Predicting who’s going to win the Premier League this season is becoming as boring as guessing the outcome of June’s general election. Will it be New Labour (Man Utd), Arsenal (Tories), Leeds (Lib Dems), Ipswich (Green Party) or Liverpool (New Labour II)?

I look forward to the day when people hand back their digital boxes and get back to the genuine grassroots of football: non-league. There, the passion is as intense, but the blatant corporate rip-off is not part of the culture. Sure, there are dodgy chairmen - Mr Arif being the most infamous. He took Fisher Athletic, Bermondsey, from park football to the Conference and hired Malcom Allinson as coach. One massive drugs bust later and Fisher plummeted. He’s yet to recover.

There are many clichés about football, one of which is that fans are more loyal to their team than to their partners - which is true. Only by losing the plot, my job and my mates did I look elsewhere. I was seeing a ‘shrink’ one day when she turned round and said to me, “You do realise before there were drugs, people used to be depressed for up to two years.” “That’s funny”, I replied. “I’ve taken all the drugs that can be thrown at me with all the side effects and I’m still depressed over two years later, but then again, I do support Crystal Palace!!” “Change your team,” cracked the shrink.

It was around this time that I had a chance encounter in a library with an old school mate, Mishi. Editor of Champion Hill Street Blues, the long-running Dulwich Hamlet Fanzine, he also produced a book for the archrivals entitled “Tooting and Mitcham’s Greatest Moments in 100 Years”. Turn the cover, and it’s full of blank pages. He was the youth-team secretary, whose job was to make the half-time tea, and it’s rumoured that on the record-breaking run to the last 16 of the FA Youth Cup in ’95, he pissed in every opponent’s teapot. Loud, brash and a total piss-head, he’s an unlikely librarian. As he stamped the books in his belly-revealing Dulwich shirt, I recounted my predicament. “If you’re unemployed, you get in for three quid. See you Saturday.”

Dulwich were playing Carshalton Athletic, and I caught the bug. I’m not sure why - maybe it was because Dulwich were having their one good season of the decade. Whatever the reason, staggering out of the bar later, I realised I’d spent £30 - shit! That’s the same as a Premier League ticket. But I consoled myself with the thought that I’d had a good piss up and felt like I belonged. On the way out, Mishi shouted, “Got your nutter’s bus pass?”
“Er...yeah,” I said.
“Great, that means you can get to away games for nothing as most of the Ryman League is in Greater London.”

The tradition of non-league dictates that there’s always a cheap bar and at certain grounds like Bognor, you’re allowed to drink throughout the match, or failing that bring your own booze or dope. I became part of the Dulwich “Rabble”, singing songs like “Tuscany, Tuscany, we’re the famous Dulwich Hamlet and we look like Tuscany”. This is a throwback to when the ground was being planned. A protestor said the trees that had to be uprooted reminded him of Tuscany.

Going to non-league grounds often takes you to places that you never imagined going. Yeading’s ground used to be close to Southall High Street, so part of the ritual involved going to an Asian pub before the game and having a cheap curry afterwards. Chesham’s ground is set in the Chilterns, but the most breathtaking is Easington Colliery’s.

Living up in the northeast for a while gave me the chance to sample the delights of the Northern League. In old mining villages, there may be little more than half a mining wheel ceremoniously sticking out of the earth as a physical reminder of the past, but the football teams carry on some of the traditions. Seeing Easington Colliery play Newcastle Blue Star in an FA Cup qualifying match on a hot August afternoon was like watching football on the northern riviera. The ground is on top of a cliff and you can see the waves breaking below on the Durham coast. Well worth going to watch a match in a gale force wind, but bring an anchor with ya!!

My local team up there was Peterlee Newtown, who had the strangest fans I’ve ever seen. They would never cheer, clap or do anything when their team scored. Maybe it wasn’t cool to actively support your local team. But when the away team scored, it would be like pandemonium and that would only be the sub’s bench, one man and a dog cheering!

Spennymoor had the worst toilet I’ve ever come across in my lifetime as a football fan. Yeah, I would rather sit on a bomb. Took a picture for posterity. At Bishop Auckland, the drainpipe is positioned so that no matter where you sit, the rain will always run down your neck. Still, the directors are well friendly. When they realised I was a Cockney, they gave me free tickets, invited us into the boardroom for a half-time cuppa and let my mate announce the result of the ticket raffle over the tannoy.

Initially, I entered the non-league scene because I was looking for a community to belong to, beyond the mental health ghetto I was totally stuck in. I needed to pursue a hobby away from campaigning and find a way of chilling out. The politics of professional football is that it is The Corporate Game. At best we are consumers. In reality - as the fans of Newcastle have found out - we are just fodder. With the death of organised religion, football is the new secular religion, with all the rituals. A backdrop for TV, you’re an expensive participant in the passionate ritual unfolding around you. Bonds are meaningless and if you don’t like it, there’s a big queue waiting to take your place.

I was at Newcastle versus Palace just after the News of the World sting, when directors Hill and Shepherd said the fans were mugs for buying replica shirts for £50, which they produced in Indonesia for £5. The fans have stopped buying as many shirts, but they can’t stop that drug - they’re still going to the games, even though they’re aware it’s a rip off. But they know no different. I heard a Macclesfield fan saying he missed the intimacy of non-league football. Swapping ends at half time and going into the club bar doesn’t happen at League grounds.

Non-league football is ethical: you’re supporting a local community and you can have fun while you’re at it. When I’d just started going out with my present partner, I talked her into going to a totally, meaningless friendly, Moseley versus Dulwich. After a night with the “Rabble”, we ended up stranded in Hampton Court, no train or night bus. After a bit of bartering, I managed to get us the honeymoon suite at Hampton Court Palace. She was totally in awe. “This is what you get when you follow Dulwich Hamlet,” I explained. The friendly result, 1-1.

Pete Shaugnessy
18.12.2002

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