Derby

I wrote to Mum and Dad, and a typically limp letter to Claire before Barry, Guy and I set off to the football and the local derby with Bedgrove.

We met at Guy’s local, The Wessex Ram, near Sutton Road, and drove to the ground. We parked the car a discreet distance away and joined the scattered crowds all heading the same way. There was forty five minutes to go before kick off and the Bedgrove fans were already a massed bank of yellow and red on the South Terrace, diagonally to our left. At times the noise was terrific; “You’re gonna get your fucking heads kicked in . . .” etc., all the old favourites, all aimed at our side of the ground. I tried to separate their faces out as individuals, but they were small and blank with distance.

The game itself wasn’t very distinguished and Bedgrove were two up after just twenty minutes; the South Terrace went berserk, while the figures around us muttered dumb acknowledgement. For too much of the match though, events off-field detracted from the events on, and our eyes were drawn irresistibly to the spectacle of dozens of Bedgrove fans kicking with their boots at the large double gates at the front of their cage. The police hurried quickly onto the cinder track between the pitch and the fence and stood with their arms and bodies braced against the gates as a section of the crowd threw itself repeatedly at them, the cops fending them off by prodding with truncheons through the mesh. At one point we all thought the gates would go and the mob come pouring onto the pitch.

Watermouth applied intense pressure for the last quarter of an hour and forced several corners and free kicks, but Bedgrove held on and at the final whistle our section of the crowd fled. The streets leading from the ground were full of hurrying figures, bent against the bitter wind, some even running and casting anxious glances behind from whence drifted the faint sound of triumphant voices.

We called in at Guy’s for a cup of coffee before driving home. Doug, yet another of Barry’s RCP clique of friends, was waiting when we got back. He hides the RCP hardness beneath a more amenable, less intimidating façade, but deep down it’s there all the same.