At Edinburgh Airport three teenage boys discuss the periodic table. I feel like dashing into WHSmith and buying them a copy of 90 Minutes magazine, except it no longer exists and we are about to board an aeroplane.
We climb over the River Forth into a crisp September sky, the peaks and tenements of Scotland’s capital below us. I will feel sad if this country decides to elope from England. They say we will stay friends, but after a while the calls will dry up and only chance meetings will maintain our acquaintance. One effect of my English journey has been a change in my attitude to Scottish independence. Where before I felt ambivalent towards ‘the union’, its history too tied up with that of Empire, now I feel modern England is above all that and a place worth hanging on to. This, of course, is selfish and a matter for the electorate to decide, but I will find it hard to live in a country that chooses to split from my own. On the one hand I will be in an ever-opening world that may, eventually, broaden horizons enough to end segregation in Luton or Burnley, and on the other I will be in a country that has just re-built an ancient border with its neighbour. The people of Carlisle must be rolling their eyes and saying ‘oh not this again.’
Thankfully, there is no need for further, Orient-style destructive thought as the flight experience distracts me. First of all, a stewardess uses the word ‘de-door’. Then I pick up the in-flight magazine, suitably dog-eared as they always are, and flick through its pages ticking off tired modern language. Much is ‘iconic’, hotels are ‘boutique’ and many living people are ‘legends’. The catering trolley arrives and, as ever, has no change – it must refuse to carry coins just as a celebrity carries only Amex. It is followed by a trolley sporting watches and aftershave, among other things, and as usual no one makes a purchase. The half-page dedicated to my destination, Newquay, has been ripped from the magazine with precision, so I look out of the window.
I am travelling to the south-west because I have so far missed a hefty and splendid chunk of England. Liverpool are the twelfth team I should be visiting, but little fresh can be written about team and town. Besides, ending with a Premier League game would be like finishing a wholesome, happy marriage with a cocaine-fuelled orgy. The result is a visit to Cornwall and Newquay AFC, in 1981-82 South Western League champions. As much as anything else, the end of England feels like a perfect place to finish.
We surf the cotton wool-dab clouds over Carlisle and the Lake District. By now I should not be surprised at the greenness of England and its wonky fields panelled shapeless by ancient tithes, at its silver streams and snaking rivers. I should not be so naively enthralled at the way towns and cities suddenly appear and are then quickly lost to countryside. I am, though, and I feel glum that my travels will soon be over, all those places and lives and accents and teams below left behind. We trace the coast’s outline. The wheelie bin-green Irish Sea laps and pounces north of Blackpool and I catch sight of Bloomfield Road stadium, a stretched beige oval filled by a pitch waiting for people. To pass a town by train and spot floodlights thrills me, to fly over a stadium overheats me. As we approach Liverpool I fear for my health. The plane seems to turn off at the Mersey and scud along its centre. After thirty seconds or so, I spot them: Goodison, then Anfield, crowded in by terrace roofs and separated by Stanley Park. Only last night Blues showed their solidarity with Reds by wearing shirts and waving banners in honour of the Hillsborough dead. I awoke today feeling proud of football. Even at the top its soul occasionally peeps through. The final stadium I spy on this brief re-cap sweep over England is Chester’s. Oh to have enjoyed the gradual pitch invasion from up here.
The plane slides the length of Wales and falls gently towards Cornwall, verdant as everywhere else, but with sea poking out of it. We swoop over quarries with the concentric lines of Ordnance Survey maps and pools that seem to be filled with chocolate lime juice, ignored by snacking sheep. The wheels lower, bash the tarmac and make the plane shudder. I leave the terminal – more of a village hall that serves lattes – and am greeted by an advert for clotted cream, bucolic aromas and a field of cows. As the only passenger to board the number 556 Western Greyhound bus at the airport I feel the heat of nosy eyes when I take my upstairs seat. Perhaps my fellow travellers, none a day under sixty-five, think me exotic or impossibly young given rural Cornwall’s demographics. I decide against telling them how dope I am or treating them to some banging tunes and instead stare from the window. Hills sheep sea, hills sheep sea, hills sheep sea: the spluttering bus seems to repeat a mantra inspired by its surroundings. From all four sides the view resembles a dreamy idyll as depicted on a butter label. This beauty is so exquisite that it seems like a construct. Or, as I say to the old man across from me, ‘dis is sick, innit.’ We crawl through Watergate Bay where surfers and septuagenarians glide around behind studied suntans. It makes the pallor of Carlisle feel appropriately distant.
Most dwellings on the main road into Newquay are bed and breakfasts or hotels. Some look pleasant, most are tatty and one has two bay windows dedicated to a busy collection of porcelain dogs. From the bus’s right can be seen cliffs, beaches and the sea, from its left swathes of charmless and unkempt buildings and establishments. This part of Newquay is unarguably ragged. I think back to Brunton Park and Morrissey’s dishevelled Sunday resort town. Surf shops abound, bringing with them a dripping army of long-haired men with an aversion to shoes. By my early reckoning Newquay is the most alien place I have been to. I only vaguely recognise it because I have holidayed in Benidorm and used to watch Home and Away.
I buy a postcard and queue in the post office for a stamp. Ahead of me, a Cockney lady pays her electricity bill and behind me a Brummie yabs into his phone about Aston Villa. Back in the street I hear Yorkshire, Lancashire and East Midlands accents. Presumably most of these people are tourists, but many others have moved or retired here, fleeing for an olde England and turning their backs on the real, breathing one. The pavement is made mazy by the number of mobility scooters that clog it up. Some, like many of the buildings here, have black and white Cornish flags attached to them. These serve to remind me that Cornish people are often as stringent in their regional identities as Yorkshiremen, and even Scots, and that again I should not be looking for a part of England that necessarily connects with the rest. As I have seen, they rarely do. I manage to make it into a bakery and order a pasty. ‘You want a cake for dessert, my love?’ asks the gleaming old girl behind the counter. There’s nothing ‘in-comer’ about her.
I find a bench on which to eat my pasty next to a group of young Londoners who are all searching their iPhones for somewhere to eat. ‘There was a Pizza Express back there’, one says. The paper bag containing my lunch tells the story of how Cornish Pasties were invented by tin miners in the seventeenth century. When I bite into its contents they are so hot I suspect it has been cooking ever since. I look up and am sure I see one of the Lucky Buddhas in the furniture shop opposite me holding his nose to avoid the stench of fresh ‘Ocean Pinks’ from the fishmonger next door. I throw my historical packaging in a bin advertising the Coast of Dreams and move over the road to enjoy a newsagent advertisements board. ‘Exchange Wanted,’ reads one, ‘Our property is in Burnage in South Manchester ... We are desperate to move to Cornwall, coast preferred but will go anywhere in Cornwall really!!’ I happen to think Manchester one of the greatest cities on earth, but that does seem a tad ambitious.
Clouds surrender and the sun begins to beat down. At the same time I turn a corner and Newquay improves immeasurably. Away from the scruffy areas are kindly streets of tea-rooms and tiny shops. A sharp hill leads down to the harbour, but before descending it I nip for an outdoor pint, that cherished pastime. The pub’s patio garden sits high above the harbour and beach offering a view that makes my jar of Tribute Ale taste even better. The beach is no dainty sandpit, but an expanse that curves in a vast semi-circle. At a time four or five ripples of sea gang up and invade its face. Families brave its exposed situation to chase footballs in the wind, brush sand from their sandwiches and loiter in rock pools. Ahead of them, people in wetsuits do things with boards and sails I fail to comprehend. Noises come together and become pleasant background sound effects: the Welshman at the next picnic table talking about an over-priced sandwich; a surf teacher’s whistle; the life guard censuring with his megaphone; seagulls; the sea, a constant snare drum.
Newquay’s cliff-top streets exhibit buildings that planning regulation forgot. These are not the planned grotesqueness of Watford or Bradford, but the shabby spoils of quick-buck thinking. If it brings in a clammy pound or two, any development will do. It makes for a confusing place, in one direction tacky, in the other godly. Man has messed up where nature got it right in Newquay. My hotel for the night is in a less tarnished street of long Victorian villas. It sinks budget travel to a new level, with luxuries such as towels available only for a small hire fee. The room is clean and the clawing damp smell soon becomes like an invisible friend. My view offers both Newquays – the beach and Towan Island, a beach-bound hill of rock containing a dull house that could have been pulled from the suburbs of Reading and plonked there.
By posters for a foam party and an Australian theme bar, I walk down to the harbour. With the fall of evening it has filled up with turquoise water. Fishing boats bobble and the sun powers down. Perfection. ‘Is this where the seals wait for me?’ asks a slightly disturbing man. Why must they always pick their fellow loner? Soon I will burn these notebooks, bury my pen and melt back in with the rest of you. I try and re-engage with the serene perfection of everything but can only concentrate on a Scouse family’s yammering. ‘Mam, if we get fish and chips can I get sausages?’ ‘Oh no, not more water, I need a pee even more now.’
Down Fore Street I pass men in flip-flops, surf shops and cafes with ‘chill-out rooms’ emerging into blustery open space. I walk over grass and reach pebbles surrounding Newquay’s war memorial, a rock cross on a plinth of boulders. The memorial’s innate drama is heightened by the setting; its only background is miles of ocean. There are over 150 names chiselled into two plaques, one for each world war. Next to it a third plaque bears the solitary name of a local man killed in Afghanistan. That is wretched; the empty space beneath it is chilling.
The wind cajoles me onward, on to a rocky outcrop that stretches at the sea like a sleeping arm reaching for a pillow. I walk by signs advising me that ‘A person jumped from here and was seriously injured’ and around a corner into a flat area strangely buzzing with people. It is only when I say hello to a glamorous old lady and she ignores me that I realise I have walked on to a German film company’s set. A kindly runner ushers me on. Whatever they are filming, their location manager deserves a bonus. The sun is lowering on to a gluey sea that smashes the cliffs with the last of its daily life. Behind us Newquay, Cornwall and England. Ahead of us ... Canada? At the peak of the outcrop is a wooden pagoda with benches on its outside. I sit with my back to England and my eyes on a sun sneaking towards the sea. The clouds ghost towards the land, and the sea simmers ready to accept the sun. I have seen no more perfect sight in the best parts of a year. ‘You want a crisp, son?’ says a man with binoculars who appears from within the pagoda. I jolt and nearly fall off England then turn down his Quavers and head towards the football ground.
The walk to Mount Wise Stadium involves tackling an incline on to which clings another accommodation district. First there is Reef Surf Lodge, then The Escape, an ‘18-40s Surf Lodge’ and further up Mor surf-lodge-bar. Some venues did not adapt quickly enough to Newquay’s newfound Summer Bay leanings – the closed down Pendennis Hotel is the type of place Norman Bates would have run screaming from before repenting and becoming general manager of a Travelodge. Across the road, two men carry surfboards beneath their arms. This did not happen on the way to Portman Road.
Like most bars tonight, the Top of the Town Freehouse is about to show a Champions League fixture between Real Madrid and Manchester City. This will be viewed by far more people in the pubs of Newquay than will be at Mount Wise. If they love football enough to sit and stare at a screen as two nauseatingly wealthy teams they don’t care about play out a match that will be dead to them in a week, then surely they love it enough to walk up the road and pay £4 to be part of something. Despite the rising cold, they are the foolish ones.
On Playingfield Lane a proud red Newquay FC sign advertises tonight’s fixture with Ivybridge Town, as well as Thursday night bingo and Friday night karaoke in the bar. Between gaps in a closed turnstile gate and the fence I see players warming-up, flip-book imagery accompanied by the sound of walloped footballs and jeered wayward shots. I enter Peppermints Bar, the social club carrying the team’s nickname. Newquay earned their moniker in the early 1900s when it was pointed out that their red and white striped shirts resembled the wrappers of boiled sweets. In the entranceway on the left are varnished teak honours boards, first for the men’s team, then the women’s. A noticeboard advertises fixtures and points out that pin badges are available at the bar. Through double doors I step into a 1970s world of maroon suites, red carpets and orange curtains. The bar is draped in other clubs’ pennants, the walls filled with pictures of Newquay teams gone by and a long display cabinet hangs in the air proffering medals, shields, an international cap, handbooks, letters and shirts.
Peppermints Bar is a social club and a social history museum. Half a dozen regulars lean against the bar, burring in deep Cornish accents. All are engaged in a long debate about industrial weedkiller. A sprightly older gent with wellies over smart trousers and a flowery sunhat above his suit jacket walks in purposefully. He reads the team line-ups to the drinkers who groan at a couple of selections and walks out again. A few minutes later he returns and asks whether anyone has a spare light bulb for the referee’s room. The barman looks in the back but finds none and returns scratching his head. ‘We bought a ten pack last week as well,’ he says. Picking up a universal theme there are nods when the only woman present moans about the fixture list. ‘Poor Ivybridge, all this way on a Tuesday. I don’t know who dreams them up.’ The lights go out and the barman ushers his customers towards the match. I have half a pint left but hand it in for collection. ‘Oh don’t leave all that, sir,’ says the barman. ‘Here, I’ll stick it in the fridge and you can have it at ’alf-time, how’s that?’ He shoves aside a bottle of WKD and carefully stores my drink. At Middlesbrough, they take the tops from bottles of Coke.
The red gates are now open so I pay my £4 and shove a turnstile for the final time. Four quid. My first ever paid ticket at Ayresome cost that. A white iron bar runs around the perimeter of the pitch and behind it on the opposite side is a roofed stand the length of the centre circle at its longest. There on backless benches sit a dozen away supporters. If they crane their necks they can see miles of Cornish countryside and the waving arms of a wind farm. Behind me is a stand that runs from the halfway line to the corner flag, at which point it adjoins the tea bar and the buildings containing Peppermints and the changing rooms behind the goal. Assertive mural lettering on their outside wall denotes that this is Newquay FC, though to me it is more like heaven. I am besotted.
As they await the arrival of their teams, most of Newquay’s seventy fans chat on the three steps of terrace beneath the stand, the garden benches with plaques to fondly missed supporters at its rear or outside the tea bar, cradling a hotchpotch of homely mugs. The referee emerges with the two teams behind him. He makes them gather before reaching the pitch in full sight of all. It reminds me of a cruise ship cabaret singer introducing himself in the first person from the side of the stage. At the same time, on a long-cabled microphone Sunhat Man reads the team line-ups from a clipboard and updates us on this Saturday’s cup fixture with Sticker FC: ‘It’ll be an earlier kick-off. I can’t remember what time, off the top of my head.’ Floodlights stir, the three officials then make a signal to the captains and our twenty-five entertainers for the night walk on. At the toss-up Ivybridge elect to swap halves despite there being no hill or wind and no one at either end, though the sky is prettier above their chosen half to the one Newquay are left with, pink to its blue. When irritated Newquay heads have been shook and every man is in his place, there is just time for motivational speak from the home keeper. ‘Do the right thing or don’t do anything,’ he barks. At 7.30 p.m. the referee wishes everybody ‘an enjoyable evening’ and starts the game.
The pace is frenetic meaning much wheezing during the relief of set-piece breaks. The football on offer is the very definition of ‘honest endeavour’; mistakes are plentiful but only made with good intention and never due to effort dropping. These are the kind of players who concentrate so hard their tongues stick out. Although I have the advantage of actually being able to hear them, I’m sure they shout more than their colleagues further up the pyramid, a symptom of increased passion and ideas outweighing ability. ‘Gamble! Somebody bloody gamble,’ the away keeper repeatedly hollers. There are shouted exchanges between players, too. ‘High fucking foot!’ shouts a centre-back; ‘low fucking head’ replies his fellow No. 5 up the pitch. Ivybridge’s version is a tall bald man whose forehead gives the ball a happy slap whenever the two collide. His side are much the better in the first-half. They use the springy turf to their advantage, passing crisply to feet and thus avoiding too much wading through its weight. It is so peaty that a group of two players chasing an errant pass sound like a heard of trampling wildebeests. Two blokes walk around from the away end and stand on the highest terrace step behind me. One is telling the other about his new medication. ‘Oh they’re great them, Mick. Just don’t have one with a whisky,’ his mate replies.
Newquay drag themselves up the pitch and hit a post. ‘Stop fucking panicking!’ bawls an Ivybridge centre-half. Inspired, his team pass their way up the pitch. Their No. 9, a wiry skinhead with low socks and the paciest player on the park, finds himself one-on-one with the goalkeeper and cracks in a shot. It passes underneath the keeper, but he reaches backwards beneath himself in a move I last saw performed by Dick van Dyke during the ‘Me Old Bamboo’ dance on Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and captures the ball. ‘Unlucky, Mikey son,’ shouts the Ivybridge manager, a sonorous north-easterner. His team continues to pressurise. They win and waste a free-kick on the edge of the area when Mikey is fouled and does his very best to stay upright like a drunk, an anti-dive. The only Newquay man who can match Ivybridge is No. 4, another baldy and a crafty centre-midfielder. Though his legs seem aged, it suits his languid, tired but wily, style. He is also enjoying himself. It is there when he commits an obvious foul, sarcastically questions his booking and reacts to being told to ‘shut up’ by laughing, and there when he wins the ball, drops a shoulder, finds a yard and spins a pass out wide. There is similar glee in the eyes of the Ivybridge baldy when he remembers how good he was at school and dribbles by three flailing challenges before passing the ball out of play. The game is theirs to love and they make a grand job of it. ‘They’re a smashing team, Ivybridge’, says the linesman to the three of us behind him, ‘I can’t believe they’re second bottom.’
‘Here ’e is!’ The barman welcomes me at half-time, my half in his hand. ‘We’ve only had a little sip each!’ The other drinkers settle to their pints while I allow the walls to teach me about a club once known as Newquay One and All. The black and white pictures are rich and plentiful, here a bustling crowd falling on to the pitch in the 1950s, there a dozen players riding a Hinckley-invented Hansom Cab to the 1907 Easter Monday final with Wadebridge. A large golden frame is reserved for the champions of 1981-82, a skinny crew grinning behind much facial hair. Only a couple of their faces look serious, one of whom is Chris Morris. Morris is Newquay FC’s most famous son; he has an entire cabinet to himself on the far wall to prove it. He went from here to play for Sheffield Wednesday, Celtic and Middlesbrough. I remember him for two things: hearing the Ayresome cheers from outside when he scored a rare Boro goal while my dad and I ran back to the car because he’d left his wallet on the dashboard, and taking out Newcastle’s Keith Gillespie with a judo kick to the groin.
A country black sky has set when the teams re-emerge for the second-half. I move to the away side, on my way enjoying an amusing dispute between the home manager and referee. When the latter marches over to warn the former, something falls from his mouth. ‘I’ve lost a bit of bloody gum for you,’ blasts the referee while gesturing at Newquay’s boss. It is behind the other dugout that I settle, however. I am intrigued by Ivybridge’s booming boss, whose volume is rendered homely by a soft Northumbrian accent and the manner in which he encourages his players, whom he collectively calls ‘sons’. ‘Oh that’s tremendous, sons,’ he excitedly shouts as Mikey breaks clear, ‘go on, Mikey son ... Yessssssss!’ One-nil to Ivybridge; as deserved in this young half as in the first one. The manager balances his words by being critical in the mode of a disappointed father to the officials, ‘Oh liner, man, you’re not even looking!’ and ‘dee-aaah meee’, each vowel stretched like pizza dough. He wears shiny shoes, smart dark trousers and a winter sports jacket, suggesting a manager who has come straight from work. He totters around his tiny technical area gesticulating, somehow made more charismatic by the confined space, and coaxes his sons’ every move. Most general things are repeated two or three times in a row. ‘Stay on yer feet, stay on yer feet.’ ‘Close him, close him, close him.’ When players are singled out they do not look over, but you know it must be satisfying. ‘Great cross, Westy.’ ‘Well done, Ben.’ ‘Brilliant, Mikey son.’ I become hypnotised and can hear no one else. ‘Get up. And again, Westy. Man coming, man coming. Great ball. Well done, Westy. That’s the way. Have a look. Shape shape. To a man, to a man. Always be aware of this man here.’ When later my head hits the pillow and I close my eyes, he is there – ‘go on, son. Off to sleep, off to sleep. Sweet dreams. STAY ON YER FEET.’
With twenty minutes to go, a thumping diving header signals 2-0, then Mikey saunters free and bags another. In front of me the manager calmly strolls on to the pitch and yowls uproariously. He talks his sons through the cold dark night, stopping only to occasionally chide the linesman. ‘Where’s the advantage? WHERE’S THE ADVANTAGE?’ The Ivybridge coach implores the referee to end the match: ‘How long to go, Ref? I’m up for work at five.’ The man in black comes back with: ‘Well, I’m enjoying myself listening to you so much, I could go on all night.’ After four minutes of injury time he ends the joke. The Ivybridge manager looks to the stars in joy. The whistle has blown on my year.
The next morning at the end of England I catch a bus to Padstow. A lady on the seat behind me commentates on the entire route, her husband offering expert analysis in the form of ‘Yep. Yep. Yep.’ ‘Oh, a Wendy house there. Has seen better days. Pub there, meals 12 till 2 and 5 till 9, all day Sundays. And a dog, male by the look of things.’ I tune out but only along the dial to an elderly lady from Leeds who informs us, ‘When I get up for a wee in the middle of the night, I can go straight back to the same dream afterwards.’ We arrive at the harbour and I walk through town and sit on a bench at the top of a hill. Beneath me is elegant Padstow and the ocean sparkling in the sun. It isn’t a bad place, this country of mine.
The dozen or so places I have visited do not matter to many people from elsewhere. As a miscellaneous whole, though, they tell the story of where England came from, who she is today and which direction she is heading in. These provinces were the Industrial Revolution, are now charmingly flawed mini-Englands and will develop into world places with layers of identity. The process has already begun. Where I expected to see a society still hung up on its role as a world leader, I saw Little England, a place increasingly comfortable in its own skin and not hankering to police anywhere else. Our problems are many, but in their typical wit and resolve the people of these small towns will show England the qualities needed to overcome them. The post-industrial towns in particular brim with pluck and resolve. Middlesbrough and Burnley are, in parts, dirt poor but still they are there, still their people gather and laugh. In the USA they would be gold rush ghost towns, but something here makes people want to remain, bound to the soil, tied to history and often their football club. Their towns are each unique – do not listen when you are told that everywhere now is the same. Blinded by consumerism, those who make that judgement are talking only of high street chains. They do not account for the individual histories, accents, smells, colours, senses of humour that make these places and, in turn, England. Their diversity contrives not to make one England, but contributes to the glorious and messy, multiple state it is in. I started out wishing for England a uniform identity like Scotland’s and thinking our uncertainty a bad thing. That is not so: it is our greatest attribute.
I was sad to see how racially segregated Luton, Burnley and Bradford were, yet in each there was a binding unspoken tolerance and evidence of change. When the current young are adults, they will not see colour. Football can take the lead, it is at its best when it does; let us see all kinds of faces in the stands and on our pitches. In Bradford I saw youthful mixed-race couples and rejoiced to hear how locals of every creed united to overwhelm an English Defence League demonstration. It should not be left to the EDL to define England. It is what we, the majority, make of it and how we see it in a thousand different ways. We should not be afraid of finding pride in our Englands. I am a reluctant patriot, surprised to find myself so content with my country. Perhaps it is because I don’t live there. I do not think it a better country than any other and can think of few sentiments dafter than ‘my country, right or wrong.’ It is just an idiosyncratic place in which I can’t go longer than fifteen minutes without smiling. That must mean something.
What of football? At the top, it is clear player wages will not fall, television will not go away and ticket prices will remain extortionate (plus booking fee). While capitalism has had nigh on a decade of crisis in the wider economy, the Premier League has become even more profoundly free market. It won’t change. There are two things we can do. One, we can chip away at it where possible. We can protest until supporter places in boardrooms are the norm, or demand small things that make a difference and give us back the game we knew, like a return to home-away-home-away fixture orders or safe standing areas. Secondly, we as supporters can abandon the highest level, and leave it to become the closed shop, perhaps pan-European, league desired by chequebook men and watched by wealthy tourists. This will not be for everyone, and tribalism is hard to shake off and harder still to accrue. But if we two-time we can start anew, become involved in our smaller provincial clubs, embrace football at its most flawed and loveable, rawest and rewarding. More of us should get out there; team adultery is not a sin. The jaded modern fan can feel what he or she first felt about football, and fall in love again. A whole new sense of belonging is possible. ‘Originality is returning to the origin,’ as Gaudi put it.
Overall, the game I saw – my football – was in rude health. Away from the jaded cynicism of its highest reaches it remains a social movement I am honoured to be part of. Down in the provinces, it is affordable and accessible. Contrary to my fears, young people are still catching the bug. No computer game can beat the thrill of getting your favourite player’s autograph or being an active part in a bustling community of interest. The experience of going to the match remains vivid and life affirming, the action itself an eccentric art form. In an England of flux, where no job is certain, families break up or live far apart, community or church is loose or weak, football is more important than ever. It breeds belonging in an uncertain world. For ninety minutes no one is alone, everyone is united by a shared purpose and sense of identity – brothers and sisters of the terrace lost in the match. In my thirty years England and the game have changed cosmetically. Their underlying genius has not. At 3 o’clock on a Saturday, I know where I belong.