We Are Going Up!

It's difficult to write about last weekend. It's difficult because a chest infection, piggybacked by the gloom that comes with being ill, has left me staring at photos of my ecstatic self and wondering how on earth I could ever experience such joyous emotion. But even for the well and sane it's probably difficult because, after years in the wilderness, words simply cannot convey quite what this season means to Bradford City supporters, and this was a joy that, in my wildest dreams, I didn't expect to experience quite so soon. After all, we'd already had an astonishing season, and to expect promotion to cap it all off seemed to border on greedy.

The crowds that turned out to cheer on the open top bus tour said it all; the thousands that travelled down to London for the second time in a season despite the cost said it all; the ecstatic chants as half the stadium emptied itself of Northampton Town fans said it all: "We're Super City and we're going UP!" (And in parenthesis, every supporter added under his breath "FINALLY.")

I don't need to preach to the converted about the past few years, suffice to say that this time last year we'd just breathed a sigh of relief at having stayed in the bottom tier of the football league (along, incidentally, with this year's other finalists, Northampton.) This time last year that fight with Crawley and bleak defeat after bleak defeat cast a shawdow over our season. City fans were praised for their loyalty, because at the end of last season, loyalty was pretty much all we had.

City in garish pink away strip, ahead of a defeat by struggling Barnet (sadly now relegated) at gloomy Underhill

Fast-forward 12 months and suddenly we were not only at Wembley, but we were there for the second time that year, significantly richer and with League one painfully within our grasp. And we hadn't half gone for drama along the way.

A week before our last visit to Wembley I stood on a freezing platform at Norbury following a gloomy and unexpected 2-0 loss at Wimbledon. This was the sort of away game to which we'd become accustomed over the years: a walk down a residential road to the away "entrance", a side gate that led into what looked like a field, a track leading eventally to a shed with a corrugated iron roof where fans clustered on an old-fashioned terrace, devoid of any sort of bar or indeed toilets that belonged in the 21st century. And we'd lost 2-0 and played badly. One grumpy fan voiced his frustrations vociforously, liberally peppered with swearwords: "I don't care what anybody says. This ****ing cup has ruined our ****ing season." Nobody said anything, so he continued, angry with the world at large, "it's ****ing disgraceful, we were ****ing shite. We deserve to be in this ****ing league. This season has all been about that ****ing cup." Everyone seemed to politely ignore him, and few I spoke to would have agreed - the cup run was stunning, whatever happened the next weekend - but inside me, at least, a little bit of me thought "what a shame it had to be one or the other."

Away entrance, AFC Wimbledon

Well, it turned out it didn't. I was wrong, and I happily - joyfully - admit to my misplaced pessimism, because we did it. Admittedly we did it by the skin of our teeth, with 1996 fresh in the minds of those of us ancient enough to remember it, but, when it mattered, we did it, and we did it in style. After the awful, tear-inducing defeat against (the excellent) Swansea, our players seemed to emerge battered and bruised and faltering. The chat forums muttered, then gnashed their teeth and bemoaned the end of the season. Every draw and defeat led to cries of "well, that's it then", the occasional victory to murmurings of "maybe, just maybe," that were quickly shot down by cries of "nope, that's just wishful thinking", then... we won at York. We won well. In the last few games of the season we produced a run of stunning wins whilst those around us crucially stumbled. On the second to last match, where a win one way or the other would decide whether Bradford City and Exeter would secure the final playoff place, we beat Burton; Exeter lost. We were through to the playoffs.

So. Plain sailing from now on? Of course not. This was Bradford City, the team that came back in an epic second leg semi-final playoff in 1996 to eventally win the final; the team that had to beat Liverpool to stay in the Premiership...and did; the team that took Arsenal to penalties and won. And so, true to form, we were the team that let Burton walk all over us in the first playoff, while fans watched through their fingers, hearts physically dropping as they tried to control tears. As the Southern Supporters gathered in the pub for the second leg it seemed merely a formality: an act of loyalty, raising a toast to our beloved club that had given us the best season for over a decade, taken us to Wembley, and would surely finally leave League 2 behind this time next season.

And then...

...we were brilliant. We played more tightly as a team than at any time since the second Villa match. We thrived on set pieces and lightning speed and clever passes. Wells was brilliant - twice - and my personal favourite James Hanson scored an outstanding and crucial goal as cries of "He used to work at the Co-Op!" echoed round the stadium from the exhuberant but vastly ounumbered City fans. We were ecstatic. In the pub, we went crazy, as a nice Latvian family smiled confused smiles and tried to eat their lunch. We'd done it. Again. We were going to Wembley.

We never expected to be here, but we have now been here, twice. City fan after City fan posted variations on "City fan walks into a bar at Wembley. Barman says "The usual, sir?"" Actually, walking from Wembley Park tube we found that most bars had been set aside for Northampton Fans. We eventally settled on the ironically named "Quality Inn", a pre-fab 1960s monstrosity that would have looked drab in communist Russia, but that still charged an eye-watering £4 a pint (welcome to London, folks). On this occasion, I, at least, found that Wembley Way wasn't buzzing in the way it had been in the cup final. City fans were cautious. We were on the edge. We had got this far by the skin of our teeth and a defeat now would be so agonising, so sad, so absolutely, truly awful, even though we knew that really this season was already better than we could ever have hoped for. So we took our seats, we wrung our hands, and we held our breath. Some of us (sorry Dad, I'm a bad Catholic) prayed.

Pre-match nerves - not quite daring to dream...

And then...

We were amazing. We annihilated Northampton, a side which, despite what some of the arrogant comments on the various City fan pages would have us believe, had finished higher than we had, not through pure luck, but through merit. But we were wonderful. We played as though this were a mere training exercise at which we were well-polished, and the opposition might as well not have been there. The ball flicked effortlessly across the pitch, leaving no opportunities to Northampton's players to intercept it, and into the goal once, twice, then three times in the first 30 minutes. It was as though all those unexpected, stupendous victories had merged into one: here were the players that had delivered us from Watford, Wigan, Arsenal, Villa, then Burton, then finally here, when it mattered the most, making up for our last Wembley appearance before the whistle even signalled the end of the first half. At half time we were 3-0 up, and I danced with Lenny in Club Wembley and bought an overpriced hot dog in celebration. My friend and ally throughout the season (THANK YOU, ADAM), a diehard Hull supporter, said we didn't deserve to be in League 2 because we were playing like a Championship side.

Lovely Lenny. And Beer

And we continued to do this in the second half, defending like demons, though without any further goals, because, nice though 5-0 would have been, we didn't need them. We had done it. The Bradford half of the stadium erupted, and I kissed my dad and hugged my friend, and I wept.

I wept for reasons that don't make sense if you're not a football fan. I wept for reasons far beyond football that I've tried to express on my blog before, but probably not quite managed to do so eloquently enough that they seem sincere, though I promise you they are. So many things were tied up in that victory. So many emotions built up over so many years spilled out. My wonderful team, that I had followed for so long, my club, with its long history, both joyful and tragic, tied up so inseperably with my beautiful and besmirched city, was finally becoming something again. Your team is everything. Your team is much more than the 90 minute game played on the pitch, it is a bonding experience between generations, part of the family, part of who you are and where you've come from. Your team is a part of you, a part so deep that when times are hard, you hurt. You physically ache.

Thirteen years ago, riding high, we never expected to be down here, floundering season after season in League 2; at the end of the last season we were relieved to be here, clinging on. At the start of this season we were realistic, hoping for but not expecting a playoff place. Now, at the end of the season, yet again, we never expected to be here, at Wembley, twice, and now here, in League One. Finally.

Richer, stronger, prouder, we are Bradford City. And the only way is up, baby! Thank you, Bantams, Phil Parkinson, fellow fans, for what has been, truly, the greatest season of my life...so far. CTID xxxxx


Post-match celebration, with empty Northampton seats behind

11th May 1985

On this day in 1985 56 Bradford City fans who went to a football match and never came home. May they rest in peace.

11th May 1985

On Saturdays they came and went
From Cullingworth and Heckmondwike.
After defeat or victory
A pint or two at the Corn Dolly
Would set the world to rights.

On Saturdays they flooded in
To Midland Road or to the Kop
And were united for two hours
In unremitting Yorkshire showers
Whether they won or lost.

That Saturday they went with dads
And brothers, sisters, partners, friends.
Young parents took their little lads,
Proudly claret and amber clad,
To applaud the season’s end

That Saturday supporters cheered
As onto the pitch their heroes came,
And even when they saw the smoke
They thought that it was one big joke...
Until they saw the flames.

That Saturday supporters screamed
As fire encroached at breakneck speed.
They ran to find their exits blocked -
The gates were chained and the doors were locked
And they died there in their seats.

That Saturday they came and went
Via houses that they didn’t know
Queuing to use the phone to say
“It’s alright, Love. I got away.
I will be coming home.”

That Saturday at the BRI
The lucky ones patiently queued
With blistered hands fixed to their hair –
The falling asphalt stuck them there
Acting like superglue

That Saturday we sat at home
Listening to John Helm’s commentary.
And in his voice the fear grew
And in that moment, then, we knew
This was a tragedy

On Monday kids returned to school
And sat down next to empty chairs
Remembering Friday’s kickabout –
The last of its kind – as they filed out
To the special assembly and prayers

A silence falls throughout the crowd
The final Saturday each year,
As we sit secure in the Carlsberg Stand
Remembering those fallen fans
And wipe away our tears.

(From "Love and Death and That", 2012)

Health Insurance: some exclusions are just mental!

It's 2013. There are all sorts of laws in place now to prevent discrimination on the basis of a disability; reasonable adjustments must be made in a workplace; venues have no excuse for not being accessible to you. In such a progressive (by which I really just mean "equal") society we should feel safe and confident about discussing our mental health. Right?

You'd hope so, wouldn't you? But sadly this still doesn't seem to be the case.

Getting a mortgage isn't a lot of fun. We got one recently and spent much of it on the telephone to the monotonal Emily, who, on each occasion, would inform us of yet another document we should have provided for her had our telepathic skills been up to the job. On each occasion Emily insisted petulantly that we should have known we needed each of these items without her prompting (despite having never applied for a mortgage before) and made it perfectly clear to us that we were a pair of idiots who frankly didn't deserve said mortgage. Why Emily chose to tell us about one document per phonecall rather than sending us a concise list is anybody's guess. But for some there is an even bigger hurdle: the thorny issue of insurance.

Optimists that mortgage brokers are they are keen to remind you of all the terrible things that could befall you, and their terrible resulting ripple effects. "If you were to die suddenly," I was told cheerfully "your husband would be left with the mortgage" (the mortgage clearly being the primary concerm of my husband on the untimely death of his beloved). "If you were to get cancer," he continued chirpily, beaming at my husband, "and be signed off work long term, your wife would struggle." The upshot of this, of course, was a big sales pitch: "Well, fortunately, you needn't worry about your leg falling off or falling off a cliff because I'm about to sell you some nice insurance - for just £50 a month."

Insurance, though, as anyone who has watched "Sicko" knows, is a minefield. People are paid to sit in offices and sift through the most intimate aspects of your medical history: "You want cover for arthritis, you say? Oh I'm sorry, I'm afraid that's not possible. You see, you were treated for genital warts in 1997 and failed to declare this on your original application" or "it says here at 15 you sought advice on period pain. I'm afraid this means we won't be able to pay for an artifical limb after your arm was severed off in that freak Scrabble accident."

The initial application is quite straightfoward. You go through a skin-crawling list of ailments from the frankly terrifying to the comedically icky and hope you're able to tick "no" to all of them. If you have to get "yes", things get more complicated. In the case of something like asthma, this largely entails confirming what medication you're on while the insurance chappie sucks on his teeth like a builder before he utters the immortal phrase "it's gonna cost ya." With mental health, though, it turns out it's a different thing altogether.

If you mention on one of these forms you have or may have had any hint of anything that could be carelessly shoved under the catch-all "mental health" heading everything suddenly gets serious. Proceedings grind to a halt. The man who was grinning a minute a go as he relayed all the possible ways you could meet your early demise ("What if you were hit by a bus? What if you fell off a ladder? What if you were attacked by a rabid penguin in a freak zoo-escape incident?") tells you gravely there is a "special form" you will need to complete, and that this will be despatched forthwith.

A fretful few days - and the irony of the tense wait for someone who's just declared they suffer from anxiety isn't lost on you - later the form arrives. Compiled by a pen pusher with little experience either of mental health, common sense or indeed the application of correct grammar given the redundant question mark, it blithely begins: "please outline the nature of your problem?", followed by "When did the problem start" (no question mark) and "are you still suffering from the problem?" This alone is non-sensical in the case of depression and anxiety, which are so often transient and can strike with no warning or explanation. To pin down an exact date when you decided you were depressed and then a date when it all finished, as though depression is a library book you gave back and which is therefore no longer your concern, is laughable. But it got better: the last question was "Have you ever tried to take your own life? If yes, please give dates and details."

A friend and I amused ourselves for a good ten minutes compiling an answer, to be read in the voice of Alan Bennett, along the lines of "It was a warm Tuesday in early May, 1996. I distincly remember it because I was in B&Q and found myself looking at some particularly sturdy ropes, which I thought might come in handy later that afternoon if indeed there was time, after "Emmerdale", to attach it to the light fitting in the back bedroom - the best choice as the struggle wouldn't disturb the neighbours..." etc.

But joking aside, what is the outcome if you declare you have a mental health "problem"? Presumably it is consistent and proportionate, taking into account the risk, looking at your medical history, perhaps your employment sickness record, to arrive at a sensible quote?

It would seem not. The following is a genuine "exclusion" in an insurance policy issued to someone who declared a history of "mild depression", for which they had never taken leave from work:
"No benefits of any kind will be payable in the event of any claim arising directly or indirectly from any mental or behavioural disorder (as defined by the World Health Organisation using the International Classification of Diseases (ICD10 or subsequent revision(s) thereof) including (but not exhaustively) anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, stress, schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorders, or mental or behavioural disorder due to alcohol or substance use or misuse, or any functional somatic symptoms (also known as medically unexplained symptoms) including (but not exhaustively) chronic fatigue, chronic pain, or irritable bowel syndromes or myalgic encephalomyelitis/-pathy (ME)."

The company (who I won't name, as they are surely not alone so it would seem unfair) claim that they treat mental health the same as physical health, so if you declare a pre-existing condition you would inevitably face some exclusions. Really? Following the logic above, would you be denied cover for a stroke if you had, say, suffered from a heart attack? Or cancer if you'd had a bad back? It's worth noting my husband and his ashthma faced no exclusions at all, and my own cancer scare was brushed aside as having been "too long ago". But if you suffer from anxiety you can't be covered for schizophrenia; if you're schizophrenic they wouldn't cover you if you're unfortunate enough to get IBS; if you have depression you can't be covered for chronic pain - so woe betide any depressive foolish enough to develop, say, sciatica. And the nice caveat of "not exhaustively" renders everything else uncertain and therefore pointless - I'm sure, given the chance, most conditons could be spuriously linked to the above. There is no medical or scientific basis I can find for any of this - it seems to lump all "mental health" conditions togther in one sloppy "loony" category, and tag on some physical health conditions for good measure. At best this seems daft, at worst it's discriminatory, judgemental and extremely damaging.

Policies such as this seem to reinforce taboos that still, sadly, surround issues of mental health and, ultimately, scare people away from seeking help when they need it. They penalise the very people brave and sensible enough to say "there's something wrong here", from alcoholics to depressives.

I work in a caring profession and frequently try to encourage my clients to see doctors and counsellors for what such policies casually term their "problems". If I were to tell those clients that seeking and obtaining such help might, on the one hand, arm them with the tools (be they CBT, tablets, or whatever) to continue with their lives and work, but would also, on the other, effect their ability to get something so crucial as a mortgage years later, I'm sure every single one would think twice before going any further. They would suffer in silence. I don't even want to suggest the consequences of this - in some cases they are too frightening. Companies would do well to think about that before reinforcing a stigma for the sake of cynical penny-pinching. Shame on them.