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PORTSMOUTH SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY  For 20 years, I played Sunday morning football for various teams on pitches all over North London. From the Scrubbs in Acton to Wanstead Flats in the east. From Eastcote in the north to Regents Park in the south…of North London – sorry - everyone has their favourite bad pitches. Mine’s the ‘fill that hole in with bricks and dust lightly with topsoil Hampton Supporters death trap in err Hampton. But for the pupeose of this rag, I want to record the big players. Those that we’ve all played, with no sense of what might’ve been and with even less sense of affection. Like the cow pasture cum pitches at Wanstead Flats, we were shit and we knew it. Wormwood Scrubs There was always a howling wind shrieking across the scrubs. More so than any other big space in London. Goal kicks would sometimes bounce once before disappearing over the opposition’s goal and far far away but change ends and you’d struggle to get the damned pill out of your own penalty area. Always made for a great game, that. And balls from neighbouring pitches i.e. one yard away would frequently fly into your game followed by the poor sod designated to retrieve. Both alien balls and alien players would often have a bit part to play in yours or an opposition’s goal. Surprisingly, they never got thanked. But what made the Scrubbs special was nothing. There was nothing special about the Scrubbs. From the oh-so-welcoming entrance track running alongside the Gulag that is Wormwood Scrubbs prison, to the freezing, stinking changing rooms; from the allocation of pitch number 57 a mile away to the state of the mudhole when you got there. It was horrible. Remember comical Ali, Iraq’s former Minister of Information. The Scrubbs also had a “Groundsman” although all I ever saw was a tractor pulling a noisy chain mesh across the ground. Presumably, this was to ‘scarify’ the lawn but what it actually did was to rip from its roots what little grass was left after just one week of football abuse. And leave tyre tracks. As for mowing; I once played in a game where you could beat the offside trap by hiding in the hay in the opposition half only to stand up and peg after the long ball over the top. That is true. As for the touchline, the referee just blew up arbitrarily; usually when players and ball started to disappear from view. And in one year towards the dog-end of the season, you could get your leg in a centre spot crack down to your knee. No, the Scrubbs was not good. Hackney Marshes These pitches covered a lot of ground. Not in themselves – the ones I played were tiny but the Marshes went on forever. It didn’t matter what your pitch number was either because that was taken by the hairy-arsed monsters from ‘The London Underground FC’ or worse still ‘The Dog and Duck’ (why do pub sides always have bad tempers on Sunday mornings) Besides, the rule was, if you got there first it was yours. So off we’d trudge, we gallant few, ordered to “put the nets up.” By the time you’d bagsied a pitch you were either knackered by the length of the hike or suffering from exposure. To add to the cold, it always took a good half an hour before everyone else had found you. When a fog descended as it often did, stragglers would often appear at around half time. They’d got to the ground on time. Just got lost in the long journey after that. What pitches I played on however were usually OK. They were flat, which made a change, and because the marshes lie in a…marsh they didn’t dry up in the summer like the Mohave desert of the Scrubbs and elsewhere. I quite liked the marshes although others may disagree. I’ve heard horror stories from people emerging from the mist looking like the Retreat-from-Kabul FC long after we’d all showered, dressed, hot dogged, and were ready for the Dog and Duck (unless we’d just played them). In the pitches of the far north they told strange tails of touchlines made of iron railings, dangerous swamp areas near rivulets directly behind goalposts and East End scag-kids thieving the hallowed ‘valuables sock’ in BMX hit n’run operations. But for me, as I said, they weren’t that bad. Three out of ten, I’d say. Wanstead Flats Shit. I’ve intimated, gentle reader, of the trouble with the Flats in my opening salvo. Let me elaborate, so your after dinner anecdote at the boss’s soiree is complete. You see, when I played 20 years ago, cows still grazed on the flats, farmers exercising their common land rights dating back 1000 years. Well fuck that because what it meant to the Sunday superstar was a ploughed up field, no more no less covered in cowpats in various stages of antiquity. Hoof prints everywhere, it stank to high heaven, as did we within 5 minutes of the kick-off. I played for a filthy side of Ilford yobbos I’d picked up having moved to East Ham. I’d regularly arrive at the ‘pitch’ to see some yokel herding his beauties off the field which, for 90 minutes miraculously became the football pitch. After hostilities were over, we’d shower, change, get out of the building before we collapsed from the stench of it all, only to see the cows chomping and shitting where we’d been ‘playing’ only moments before. A rose by any other name also applies to cowpats and so it is my abiding memory of the Flats. Not of the foul pitches, nor of the sulphurous changing rooms but moreover of the time when the showers broke down. And that bit, and the journey home by public transport, I’ll leave to your imagination. Gunnersbury Park Better than the Scrubbs, marginally less smelly than the Flats, and less of a hike than the Marshes what more could you ask for. Yes, Gunnersbury Park was the prince amongst the North London football pitches. Nice cold showers though, and even the Gunnersbury Park Tourist Board could only describe the pitches as “undulating”. But a topographically ‘interesting’ pitch worked in your favour for 45 minutes unless it sloped from side to side in which case no one won. Whatever the score. But I feel attached to Gunnersbury as it was there we won the Lenin Cup for Locomotiv Wandle against our arch foes Red Star Hackney. A pointless piece of tin, fought over by all North London teams with a vague connection by name only to the Iron Curtain. There were about six of us. Loco also went on to win some other cup during the season played out at the Hurlingam stadium – where Monty Python’s ‘Twit of the Year’ competition was filmed. Regents Park For those of you who only know Regents Park for it’s zoo there are many small and average football pitches surrounding the beasties. And the wolves have cages that back onto the park for all to see. That’s what I remember about these pitches. The strange howls and snarls from domestic dogs who are confronted with their distant past. The wolves were disinterested, as are you by now, but one more. Old Deer Park Home pitch of the Civil Service 6th eleven - what a side. But we did have the fattest goalie ever. The Flying Elephant was about 5’ foot 4” and weighed in around twenty stone. He wore half-length tracky-bottoms, assorted tops with writing on, a baseball cap, and ‘cool’ sunglasses. And to be fair to the lad, he wasn’t that bad. So as you stick close to the 40mph limit down the A316 between Richmond And Twickenham take a shuftie to your left or right depending which way you’re going. That’s what they’re all like. Just uniform bad pitches. Bumpy, sloping, muddy, odd shaped splats of land with off white irregular lines. They’re everywhere, these rubbish pitches. I’m old and knackered. I wish I could play on them now. |
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