Feature: My First Game (watching Rochdale AFC), from Dale Supporters' Trust website
Rainy night, October 1974. Sounds like a Morrissey song already. We'd moved to Rochdale a few months before. Dad wasn't one for doing much in the evenings. Too knackered after work. This night, however, this rainy night in 1974, he packed me, my sister and my mum into the Ford Corsair and took us to Spotland where Rochdale were playing Northampton.
We sat in a shabby wooden stand full of middle-aged and old men, coughing and moaning. When Rochdale scored, they rose from their seats and patted each other on the arm, smiling like all was well with the world.
The rain came down even heavier and the pitch and players disappeared in
mist. We drank sweet, milky coffee bought from a hut behind the stand. The
hut had a low metal fence in front to direct the queuing but my sister and
me ducked underneath because there was no one else around. The serving ladies
lent on the counter, tapping the metal drums of hot water with plastic spoons.
Boxes containing Twix, Mars Bars and Stimorol chewing gum were on the counter.
The gum became slippy when you swilled coffee around
your mouth while chewing it. ''How are we doing? Are we still winning?'' asked
one of the ladies.
''No, they're drawing now.''
''The usual story,'' she sighed.
Back in the stand, we stared through the wooden planks at our feet to the area beneath. It was piled high with discarded plastic cups and sweet wrappers. A few minutes before the end of the game, the ladies from the tea bar shuffled down the cinder track alongside the pitch, carrying empty urns. They stopped and talked to people in the crowd. The match ended in a draw.
My mum and sister never went to Spotland again. Me and dad haven't been able to keep away.