Handbags at Dusk

I'm a bit slow here in commenting in what has been described in the various media as a "terrible brawl", "unbelievable scenes" and "Bradford's night of shame", but I'll give it a go anyway. I listened - slightly incredulously, it must be said - to the unfolding, ugly events on Tuesday following yet another disheartening if somewhat inevitable draw. The following morning I awoke feeling metaphorically as battered and bruised as Claude Davis and Andrew Davies as I realised we'd made it onto the Today Programme, but for all the wrong reasons.

If you've not seen what happened on Tuesday night (and you actually care, or you're one of the people that finds it eyebrow-raisingly amusing, as I think the Today presenters did), you can see it here. The gist of it seemed to be that Crawley "started it", and our various players leapt in - heroically or stupidly - to defend their teammates. Certainly it looks that way, and I know from watching them (and friends who support teams in the same league concur)that they are not a "nice" team. And it wasn't a "nice" game, either - dislikable and thuggish or not, how could it be with one team vying from promotion and the other fighting for its very survival? But the problem is, it doesn't really matter who "started it". This is a professional (just about) football match, and these are grown-up adults (theoretically). It isn't the Year Six playground or the carpark of the Crown and Anchor after last orders. Throwing punches and generally having a great big barney just isn't on, and more to the point, it has potentially catastrophic consequences. For a start, we are now three players down: Davies is out for five matches and Luke Oliver ("Big Luke Oliver" to Pulse listeners, as though there's a Little Luke Oliver somewhere, sulking that he never gets a mention) and Jon McLaughlin are banned for the next 3. This is potentially disasterous: McLaughlin (though our record would suggest otherwise) has proved a saviour at times - many of our narrow victories and skin-of-the-teeth draws were thanks to his dexterity, and his absence could prove fatal; Oliver, too, has been an asset this year and at the very least brings the benefit of height and well-placed headers to the side. I'm not massively bothered about Davies, which is just as well as rumour has it he won't be seen in a City shirt again.

Worse, though, are the further penalties that could come our way. A financial punishment would be very difficult for a club already in dire straits to bear, and one is likely - Newcastle and Sunderland were fined £40,000 and £20,000 respectably for much less earlier this year, and the FA are going to want to look consistent. But a points deduction would be far more deadly. Bradford City is current teetering a dangerous 5 points from the bottom of the table. Any points deduction would make relegation almost inevitable. Davies, Oliver and McLaughlin never for a moment stopped to think, as they leapt into the fray, fists flying, on Tuesday night, that they could be inadvertantly signing the club's death warrant.

But this isn't just about the club. I am not just being sentimental when I say that, at the thought of us dropping in disgrace from the football league, potentially never to be seen again, my childhood flashes before my eyes, adulthood hot on its heels. I have worn a City shirt for as long as I can remember; my family has always supported them. My cousin was present on that terrible day when fire took the lives of 56 people, including some of his friends, and I have run charity races for the Burns Unit in their memory. I have cheered and screamed til I was hoarse. I have actually cried in frustration at times. I have watched us rise to the dreamy heights of the Premiership, have watched us play the likes of Chelsea and, of course, beat the likes of Liverpool, waving my "Bye Bye Wombles" poster and experiencing an unfettered joy that those who don't follow a team cannot understand. I have watched the heartbreaking slide back down again, season by season, league by league, waiting for a Phoenix-like resurrection that never came.

I have watched the footage from Tuesday night, and begun to prematurely mourn. This is not just about a club. This is about a city, too. Years ago, when we dropped to League One, my dad said that it was sad that a city the size of Bradford did not have even a Championship team. The thought of us possibly not having a professional team at all seems inconceivable. My city has had a hard time, unfairly so. It is associated with riots and racism and the EDL, unemployment and poverty. It recetly came bottom in a study on wellbeing, and in 2010 was "voted" Britain's worst tourist city, being branded as "dangerous, ugly and boring." This is what people hear day in, day out: Bill Bryson once said our role in life was to "make everywhere else look better." If you say you're from Bradford, there is often an awkward pause, followed by the inevitable and slightly pleading "I hear they do good curries?"

I simply do not know this side of my city. I live in London now, and I have lived in many places, and Bradford is warm-hearted, friendly, concerned. People talk to you in shops. People smile at you. We are a city with a wealth of culture and history: the Brontes were born in Bradford, not in Haworth; we can boast Priestly and Hockney; we have a nationally acclaimed film festival, and our Media Museum was one of the most visited attractions outside of London last year; Titus Salt brought philanthropy to a whole new level at a time when factory workers in comparable towns were living in appalling squalor. Oh and while we're on the subject, yes, as it happens, we DO also have awesome curries.

Soon, though, we may not have a football team. The Bradford Bulls might not last much longer either.

So although you may laugh at this and other football tantrums, although you may swamp the chat forums with LOLs, OMGs and WTFs, once all the analysis is over, fines have been paid and bottoms well and truly smacked, I have just two words for the players who were involved and those they have left holding the fort: Grow up! And focus. Bradford needs you - Bradford sure as hell needs all the help it can get right now: after all, it just elected George Galloway as MP. So please don't let me down.

Be More British: Support a Rubbish Team

This was originally written for a blog for international students, but I fear it will be too long, so am putting it here to make myself feel better:

It’s a well-known fact that we Brits are obsessed with football (which is interesting, given that, when it comes to our performances in recent international tournaments, we actually don’t seem to be very good at it.) I have travelled extensively and on more than one occasion, on saying I come from England, I have been met with smiles and enthusiastic cries of “Manchester United!” Many people across the world have adopted a UK team as their own – in my experience usually Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool or Chelsea.
If you really want to blend in with the locals, then, you may find yourself embracing a team you can then vaguely follow – perhaps one of the above, probably London-based if you’re studying here. But if you really want to assimilate then may I suggest a bolder move: support a rubbish team.

Every year at our International Orientation I extol the virtues of my beloved Bradford City to my (bemused) students. I start by explaining that we – a club still riding high on the back of our FA cup victory in 1911 – are in League 2, and they smile politely, nodding enthusiastically and thinking: League 2. Hmm. Presumably that’s the second division, so you’re not far off the top; that sounds pretty good. I then explain that we have a Premiership, then a Championship, then League One, then League Two. I watch them count, then realise that this means my team is in fact in Division Four, and so probably not that good after all. I then tell them that we are skulking in the bottom half of that table, and as such are at risk of dropping out of the league altogether, at which point their expressions can only be described as pity.

For many Brits, Saturday afternoon means only one thing: football. Across the country, men and women of all ages pack out football grounds, and most of them do not support Manchester United or Arsenal. You may think you’ve felt elation after yet another 3-0 win, but you won’t have experienced the euphoria that comes with a last-minute extra-time goal resulting in three points after an extended run of dismal losses. You may think that you will dazzle with your knowledge of John Terry’s misdemeanours and Chelsea’s seemingly constant search for a new manager, but you will win a place in more British hearts if you too have shared the pain of a long, dejected train journey home following two hours standing in the rain in, say, Rotherham, ending in a 1-0 defeat. Your friends may have been to Liverpool, noted for the Beatles and its vibrant history, or Manchester, with its museums, nightlife and impressive pop back catalogue, but support a team like mine and you could find yourself in such glamorous locations as Torquay, the home of Fawlty Towers, Burton, noted for being where Marmite is produced, or Crawley, famous for...um… being quite near Gatwick airport. You could wow your fellow classmates with tales of your trips to Swindon and Southend, Accrington and Aldershot. Instead of clubs who regale themselves with tough nicknames like the Lions (Millwall) or the Tigers (Hull City), designed presumably to intimidate their opponents, you’ll be playing teams that are perfectly happy to be known as the Shrimps (Morecambe) or the Cobblers (Northampton), only effective against those with a phobia of small marine life or shoemakers. My own team are the Bantams: a bantam is a small chicken.

Much as I would love to inspire you to join me and become ardent Bradford City supporters, this is probably a little impractical, not to say expensive, if you’re London-based (I speak from experience.) Fortuitously, though, there are several London clubs floundering in the same division as us who would be thrilled by your support. To start you off and help you decide which one might be for you, here are a few facts:

Barnet: based in North London and known somewhat unimaginatively as the Bees, their mascot is called Mr Bumble, who appears at home games as a man in a giant and slightly creepy bee costume. Their current ground (though not for much longer…) is called Underhill, and is on a slope – when my team was losing at the end of the first half a few years ago I heard someone wryly say “it’ll sort out in the second half: we’ll be playing downhill.”

Dagenham and Redbridge: The result of a relatively recent merger between two local teams, my best friend rather unencouragingly says of the “Daggers”, his team: “this is proper football: people get hurt.” Dagenham unexpectedly went up to the first division last year after winning a play-off against Rotherham, and promptly came down again at the end of the season after losing most of their games. They are now near the bottom of League Two, which means they are below us, despite beating us in their last game.

AFC Wimbledon: You may have heard of Wimbledon, but possibly not this Wimbledon. For reasons best known to those involved in the decision, but a mystery to everyone else, the club relocated to Milton Keynes in 2002, a town almost 60 miles away in a completely different county. Unsurprisingly, their fans were not thrilled about this, what with being largely based in Wimbledon and not Buckinghamshire. So they founded a new club and pinched the name (the club that had moved became the MK Dons) and, 10 years on, they are back in the football league. And, um, currently doing better than we are...

So, I hope that has inspired you to seek out a more authentic – and far cheaper (usually £15-£25 on the gate) – football experience. Be warned, though, football supporters can take it all very seriously: when one of our fans asked on a chat forum for advice as to whether he should attend a match on Valentine’s Day or take his wife out instead, another simply replied: “Mate: you can always change your wife, but you can’t change your team.”