fixing charges of which several of their current and former players were recently found guilty, while Colin Murdock, who did everything to keep us at bay here last season, has left the club.
Like every other League club this weekend, we have a minute’s applause to mark the passing of Sir Bobby Robson – so much more fitting a commemoration than silence when it’s for a person who wasn’t intimately involved with your club – and then we’re off.
Accrington take everyone – including, it seems, the Rotherham players – by surprise by attacking from the start. Last season, it seemed they’d come here not to lose; now they clearly want to win, much to their delight of the travelling fans, who are very few in number but very loud in volume. No sign of the ‘Accrington Ultras’ flag, though – they must be still on their holidays. Rotherham, in contrast, seem disjointed and a little sluggish. Nicky Law is putting in some great crosses and kicks from dead balls, but it doesn’t yet seem as though he’s on the same wavelength as everyone else. Don Warrington has to make a couple of good saves, and when Paul Mullin heads over from close range, my dad mutters his first, ‘That could have been who’d have thought it,’ of the season. Most of the problems Accrington are causing us are coming from the trickery of John Miles, even if he does have a tendency to go down under minimal contact. Music may be his first love (younger readers, check your dad’s record collection for the reference...) but he’s fond of falling over, too. Our best chance of the half comes when Tom Pope shoots just wide from a Nicky Law free-kick, but the Rotherham fans clearly expect to be ahead by now and there are murmurings of discontent as the players come off at half time.
If Accrington have had the first half, we have the second. Ryan Taylor, who’s been trying his best up front but gets pushed off the ball rather too easily (hurry up and heal, Mr Broughton’s toe!), is replaced by Paul Warne, recruited to fill the role of the prodigal son now Richie Barker’s been forced to retire. Warney may be 36, as is Andy Liddell, who we’ve also acquired on a short-term deal, but they’re spring chickens compared to Dean Windass, now at Darlo, and Paul Furlong at Barnet. A man behind me isn’t impressed. When it’s pointed out that Warne was Yeovil’s player of the season a couple of years ago, he retorts, ‘And their player of the season the next year was a Cox’s Orange Pippin.’ However sceptical he may be, Warne has that little bit more guile than Taylor, and gradually we take control of the game. Don still has to make a save from a stinging free-kick which would have Ted shouting, ‘Catch it, Grandad!’ if he were here, and Pablo Mills and Ian Sharps have a mix-up which nearly allows Accrington to score, but we’re having some chances. Accrington are no longer bossing the game and they don’t like it: their defending becomes more panicky, and they start wasting time. We’re not helped in our efforts by an assistant referee who gets a couple of offside decisions wrong and misses that their keeper has carried the ball out for a corner. Miller Bear, as shy and retiring as ever, shows what he thinks by miming walking with a white stick...
When Mark Robins substitutes Kevin Ellison and brings on Liddell, a bloke at the back of our block loses it, calling Robins a clown and using some fairly choice language. This is when it becomes apparent that all this time we’ve been sitting in the designated family area – this year there are signs to that effect, which weren’t there before. Stewards are called and he’s warned that if he can’t cool it, he’ll have to get a seat somewhere else. If only they could set one of the blocks aside as an official moaning area, a lot of people would be a lot happier.
With only a couple of minutes remaining, we win one last free kick. Ian Sharps rattles the ball against the bar; it doesn’t cross the line, but in the ensuing scramble it comes out to Paul Warne, who fires it home. The cheering is so loud and the release of pressure so obvious, it’s like the lid has come off a can. Warney celebrate by sprinting down to the home dugout; we can’t remember the last time we saw him move so fast!
At the final whistle, my dad calls the result ‘daylight robbery’. If Stanley had kept playing football, they’d have got something out of that game and could easily have won it, but when we wrested control from them as the second half went on, they didn’t really know how to respond.
Jenny, Clarkey and I head off to the Carlton, where Phil is waiting for us. A couple of Barnsley fans are also in there, having left Hillsborough at half time, when they were two-nil down, and not having witnessed their fightback for a draw. Clarkey’s keen to listen to ‘Test Match Special’; less so when the wickets start falling...
We’re travelling back to London in a carriage with seven or eight Barnsley fans in high spirits and a couple of subdued Wednesday fans. When the Barnsley lads find out we’re the London Millers there’s a bit of good-natured banter, and I end up having to get my flag out for the lads as the train zips through Bedfordshire. Yep, it’s good to be back!