Plymouth play host to MK Dons in a final-day fixture with many issues left to be settled and multiple potential outcomes.
As League One enters its final week, it is not exaggerative to say that this season has been like no other. While it looks as though Wigan Athletic should secure the title and climb to the Championship, a host of permutations, some more likely than others, mean they could still finish outside the top two and miss automatic promotion all together, while four sides competing for three play-off berths are separated by just one point point and only two goal difference.
Normally it would seem hyperbolic to suggest, but it is practically impossible to predict what might happen.
The Latics could have secured promotion at home to Plymouth Argyle on Saturday, but were held to a draw that saw the visitors reach 80 points, a figure they share with Sunderland and Wycombe Wanderers, which would normally be comfortably enough to secure a top-six finish and a place in the play-offs.
However, with Sheffield Wednesday currently seventh on 79 points – and with two games remaining – it is not inconceivable that a side could muster 83 points this campaign and not make the play-offs, something which has never been seen before at this level.
In fact, the last time a team secured 80 points and missed the end-of-season promotion fixtures was 2002/3, when Tranmere Rovers were the unlucky outfit. That season was dominated by Wigan, who amassed 100 points to top the division – this time around, they could reach 95 if they win their final two fixtures. That said, in 2009/10 Southampton were docked 10 points for financial irregularities; had that deduction not happened, Huddersfield Town would have finished seventh despite having 80 points.
While Wigan look certain to secure their place in the Championship next season, the second automatic spot remains up for grabs. Rotherham, who have been there or thereabouts all season, currently occupy second place but are level on points with MK Dons. Both teams have stumbled in recent weeks, but while Rotherham overcame Oxford this Saturday, the Dons claimed a vital win at home to Morecambe. The Millers travel to Sunderland on Tuesday evening in a huge game that could have significant impact on all the clubs involved in the run-in.
A win for Rotherham at the Stadium of Light would see them as-good-as promoted going into their final day fixture at Gillingham with a three point lead over the Dons and a goal difference advantage worth a point, especially with the MK side travelling to Plymouth, where their hosts have enjoyed excellent home form this season.
One potential reason for the near-unprecedented high points tallies at the top of the table could be the low accumulations at the bottom; going into the final week, Gillingham have 40 points from 45 games while Fleetwood – currently one position outside the drop zone – have 40 from 44.
With tough fixtures remaining – the aforementioned Rotherham for the Gills, Wednesday and Bolton for Fleetwood – it remains possible that 40 points could be enough to beat the drop, which would be a first for the third tier (the lowest previously recorded as Oxford United’s 45 in 1999/2000).
Even though this has been a wildly unpredictable division, it’s possible to identify a big and possibly growing gap between the teams at the top and those at the bottom. It’s long been thought that the gulf between Premier League and Championship is creating yo-yo teams like Fulham and Norwich, but something similar is developing between tiers two and three – should Rotherham secure promotion, it would be their third in five seasons, while Peterborough, Barnsley and Charlton Athletic, to name just a few, have all suffered relegations from the Championship in recent seasons within a year or two of winning promotion.
Before the start of this season, there were eleven or possibly twelve sides with legitimate ambitions for promotion from League One and maybe a couple more with hopes of making the play-offs. While some of those pre-season contenders have struggled – namely Ipswich Town and Charlton, who go into the final game of the campaign 11th and 12th respectively. Whoever misses out on promotion this year can bank on those two clubs, plus a number of others, regrouping and challenging next time around.
That Plymouth Argyle go into the final game with their play-off destiny in their own hands shouldn’t be overlooked as an outstanding achievement. 2020/21 saw the Pilgrims finish 18th after a terrible second half of the season, which led some pundits to predict a potential relegation battle.
After some smart recruitment in the summer, particularly bring in a completely new three-man defence in Dan Scarr, Macauley Gillesphey and James Wilson, Argyle went on an incredible run at the start of the campaign, losing just one of their first seventeen games. That sequence saw Ryan Lowe’s team hold on to first place in the table all the way up to Christmas, an achievement that saw the manager eventually catch the attention of Championship club Preston North End.
Following Lowe’s departure to Deepdale in December, Argyle moved quickly to appoint his assistant – Steven Schumacher – as his replacement, a smart move which has seen the Greens remain stable and adapt quickly, playing attractive football and ultimately earning the new boss the League One Manager of the Month award for March.
Waiting for the teams to arrive before kick off between Wycombe Wanderers and Plymouth Argyle on Good Friday, 15th April
A tough string of fixtures towards the end of the season has seen Argyle struggle in recent weeks, particularly a demoralising 2-0 defeat at fellow play-off contenders Wycombe Wanderers, but they will know that a positive result on the final day will give them a great chance of securing an unexpected top-six spot.
Saturday’s visitors to Devon, MK Dons, would have been among most people’s expected candidates for promotion before a ball was kicked this season. A mid-table finish in 2020/21 came after an excellent finish to the campaign under hot managerial prospect Russell Martin, who joined the Dons in 2019 and established a successful, possession-heavy approach.
After a big-spending summer, Martin walked out on the Dons on the eve of the new season, leaving the club in the lurch to join Championship outfit Swansea City. Despite being rocked by Martin’s departure, the Dons made a smart managerial appointment, hiring the previously unknown Liam Manning. Since his arrival, the Dons have steadily grown into promotion contenders despite needing to replace a number of important loan players and midfield star Matt O’Riley in the January window, something which could easily have de-stabilised the squad and undermined their campaign.
Although they too have stuttered in recent weeks, losing back-to-back games against Sheffield Wednesday and Oxford United, Manning’s Dons have really found their groove since Christmas, with the defeat against the Owls ending a run of 15 games unbeaten and being only their second loss since 11th December.
By the time these two sides meet next Saturday, some of the remaining issues could be all but settled, which could totally change the complexion of this fixture.
Whatever happens between now and then, both clubs have overcome adversity and unexpected challenges throughout the campaign and although their end-of-season emotions could swing wildly from delight to despair, they should both be extremely proud.
Argyle’s full-circle journey that sees a winning run ended by Charlton before returning the favour at Home Park
The real beauty of following a football team outside the Premier League is the sheer unpredictability of the story that makes up the season. More generally, it’s the possibility of a wide range of outcomes that makes pretty much all sports so engaging and enthralling. This League One campaign for my team, Plymouth Argyle, has so far been much better than almost anyone would have predicted, with the team recovering from defeat on the first day of the season to embark on a 16-match unbeaten run.
That streak of results came to a shuddering halt on Saturday 20th November away to Charlton Athletic, which just happened to be my second Argyle match of the season, with my attendance seemingly predicating an outcome that was completely foreseeable.
That’s always the issue with any sequence of results, especially one so positive and so long – eventually it has to come to an end. Argyle defied all the odds to be in the position they were going into this game, while the hosts themselves were recovering from a shocking start that cost manager Nigel Adkins his job, meaning the Addicks were being marshalled on a temporary basis by former player Johnnie Jackson. Under his stewardship, Charlton have improved hugely – they were terrible when I saw them lose 2-1 at MK Dons in August – and they undoubtedly deserved this 2-0 win at the Valley.
Moments before kick off at the Valley; 26,000 fans in attendance, including 3,000 visitors
Being a supporter in exile – or ‘up the line’ as it was always known in he Westcountry – adds a layer of detachment from the team that can make it hard to keep up. One of the really great things about supporting a team is the immersion it brings, especially in a one-club community where there are no local rivalries to contend with. When I was young, I remember my parents receiving local newspapers – Western Morning News and Evening Herald – where Argyle were the entire focus of local sports coverage, with match reviews, previews, transfer rumours and conjecture around matches meaning it was easy to keep up to date and feel part of the journey.
Being 250 miles away makes that more tricky, although the wealth of online media makes that easier, even if club-controlled content is, at the very least, polished.
After that phenomenal string of results came to an end in South London, there was an instant demonstration of the importance of momentum in sport with Argyle losing their following two league games against sides chasing promotion as both Wycombe and Wigan came away from Home Park with all three points.
Form and momentum in sport can be so important, but also so fragile. One minute you can be flying and everything feels easy, happening almost naturally with the minimum of effort. That positive sensation can be incredibly difficult to maintain and often there can be little or no way to identify what makes everything click for so long.
On the flip side, that momentum can switch almost instantly and those games where a win was snatched or a draw somehow claimed against the odds become so much harder to find and all of a sudden, it can feel like trying to turn the tide of defeats. It must be incredibly difficult for people in sport to handle momentum in this way – how do you maintain the positive outcomes when you know they can’t last forever and how do you arrest the slide before it becomes insurmountable?
After a brief break to win at Rochdale in the FA Cup, Argyle’s next league game was a trip to somewhere far more familiar to me, MK Dons at stadiumMK.
The day before the trip to Milton Keynes, Argyle took perhaps a more significant blow to their ambitions than a couple of disappointing recent results with news emerging that manager Ryan Lowe would be leaving to join Preston North End. Ryan is a Liverpudlian through-and-through and the vast majority of his career prior to taking the Argyle hotseat has been in and around the north west of England. His previous job saw him take Bury to promotion from League Two with a side playing expansive, attacking football, something he has successfully transplanted to Plymouth, only for the club to succumb to years of appalling mismanagement and ultimately going out of business.
Argyle Twitter went into something approaching meltdown on the day the rumours of Lowe’s departure began to surface, with fans showing their displeasure by giving oxygen to all manner of salacious rumours. Fans are always very quick to turn on players and managers who they feel have wronged their club and this was the case, with many appearing to cite Lowe’s reluctance to relocate to Devon as a sign of him never really committing to the role.
I think it’s important at this point to remember that football people are people too – when Lowe and his managerial team lost their jobs as a result of Bury’s collapse, they would have been in a position of needing to take up a new gig to protect their careers, reputations and to keep a roof over their families’ heads. As a man in his early 40s, Lowe has a settled family in the north west and moving them to a new city, hundreds of miles from home, potentially taking children out of schools and expecting them to settle instantly is, at best, unlikely.
Instead, and as is common in football, he would have taken temporary accommodation in Plymouth, either a long-term stay in a hotel or by renting an apartment, working at training during the week, leading the team into matches and maybe getting home to see his family when the schedule allows.
Add to that the additional restrictions created by the last 18 months in a global pandemic and trying to maintain a connection to his family would have been more difficult than ever.
With this in mind, when he was presented with the chance to return home with a club a division higher (at the moment), it’s hardly a surprise that Lowe took the chance to move to Preston. Even if Argyle are capable of winning promotion to the Championship, Devon will always be a long way from home and that separation will continue to put strain on a man, his family and their happiness.
I don’t blame him at all for making the switch, even with Argyle enjoying a fantastic first half of the season, as it’s impossible to know when the next chance might be. In addition, the ‘life expectancy’ of a manager in the Football League is incredibly short – what would have happened to Lowe if the team’s form had taken a dip, as it did last season, and all of a sudden his job is at risk?
Stepping into the manager’s shoes for the team’s trip to Milton Keynes was his own assistant, Steven Schumacher, making for a sensible appointment that guarantees stability while also providing him with an opportunity to step up and take charge of a team for the first time. Schumacher has been instrumental in establishing the team’s style of play and he will know the characters that make up the dressing room, having worked with them since the start – it strikes me as a situation that works for everyone, especially with Argyle pocketing compensation for Lowe’s departure.
I was able to switch my season ticket seat at stadiumMK for a spot in the away end, creating an unfamiliar feeling to somewhere I know so well – I was there when it was a big concrete whole in the ground and again when it first welcomed football as well as attending some great moments in my time working for the Dons. Taking a seat in the away section for this game was a first for me and it was an interesting change of perspective.
The game itself, which was live on Sky on a Wednesday evening, was actually pretty terrible. The hosts capitalised on a couple of mistakes in Argyle’s defence to take the lead after 20 minutes and then seemingly tried to remove any life from the encounter by reducing the match’s tempo to practically zero.
Argyle made changes after the break and took the game by the scruff of the neck – in particular, the introduction of midfield playmaker Danny Mayor changed the game, and it was no surprise when he was involved in the equaliser, scored by Conor Grant, with about 25 minutes to go. Both sides went on to strike the woodwork before the end, but with 45 minutes of dominance each, a draw was probably the fair result.
The equaliser gave rise to Argyle’s fans celebrating their new manager’s reign with chants of ‘Schuey’s at the wheel’ and ‘Shoes off if you love Schuey’. I was far too cold to be exposing my feet to the concrete steps, but it was a bizarre sight to see so many young lads waving their footwear behind the goal.
Shoes off if you love Schuey: Argyle fans celebrate their new gaffer by raising their footwear
Seeing stadiumMK as a visitor was an eye-opening experience; it is a fantastic stadium, no doubt, and while it is easy to criticise the club for lacking the support to generate the atmosphere it deserves, games there do lack the intensity of a large crowd, with such a huge percentage of the ground sitting empty and large gaps between fans as a result. It’s great for social distancing, but it does nothing for bringing supporters together and creating the sense of community and togetherness that fosters support and emotion.
Whether or not MK will ever truly have a team befitting of this wonderful stadium remains to be seen. I hope it does, but my personal experiences from this season have left me feeling indifferent towards the team, primarily because the matchday experience lacks much of the edge and energy that makes going to football such a great event.
Argyle’s next away day probably provided the exact opposite atmosphere with the prospect of English football’s longest trip by way of a trek to Sunderland. I had considered making this journey myself as the Black Cats’ Stadium of Light home is a ground I’ve yet to visit – however, I was left feeling inadequate after deciding it was a trip too far for me after learning that over 1,000 away fans did make the trip. Perhaps next season, depending on the two clubs’ respective outcomes this campaign, when I’ll have the majority of my Saturdays back after not renewing my season ticket at stadiumMK.
It’s incredible to think that so many fans made that trip and it must have been heartbreaking to see Argyle go two down in the first 13 minutes, but these things can happen and they so often do. In the end, Argyle claimed a goal in the second half to lose 2-1, meaning that their 16-game unbeaten run was instantly followed by four defeats in five in the league, including a draw and a defeat for the new manager.
But football has a strange habit of weird sequences and symmetries; almost exactly a month after seeing their bubble burst on a Saturday afternoon in South London, Argyle would welcome Charlton to Plymouth for the return fixture and the first for Jackson since being confirmed as the Addicks’ full-time manager.
After a start which saw the visitors come close to scoring twice in the first 20 minutes, Argyle took the lead in first half stoppage time through Kieran Agard and after the interval they created the better chances, deservedly claiming the win despite being unable to double their lead. I would’ve loved to have been there for this clash – Schumacher’s first home game in charge and a worrying dip in form turned around just in time for the busy festive period (Covid cancellations allowing), but unfortunately that’s the nature of being an up-the-line fan.
Even though I’ve only seen Argyle in action three times so far this season and I was really apprehensive about how I’d take to following them again after so long, I’ve absolutely loved the experience so far. While Premier League clubs seem to be more detached from their fanbases and communities than ever, becoming essentially the content generation departments of corporate investment growth conglomerates, it’s been fantastic to re-connect with the club that fostered my original love for going to matches and actually watching football.
And while it’s obviously easier to become attached to a winning team, it’s not as straightforward as that – seeing the team encounter and overcome the challenges that are inevitable in the course of a season are what makes football – and, more broadly, sport – so enduringly engaging. You hope it will go well, you expect that it won’t and whichever way it goes, you just have to roll with it.
When things are going well, you have to make sure you ride the wave and remember the good times, because when the coin is flipped and you’re on the end of a sticky patch, the memories of the good times can keep you going.
After such a long time away from being a match-going supporter, was it slightly ambitious to think it would all just be like it was?
Twelve years is a surprisingly long time. That’s how long it had been since I last saw the team I watched most growing up, Plymouth Argyle, in actual live action. There’s numerous reasons for that, central to which was geography but equally important was an overall waning of interest in football and, therefore, a reduced willingness to part with cash for the experience.
The last Argyle game I saw was a Championship fixture in September 2009 at Peterborough, with Plymouth manager Paul Sturrock in his second spell at the club leading the Greens to a 2-1 win thanks to goals from Jamie Mackie and Rory Fallon. It was Argyle’s first win of the 2009/10 season and ultimately both sides would be relegated to League 1.
Fast forward to October 2021 and so much has changed for me – house purchases, changes of career, weight loss, marathons and loads of other memories wiped out by late nights and their supporting substances. In that time, I’d almost totally lost interest and energy for football – no longer a game or the never-ending soap opera it once was, now more of a corporate content factory where victory in the transfer window and social media bear pit trumps actual form on the pitch. Announce Icardi! Take the ratio, admin.
At the height of the pandemic-enforced global lockdown, many of us fell back on nostalgia to replace the hope vacuum created by an uncertain future. I spent a lot of time thinking about my favourite football memories and why they particularly stuck in my mind. Almost exclusively, my personal highlights revolved around watching matches in the flesh and sharing that experience, with friends, family and total strangers. Having televised games on wall-to-wall during lockdown was fine, but watching a series of ghost games played out in front of empty stadiums with canned audio only underscored what was missing, both from matchdays but also my own existence.
An Argyle fan places a flag in position before kick off at the Kassam Stadium
So far this season, I’ve enjoyed going to watch matches again, taking in games at stadiumMK as a season ticket holder at MK Dons. However, the ambition this year was always to re-connect with Argyle and try to see them in action whenever their away fixtures brought them close to my Buckinghamshire home. The first such match, after having failed to get a ticket within the sold-out allocation at Wimbledon, was a trip to Oxford United’s Kassam Stadium.
It was hard to know how the game would go as a lapsed, exiled fan – I don’t have a Westcountry accent so I would probably stand out a mile. I also don’t have the knowledge of the team that more committed supporters build up over years of comings and goings, so what if I seem like some kind of bandwagon jumper, especially seeing as the team are, at time of writing, top of League 1, having enjoyed a fantastic start. What might happen if I was seen as some kind of imposter, taking up the place of a proper fan among the 1,800 away fans?
I was apprehensive, nervous really, about trying to be a fan again, which is crazy really – I’m a middle-aged man who has been to hundreds of games in my time at all kinds of levels. But wanting to be a part of something, a community, and to share that experience creates a huge fear of rejection and humiliation.
Very soon it became clear that those fears were irrational and unnecessary. The game itself was a rollercoaster and was perfect for this return to being a fan – Argyle were behind early, then equalised quickly and went in at half time 2-1 up. Oxford then wasted a series of chances after the interval, but Plymouth weathered the storm and eventually doubled the lead in the closing stages.
Argyle fans and players celebrate the 3-1 win at Oxford
All the emotions of supporting a team came flooding back – the disappointment of conceding early, the relief of an unexpected equaliser and the joy of seeing a game turned on its head. Then the nerves of seeing your team pushed back, waiting for the inevitable levelling of the scores and ultimately the surreal sealing of the win with the third goal. The pantomime jeering of an opposition player with the temerity to celebrate his goal and the hero-worshipping of a midfielder from Guinea-Bissau who was born the year I took my GCSEs (Panutche Camara, scorer of two goals against Oxford, in case you were wondering).
I’d expected to be something of a detached observer, quietly taking in the game and making astute observations (not that I normally do this anyway, but still). Instead, I found myself completely unbridled, on my feet from the early exchanges and joining in all the songs as best I can – it always did feel odd to me to proclaim Plymuff Argo as the greatest team the world has ever seen, not because they’re not excellent, but because my Home Counties diction struggles with the colloquialism.
Argyle’s fans are terrific. I was sat in the quieter of the three blocks, but the noisy and boisterous support on either side was infectious and it felt totally normal to be sharing the game with the elderly couple on my left and the guy on the right who was enjoying a day out with his boy seeing as his under 11s game had been played the night before.
I’d worried before the game that I wasn’t a fan any more, that I was too aloof and too distant from actual supporters to be able to enjoy the experience, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. My whole desire to get back in touch with football fandom was fuelled by nostalgia – powerful memories from my youth, shared with friends, strangers and, particularly, my parents. Football may have totally changed in those times, but it’s also exactly the same, depending where you look.
Above all else, it was a sense of normality and regularity that I took from the game – no questions about the bigger picture, the future of the sport or the potential damage being done by financial disparity and European Super Leagues. No concerns over foreign ownership, petrostate transfer budgets or games being moved to fit TV schedules – just a football match, three points and then onto the next one.
It was simple, uncomplicated and energising. I’d expected to feel like a fish out of water and for the game itself to be relatively low standard – that couldn’t have been further from the truth. Because I felt invested in the outcome, it was exciting, enjoyable and it felt like it mattered, which is something I’d really missed from my match going hiatus.
Prior to the start of the season, Argyle were expected by many to struggle, maybe even candidates for relegation after a terrible finish to the last campaign. The fact that they are currently top of the table, admittedly having played more games than those around them, just shows the unpredictable nature of football outside the ‘big six’ Premier League bubble.
Whether or not Plymouth stay in the race for promotion is unlikely but also irrelevant – just that there is the opportunity to do so is what makes the sport exciting.
Standing in a queue and waiting in a car park to finally return to a stadium and catch a game. In a strange way, it felt kind of apt – I don’t know exactly how long it’s been since I last went to the match, least of all as a punter, but it’s definitely in the realm of years rather than months. In itself, that seems extremely sad; the boy from the middle of nowhere with the insatiable appetite for football, a passion so great that he studied the sport at university and toured the south of the country in search of a career, bouncing from club to club like an unsure golfer.
So why now after so long away? If the truth be told, I totally lost my love and interest in football. One of the dangers of turning your passion into your paycheque is that you close off what you do to escape from the real world. Working in football became a real grind; watching matches lost its sparkle, especially when fans become customers and the attendance is more important than the result.
After so long away from it, much of my interest returned during the pandemic, partly because, in all honesty, there wasn’t much else to focus on. I stopped going to games because time is precious and I wanted to waste mine doing other things. Over the years I continued following my big team – Spurs – and enjoyed seeing them improve massively from where they were when I was young. That bubble kind of burst, however, when they appointed a manager who ‘guarantees trophies’ but in a style totally at odds with the club’s tradition and with a management approach based on avoiding blame, singling out individuals and generally protecting his own reputation. The trophies never arrived so Mourinho had to go.
That appointment typified priorities of the biggest clubs – instant success is more important that traditions or values, because neither of those bring in the money. Being in the Champions League is all important now to the clubs with the biggest outlays in order to preserve their status at the top table and prevent anyone else from stealing their slice of the pie.
With that in mind, it was never a huge surprise when the European Super League was announced earlier in 2021; owning a football club is an expensive business, so protecting your investment to guarantee a future profit needs a secure stream of income in the short term. That kind of steady revenue is totally at odds with the competitive nature of sport where risk is inherent – a poor run of form here or a bad string of injuries there and all of a sudden that Champions League spot becomes Thursday night trips to far flung Eastern Europe and a greatly diminished tv revenue.
Queueing the rain at stadiumMK to watch Dons vs Spurs in pre-season. I eventually made it into the ground 10 minutes after kick off to see Spurs comfortably win 3-1 – it was only after I got home later that evening that I learned Dons had missed a penalty in the first five minutes.
Front the point of view of the ESL club owners, it makes sense – protect your income, massively reduce the chance of seeing that income fall into the hands of someone else and watch your investment steadily grow.
At the time, I remember reading something that likened the ‘big six’ English clubs to being like the ‘big four’ supermarkets – greedily gobbling up the little businesses by hoovering up their customers while also expanding into new markets, leaving behind their traditional fanbases, laughably referred to as ‘legacy fans’. In this sense, fans like me are no more than customers – years of supporting the club that my dad did means nothing.
This makes it difficult to love your club. There’s something unique about going to football; admittedly a lot of what makes it great also makes it repulsive to many – the passion and tribalism that creates an indescribable bond spills over all too easily into pathetic scraps on the street and juvenile ‘banter’ in the stadium.
There’s a couple of old cliches that try to explain what it’s like supporting a football club: that it’s either a religion where everyone gathers to worship and pray or it’s like being part of a family except that everyone wants much the same thing. You can add in a couple of extra layers to both those ideas by including the shared experience of going to a match and the sense of community created by following a single entity that represents your town, city or borough.
All of which is lost when football becomes purely a made-for-TV exercise.
Watching games on television during the height of pandemic lockdown did make for an excellent distraction: something to focus on other than the rising death toll, something that really wasn’t important in the grand scheme of things. But after months of games in front of empty stadiums, it probably struck home to the big club bigwigs that those pesky legacy fans really aren’t that important to the whole business anyway, so why bother considering them in the next evolution of investment protection?
The biggest clubs in Europe are now essentially vehicles either for state-funded soft power PR campaigns or investment arms for (predominantly) US capitalists. In essence, the name of the club, its geographical location and the community links that infers are now irrelevant – these clubs are realistically franchises that could play their games anywhere in the world so long as it suits the broadest TV viewing market.
Complaining about this feels a little like ‘Old man shouts at clouds’ and it will take an unimaginable shift in the way the game is run to turn this particular tanker. This summer’s transfer splurge by Paris Saint-Germain (Owned by the Qatari state), only highlights this by taking star players, for ‘free’, from Barcelona, Real Madrid, AC Milan and Liverpool, plus a big-money transfer from a powerless Inter Milan, in a real demonstration of strength.
The state of the game at the highest point got me thinking about what it was I really enjoyed and loved about football. It was never about the biggest names, the transfer gossip or the endless debates on telly (who remembers Andy Gray and the Boot Room off the mid 90s?). For me, despite being a Spurs fan, it was never about going to watch them play – my parents retired to Cornwall when I was five years old, so I grew up around 250 miles from Tottenham and my supporting experience was limited to watching frequent disappointments on Sky.
Instead, my live football fix was formed at my local league club – Plymouth Argyle. When we first moved to the south west, Argyle were an old Division Two (now Championship) club. I remember going to my first game – I’d fallen in love with football, like so many people my age, during Italia ‘90, seeing England get the semi-finals, Gazza’s tears, Lineker’s goals and all that. It was a great time. Over the summer, I joined a local football club (not easy to find in deepest, darkest rugby country) and I wanted to consume every possible aspect of the game possible.
We were encouraged to take in a game at Argyle’s ground, Home Park, during the pre-season to 1990/91 and a friend of ours got hold of a pair of tickets for a friendly with Wimbledon – the Crazy Gang! Just two years on from the greatest FA Cup upset of all time, beating Liverpool 1-0 in the final at Wembley, the Dons would be bringing the likes of Vinny Jones, John Fashanu and Dennis Wise to Plymouth for a warm-up match before the new campaign. It promised to be a great introduction to live match action.
The game finished goal-less and and my Dad vowed never to return to Home Park. He broke that vow 18 months later to accompany me on a trip with my football club to see Argyle play Newcastle United in a league match just before Christmas. That game was also dire, with both sides setting up either side of the halfway line and launching long balls at each other until eventually the visitors broke the lines and stole the win with a goal from Gavin Peacock. It was more like trench warfare than football and the old man renewed his vow to avoid visits to Argyle, a promise he would keep this time for over a decade – and I don’t blame him; it was awful.
Plymouth Argyle’s Home Park: AKA the ‘Theatre of Greens’. The tight turnstiles, the wooden seats, the pasties. Brilliant.
However, and somewhat bizarrely, I was hooked. Most Saturdays for me meant either playing football myself or, as I grew up being a swimmer, taking part in competitions up and down the westcountry – it should be noted that I was never any good at swimming, but my mum was the coach, so I had limited choice. Even as Argyle slid down the leagues into what was originally Division Four, but was at the time known as Division Three (It’s now called League Two), the experience of going to games was addictive. I grew attached to Argyle as my ‘little club’ and the fortunes of the team and players became as much a part of my fandom as those of Spurs.
Going to matches as a teenager would be restricted to once a month initially, but as I got a bit older I could get to a few more of the bigger matches. In particular, after multiple seasons of decline, Argyle found themselves in the bottom division of elite football, but with an up-and-coming, energetic manager in charge: Neil Warnock. I didn’t really understand what good or bad football was at the time, but Warnock turned the ship at Home Park and the team were on the up. Games were exciting with the team playing fast, attacking football and winning games.
The 1995/96 season would end with Argyle being promoted via the play-offs. I couldn’t attend the final itself but the semi-final second leg remains to this day one of my all-time favourite moments watching football.
Argyle were pitched against Colchester United (more about them another time, probably). Play-off semi-finals are played over two legs, home and away with the winner on aggregate progressing to a winner-takes-promotion final at Wembley. After losing the first leg 1-0 at Colchester’s ground, Argyle knew that they would need to win at home to make it through.
I was stood on the terrace behind the goal – the Devonport End – where all the songs and the noise originated from. As a 15 year old who had never really belonged in any group or felt part of anything before, it was amazing – singing, shouting, swearing – it was liberating and exhilarating.
Argyle were fantastic that day – they raced into a two-goal lead on the night, making the aggregate score 2-1, only to be pegged back to 2-2 with the visitors scoring in the second half. If the game finished that way, it would go to a nervy period of extra-time and potentially a penalty shoot-out.
Into the final five minutes and the action was taking place way down the other end of the pitch. Even 25 years later, I can vividly remember thinking that momentum was going against Argyle and that they had no chance of making it through. Then from nowhere, a cross in from the right hand side found Plymouth’s diminutive left-back, Paul Williams, in space at the back post. His diving header was awkward, but effective, finding the net and giving the hosts a lead they would hold to book their berth in the final.
The stadium erupted – Home Park at the time was a ramshackle collection of terraces, stands and uncovered sections. For a club that normally had attendances of around 5,000, to be part of a 19,000 crowd felt like the biggest barrage of noise, celebration and joy imaginable. Everyone streamed onto the pitch, singing sings of salutation for the players, the manager and even the chairman.
It was an evening that had everything – at its best, football has that ability to ebb and flow between failure and success, with the ultimate outcome in the balance. The best matches are never the 5-0 thrashings, but the ones where your side appears to have thrown it away but somehow manages to steal victory.
There would be times in life where I would attend Argyle games more regularly, especially in my early twenties and with my mum. We formed a really close bond by attending games together (she was originally a fan of Crystal Palace), and some of those games, afternoons and moments before she died in 2004 are among my most treasured memories.
So that’s how I came to find myself stood in a queue in the rain in Milton Keynes in 2021. Because while I know I cannot repeat that sense of belonging and that attachment which grew in my teenage self, I want at least some of the experience to be refreshed.
After deciding that I wanted to get back into watching games live, I thought long and hard about what it was I got out of going to watch games and why it was something I cared about. I could go and watch my big club, especially now they’re in a new, huge stadium – I have been to see Spurs play in the flesh, many times, and have experienced some fantastic atmospheres and occasions at White Hart Lane, but, if the truth be told, I do feel a bit like a tourist when I’ve been there because I don’t go regularly enough – I couldn’t afford the cost or the time.
The commercialisation of top-level football makes following a big club even less attractive – there’s so much discussion and promotion of Premier League football that it feels like a never-ending soap opera; it doesn’t feel real or genuine as the superstars are so vast.
I mulled over some options for securing my football fix: living in MK means there are a number of different options within an hour or so but my instant reaction to paying £25 to watch Northampton or Luton play is that it’s too expensive – not because of the sheer cost, but because I don’t care how they do. Part of the joy of the experience is in the emotions created by the outcome so attending every game as a neutral will always leave something of a hollow feeling.
On the flip side of that, stumping up to watch a Premier League team is an expensive hobby – the cheapest season tickets at Spurs cost more than £900 and a single Matchday, including ticket, travel and food, will set you back around £100. For that kind of investment, its understandable that you want to feel entertained, see attractive football and, ultimately, a positive result – none of these things are guaranteed in sport.
I decided that now was the time to rekindle my love for my small club – Plymouth Argyle at a time when clubs outside the Premier League need all the support they can get. To re-visit the supermarkets analogy, there has been a real energy in the last 18 months to shop local where possible and I feel that supporting your local or lower league club is the football equivalent of this.
It’s not feasible for me to make the 500-mile round trip to Devon every other weekend, but I did consider a season ticket at one point to put something into the club and to show my support. Instead, I’ve opted to use my central location to get to as many away games as I can – there are roughly seven or eight fixtures within a reasonable journey from where I live, including a few that I haven’t been to before. I can’t wait to follow the club’s progress, even if they are among the favourites to be relegated from League One.
Meanwhile, in my research for match options, I came across this season’s promotion from my new(ish) local club, Milton Keynes Dons. The reason I live in MK is that I came here to work for the club and enjoyed seven amazing years doing just that (again, probably more on that another time). After having had no fans in the ground in the last 18 months, you can now buy a season ticket at stadiumMK for £230, which equates to a tenner a game and is much less than during ‘normal’ times.
In my opinion, the club should be applauded for this step and I want to show support for this initiative, so in addition to watching my team on the road throughout the season, I’m now a season ticket holder at stadiumMK – I think League One is going to be really exciting this season with a lot of teams realistically in with a chance of promotion. While I do have a strong affiliation to the Dons after my time on the staff, I’m still of a mindset that I’m going there to watch games involving two teams, not supporting one or the other (except when Argyle visit, of course).
The irony of this situation is not lost on me – I feel totally disenfranchised by my big club and a desire to watch ‘real’ football in person, so part of my solution is to watch the original Franchise Football Club. Much has been written on the story of Wimbledon, MK Dons and everything in between, so there’s no need to add to it here.
In the course of planning this article, I’ve read much about the Dons for this season and they’ve put together an interesting team, looking to play attractive football. However, on the eve of the campaign, their promising young manager, Russell Martin, was spirited away to Championship club Swansea, sending the club into turmoil, which could affect their fortunes through the year – time will tell.
So this marks the start of something, although what that might be is unknown, which is kind of the point. I have no idea what experiences, positive or negative, might be waiting out there or what characters might be encountered along the way.
As football clubs welcome fans back after 18 months away, my social media timelines have been buzzing with positivity and happiness for supporters to be reunited with their heroes, their friends and even their families. It’s been great to see and after my own hiatus stretching back further, it feels even better to be a part of it again.
sixteeneightyone 