SCUNTHORPE UNITED

‘I’m getting first team football here. Should think if I went First Division, I’d struggle a bit.’

KEVIN KEEGAN 1970

‘I an Botham, the cricket superstar who is now a Scunthorpe footballer, is unlikely to forget his first taste of action in the Football League.’

Saturday Sports Telegraph match report, 1980

There is no doubt that I support the team with the most gorgeous name in English football. Only Aston Villa comes close (although I think their website may need to ponder that, when celebrity fan Tom Hanks said the name made him imagine it was on the Amalfi Coast, he may have been taking the piss). As we’ve seen, Scotland has some beauties, like Queen of the South and Heart of Midlothian; and the wider world has a few crackers as well, my favourites being O’Higgins FC in Chile and Swaziland’s Eleven Men in Flight.

Unfortunately, and I think you know where this is going, Scunthorpe is definitely the worst name for a football club. Once you see the four letters hiding between the ‘S’ and the ‘h’, it is impossible not to see them every time you see the word. And the abbreviation – Scunny – only adds insult to injury. I very much doubt that their fans mind, though. It’s a tough town built on a tough industry; having a poetic-sounding name for their football team has probably never been high on their list of priorities. And the team is one of those rare ones that isn’t much older than the town itself.

A village called ‘Escumesthorpe’ (meaning ‘Skuma’s homestead’) is listed in the Domesday Book in 1086, but it grew into a big town in just a few years in the 1850s and ’60s following the discovery of ironstone in the local hills. Iron has sustained the town and employed its people ever since, meaning there could only be one nickname for the football team: the Iron. Their current badge is a hand holding a girder. Unfortunately, and I know I sound like a stuck record here, that industry is in serious decline and it probably won’t be long before the football Iron is the last reminder of local prosperity.

Scunthorpe United were formed in 1899 and in 1910 amalgamated with another local club to become Scunthorpe and Lindsey United, which they stayed until the mid-50s when they dropped the ‘and Lindsey’ bit.

What? WHY? Why not drop the ‘Scunthorpe’ bit? Lindsey United is a great name. It wouldn’t quite be up there with Palace and Villa, and Lindsey United does sound a bit like an insurance company in the Hebrides, but it’s way cooler than Scunthorpe. What were they thinking of?

They wore claret and blue from the start (well, that’s some consolation for the name) but flirted with white for a while because it would look good under floodlights, then tried red because it worked for Liverpool. Obviously it didn’t take them long to work out that it was more the squad of world-class players than the kit that had worked for Liverpool, so thankfully they are now back on the good old claret and blue.

And mention of Liverpool will have Scunthorpe fans going ‘I bloody knew it’, because they are probably more famous for producing Kevin Keegan than anything they have actually won. If George Best was the face of football in the sixties, Keegan took his place in the seventies, forming a stunning strike partnership with John Toshack at Liverpool, before moving to Hamburg then returning to England to galvanise Southampton and, more famously, Newcastle.

For a decade he was probably the most recognisable footballer in the world. He must have a massive mantelpiece because he has won everything there is to win as a player, and he is also one of the nicest, most enthusiastic people you could ever meet. The first time I met him was on a TV show called A League of Their Own. As we were chatting, a producer tripped over a waste-paper bin and Keegan leapt to his feet shouting ‘penalty, ref’ before telling the producer off for diving. For someone my age, it was a moment of magic.

And he started his career as a teenager at Scunthorpe in 1968. He scored 22 goals in three seasons (as a midfielder) and played his last game for them against Workington in front of fewer than 3,000 people on 1 May 1971 before joining Liverpool for £35,000 (yes, young people, £35,000).

He has often talked (he did to me and the producer) about the values he learnt at his first club, values that the fans demanded: hard work, discipline, loyalty, togetherness, respect – so, I could carry on and tell you about Scunthorpe coming fourth in the Second Division in 1962, or winning League One in 2007, or the 20 times they have won the Lincolnshire Senior Cup. But I think it’s enough that a team with an unlovely name produced one of the most famous names in football.

It’s not enough, you say? Okay, how about it’s enough that they briefly gave a home to one of the most famous names in cricket? Between 1979 and 1984, Ian Botham made 11 appearances in the first team of Fourth Division Scunthorpe as a non-contract player, and nobody seems to know why.

Well, the non-contract bit is easy. He had a day job being the best all-rounder cricket has ever seen, single-handedly winning the Ashes for England. It’s the ‘why’ he played for Scunthorpe that’s the mystery. He lived nearby, which helps, but despite being one of our most talked-about and written-about sporting stars, there is barely a mention of his football career anywhere, even though he is now president of the club.

It’s like turning up late for a game at Port Vale and seeing Freddie Flintoff up front. Although he could, of course, be invading the pitch.

Why You Shouldn’t Support Them

■ How on earth was copying Liverpool’s kit going to make you successful? Even if you were putting Ian Botham in it.

■ And much as I love Kevin Keegan, it’s still hard to forgive him for the hair and the singing.

■ ‘Scunthorpe’ or ‘Lindsey’? As the ancient knight at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade said, ‘he chose poorly’.