Wow. Wow. Wow.

It was the fixture dreams are made of: Arsenal. We haven't seen the likes of this since we were in the Premier League, and in those days we were fighting a constant battle to stay up, with potential financial ruin soon knocking at our door. What followed is all too well-known to every City fan - relegation, then again, then again; the constant threat of crippling financial problems; wilderness years being beaten over and over by the likes of Accrington Stanley and Dagenham; in-fighting, ugly backroom battles and even an on-the-pitch brawl that could have cost us dearly.

And then we beat Wigan.

And then we drew Arsenal.

...

And then - We. Beat. Arsenal.

This hasn't sunk in, and I don't think it ever will. Several writers have given their take on this on the marvellous Width of a Post far better than I could, but I'll try, briefly, to give you my own. Firstly I would, of course, have loved to go up to Valley Parade, but living in London this proved too dfficult: evening matches mean at least a day off work - an afternoon to get there and a morning to get back - and at this time of year it just wasn't practical. Well, I told myself, there's something exciting about watching your team live on the telly. It doesn't happen too often to "teams like us". I persuaded my local, the King and Queen (a fabulous proper London boozer serving proper beer and that deserves a great big plug, not least for the pain I think I inflicted on the ears of its regulars on Tuesday night) to show it, and they were happy to, the landlord being a West Ham fan with no desire for the Gunners to do well. I called in a favour from my mate from Hull, who I've watched a couple of times recently, gathered together a Daggers mate and an Everton mate, a reluctant husband and a non-plussed brother-in-law and, lastly, my dad, who had been ordered in no uncertain terms to come and watch it with me rather than inflicting the experience on my mother (who has been known to go to matches, but tends to take her knitting along.)

That day I awoke and was immediately excited, the way kids are when they awake on Christmas morning and immediately reach for the stocking. We made it onto Radio 4 - a predictable little piece implying we were plucky underdogs, but wasn't it exciting for the club? Mark Lawn spoke briefly, and well, about our huge fanbase, commenting that our season tickets were cheap and showing the club (I thought) in a really good light. My excitement grew during the day until my boss finally suggested I just leave early, and we passed the time eating excellent burgers in Byron and comparing score predictions. We arrived at the pub in ebullient moods, convinced our team would put on a great show, that we would lose maybe 2-0, or even 2-1 if we were lucky; we would not be shown up, and it would be a great night.

And it was... because in the 16th minute, Thompson scored!

I can't quite describe the feeling at that moment, though it was quite unreal - I remember leaping up onto the seat and squealing, unaware that (as I was in a London pub) nobody except my assembled motley crew was really joining in. From that moment, my hands were shaking and I couldn't stop them. I simply couldn't believe this was happening. Nor could I believe that, for the rest of the first half, they failed even to equalize. I have seen City play very well on many occasions, but this was spectacular. Our defence was almost faultless; Duke was a star; at the other end Hanson and Wells made going 2-0 up look like a real possibility. We were beating Arsenal. And suddenly, from being a fun evening where I could feel proud and patriotic about my club, it most definitely became about winning - as time ticked away and we got further and further into the second half, we all realised that losing now would be devastating. Losing now would actually hurt. The equalizer, when it came, nearly made me weep - with only two minutes left, a part of me thought they just didn't deserve it! I think my hands were clasped in prayer throughout the entirety of extra time, assuming a heart-breaking, last-minute defeat was inevitable. But it didn't happen.

Then penalties.

We're good at penalties, but they are without a doubt the most stressful thing for a football fan to watch. I still remember Gareth Southgate missing in 1996. I remember feeling totally dejected, utterly bereft.

COME ON CITY!!!

I have no idea if I wound up the rest of the pub, because I shut out everything around me. I remember holding my friend's hand very tightly (sorry, Adam!) and being glad I didn't have a heart condition as I went through unadulterated joy followed by crushing disappointment, then heart-leaping joy again as both teams made those last few moments as agonising as possible. My dad asked later if I'd noticed that at this point most of the pub seemed to be on my side, but I could hear nothing but my own heart beating, see nothing but the screen. And then...

We beat Arsenal.

We. Beat. Arsenal.

For a moment I almost couldn't breathe. All the pent-up tension fell away and I was almost light-headed. I leapt at my friend (um, sorry again), throwing my arms and legs around him so he lifted me into the air. The one bloke in the pub with an Arsenal shirt on glared at me. I thought I was going to burst into tears. My dad, a Yorkshireman not easily parted from his money, was already at the bar buying champagne.

Because we. Beat. Arsenal.

I barely slept that night. I awoke at 3am and actually checked the BBC website to make sure it had really happened. The next day, to my irritation, most headlines and reams of twitter feeds berated Wenger and focussed on how shameful it was to lose to Bradford City, you know, that League 2 team? God bless Wenger for not saying that, but praising our defence in particular. We played well. Arsenal put out a good team - their combined wage bill that night was around £1m; ours was just £7,000. Even better, we'd drawn the biggest crowd in over 50 years, and the upcoming fixtures are set to settle our debts. We also set a new record for penalty shoot-outs - we have won the last nine, the longest uninterrupted run in the history of English football. The following day, buying a pizza in ICCO, a young man who it turned out was an Arsenal fan pointed to my scarf and said "Well done. You guys were just really good."

I've supported Bradford through good times and occasional terrific times, and more recently through very, very bad times. Words cannot sum up my emotions on Tuesday night, so prone to hyperbole are we over lesser things. But I watched my dad as he grinned and poured champagne for everyone around him - the dad who introduced me to this beautiful game, who has stood with me in pouring rain, in icy winds, on cold stone terraces and in shiny new stands in the north, south, east and west of England, cheering on my lovely, lovely Bantams even when all seemed lost, sometimes leaping with delight, sometimes crying with disappointment. He looked deliriously happy, and so was I. My beloved team, and with it my beloved city, could hold its head up high, and for once everyone knew who we were for all the right reasons. Bradford City are back on the map, and, I hope, this is the start of great, great things.

Because we. Beat. Arsenal.

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.

Bradford Calling

In what will probably come as something of a relief to readers of this blog, yesterday's match against the giants that are Burton Albion was postponed - something to do with it being a bit cold - and so I shan’t be moaning about yet another disappointing yet predictable defeat, futilely defensive playing and the fact that we have a perfectly good player on loan from Hull who we persist on playing for ten minute stints only, making me wonder quite what the point of him is.

No, I won’t be writing about that. If by chance you’re interested in my deep thoughts on the subject, carefully withheld from the public until such eminent commentators as Michael Wood had said them first, thus legitimizing them (I’m a girly girl, you see, and as such incapable of forming such opinions by myself) then you can check out the Boy From Brazil website. Here you will find a throwaway remark suggesting that Burton Albion fans who’d rocked up to Bradford expecting to see a thrashing only to find themselves wandering around at a loose end should visit the brilliant National Media Museum to pass the time.

Ahhhh the National Media Museum. Yes. I agree wholeheartedly that this is indeed a place everyone should visit. In my day, of course, it didn’t have so grand a title, being known as the somewhat less catchy “National Museum of Photography, Film and Television”. This was an absolute goldmine of a place for small children at a time when the most exciting thing that could possibly happen to you was to open a packet of crisps to find a piece of paper telling you you’d won another packet of crisps. In particular, they had one state-of-the-art exhibit where you got to pretend you were a newsreader. You sat in a small booth on a non-adjustable chair, so if you were below about 5 feet tall, i.e. if you were a child, all you could see on the playback was your head poking over the top of a large desk. There was an introduction with a sombre voiceover by, I think, Michael Burke, then you had to read an autocue. The choice of news story was, on reflection, perhaps not perfect for the hoards of youngsters who had a go, being a report on the famine in Ethiopia, accompanied by graphic images of dying children. When I went back 15 years later in an attempt to persuade my southern boyfriend that there was more to my city than mushy peas and racial violence (the likes of Wikipedia don’t help when they list Peter Sutcliffe among their “notable Bradfordians” but forget about the likes of Adrian Edmonson and Delius) they were still using the same news story, and around half the other interactive exhibits were out of order.

But what else is there to do in Bradford? Well, lots, apparently. We’ve come a long way since we ran for Capital of Culture in 2003, setting up a “Bradford Embassy” in Trafalgar Square which consisted of free Bombay Mix and posters of Gareth Gates and a bloke handing out leaflets to the handful of people who turned up reminding them that we were quite good at rugby. There’s so much to do in Bradford, in fact, that Visit Bradford has confidently produced a page entitled “50 things to do in Bradford”. Now, OK, quite a lot of these are not actually in Bradford. Many are, predictably, connected to the Bronte sites in Haworth and several basically suggest “leave Bradford and explore the countryside around it which is all pretty and that”. Others are positively clutching at straws: apparently we have a Museum of Reed Organs and Harmoniums, unbelievably the only one if its kind in the UK, and elsewhere in the list they suggest you might want to visit a cemetery or simply eat a curry. But even when you discard those they’ve still come up with a good 30 or so attractions, and they’ve not even mentioned the ice rink, or the fact we have no less than 3 branches of Greggs in Kirkgate alone.
So as Monty Python might say, apart from the National Media Museum, famous serial killers and harmoniums, what has Bradford got to offer us? Well, in case you’re popping up there any time soon, here’s my list of things to see:


1. Saltaire. I could write pages and pages on Saltaire. It’s possibly my favourite place in the UK. Briefly, it was built by a wealthy businessman to house his mill workers in the 19th century, and it’s now a UNESCO world heritage site. The mill itself has been converted into a gallery featuring works of art by David Hockney, with the upper floors selling, somewhat bizarrely, vintage designer furniture. Nice scones in the cafe, too. As for the area itself, the houses are gorgeous, and Roberts Park is lovely. And it has its own brewery. How many places can say all of that?
2. They’re probably right about the curry, but I’m not sure I’d go with their choices. You might want to try the Three Singhs, simply because it has an awesome name (and, incidentally, they used to sponsor Dean Windass). Alternatively head to Omar’s Balti House on Great Horton Road, famous for selling naan breads large enough for the whole of your party to share. I took my husband there once and he commented on how few cats you see on the street in that area, but don’t let that put you off.
3. The National Museum, as I said above. I’m told they’ve mended the buttons on the interactive exhibits so sometimes they actually work now. If you do go, let me know what news story they use these days.
4. Have a mosey round Buttershaw. I promise that, contrary to popular opinion, you’re unlikely to be propositioned by a crack whore if you head over there. It’s all famous now, being where Andrea Dunbar lived and as such being recently used in The Arbor and, maybe more famously, in Rita, Sue and Bob Too. The Guardian even claims we beat LA in some respects these days, and who am I to argue with the Guardian? And who needs Hollywood anyway?
5. Get proper fish and chips. They can’t do them down south. Mother Hubbard’s, a Saturday treat when we couldn’t be arsed to cook and where you got a nice cup of tea with your jumbo haddock, has sadly gone, but there are plenty of other places. You might want to follow this up with a proper pint - Bradford's full of real ale pubs with sensible (i.e. not London) prices.
6. Bradford University’s Peace Museum. Whilst my own institution has a museum full of misshapen human body parts pickled in jars, Bradford has a museum optimistically dedicated to Peace. Awww. Incidentally, their Peace Studies department plays our War Studies Department every year for the Tolstoy cup, annually kicking our war-mongering ass.
7. Keep your eyes open for misspellings and mistakes on signs. Only in Bradford can you get a carpet shop called “Alladins’s Cave” and a corner shop that claims to be “Open 7 days a week. Closed Fridays.”
8. The Bronte Birth Place. OK, so you can visit the all-singing, all-dancing Bronte Parsonage Museum in Haworth, but few people realise the Brontes were actually born in Thornton in Bradford. When I was a kid this building housed an underwhelming tearoom, but now they've jumped on the commercial bandwagon and for a small fee they actually let you in to look at reconstuctions of what it might have looked like in the old days, sort of like a pre-Victorian version of the pretend rooms at MFI.
9. Architecture. Carefully hidden amongst the Brutalist monstrosities of the city centre there’s some amazing Victorian architecture, from the Town Hall to Listers Mill, from Cartwright Hall to the Wool Exchange (which now houses a branch of Waterstones), from the Midland Hotel to the fabulous Alhambra Theatre and of course the Cathedral.
10. Valley Parade. Home of Bradford City. Of course. I’m sorry, but it had to be done.

So there you are. In this age of austerity, I hope I might have persuaded you to consider West Yorkshire for your summer getaway this year.

The Only Way Is Up

It is a truth universally acknowledged - or hypothesised by me, anyway - that when things are all running smoothly and you feel you can handle anything Life throws at you, Life muscles in and bites you on the arse, slaps you round the face, then kicks you headlong into the gutter before sniggering and sauntering away.

So I've temporarily locked life away in a tamper-proof box and am resorting to late-night blogging and, of course, football until I can be arsed to go and open the lid again.

So forget all this World Cup mallarky; that's old news. The real thing kicks off in a matter of days, and I shall soon be pootling off to Torquay to watch for myself. Oh yes, it doesn't get any better than that.

And my self-worth did peep round the doorway and toy with the idea of maybe moving back in for a while when, having sent a letter months ago to Bradford's fanzine with this very suggestion, I read this on City's website today. In case you care (I have it on authority that at least one of you does...) they are bringing back the strip worn in 1911, the year the Mighty Bantams won the FA Cup. The replica strip is going to be worn at cup matches this season, to commemorate the days when we were, um, good. Admittedly it's hard not to dwell on the fact that the reason the anniversary is so important is that we've done pretty much bugger all since, but all the same...

What would make it an even better commemoration, though, would be if "Speirs" could be printed on the back of the fans' shirts. Jimmy Speirs scored the winning goal that day. He was killed in 1917, at the Battle of Passhendale.

I received an email the other day from an old friend who'd joined the army straight from school. The email said "I'm now a banker, which is a sell-out, but it's better that being shot at." It sure is, and on reading it I felt flooded with almost physical relief that he was safe and well. I'm soppy like that; I'm an idealist; I'm naive; I'm basically an idiot.

And I am City to the core.

And I don't understand why, 100 years on from the victory of which we're so proud, we're still sending men to remote parts of the world to shoot the crap out of each other and blow one another up.

Oh well, here's to this season - and the only way is up.

Bind Us Together

Hmm, so ending the first day of the working week with those immortal words of one Stephen Patrick Morrissey - "In my life/why do I give valuable time/to people who don't care if I live or die?" - running through my head is not a positive sign of things to come. (The answer, by the way, is normally "because you get paid for it.") And now I'm sitting brooding in a corner, Tears for Fears providing appropriate mood music, pouring hot water onto a mango teabag and wondering how many times I can do this before it stops tasting of mango. (Not that it especially tasted of mango in the first place...)

I could of course go for a deep and meaningful walk, secretly wondering if anybody will bother to come and look for me, but they won't; and anyway, it's pissing it down; and I've already been running tonight; and my tea would get cold.

So...

I'm going to think of ways to work Bradford City into my impending AKC exam instead.

And everywhere I look opportunities present themselves!

OK, so I probably won't get very far working it into an essay on Heresy. I can't think of even the most tenuous link that might do anything other than bemuse the examiners. But that's OK - I have my fun cut out of me already there trying to think up some cow definitions for Apollinarianism and Arianism. Oh yes. You'll see it here first.

And then, as I pretended to read Durkheim, elaborated little analogies started to form in my mind. Durkheim, you see, was the bloke who said that rituals were "designed to elicit, maintain and reproduce certain mental states among participating groups" (that's a quote, that!) Can you apply this to the (unswervingly optimistic) fanbase at Valley Parade? Damn right you can.

Oh and before you point out that this is not some new discovery, OK, OK, I know it isn't. My book - yes I'm reading a BOOK for this exam. Get me! - even uses football as an example of "the sacred in secular society". But to put me in a little perspective: I have an English degree. I'm qualified merely to read Durkheim and compliment him on his flowing sentence structure. Except I can't even do that, because he didn't even write in English. I'm the person who pointedly read "The Communist Manifesto" on the exercise bike in Fitness First, not because I understood it, but because I delighted in the irony of this little tableau. I know enough about sociology to snigger when F describes his A Level Sociology lessons as "Here's a picture of Marx. Now colour it in." But that's about it.

I do know, though, that Bradford has an unusually high turnout for a beleagured (by which I mean "rubbish") club, packing out a stadium of Premiership proportions every other week, and taking coachloads of supporters down to the most Godforsaken areas of Britain on the Saturdays in between. What binds them together?

I'm sure studies have been done - and when I have time I shall look for them - that look at class, and adversity, and all of those sorts of things, and the turbulent history of Bradford as a City as well as a Club probably does a lot to bring them together under that one corrugated iron roof in the name of football just as much as the tantalising power of the sport itself. But my book (same book - I'm only reading one. Oh come on, I'm not THAT keen!) gives some examples of events that have become "sacred", amongst them the death of Diana and September 11th. At Bradford, it was 11th May 1985, and it was the Bradford Fire.

56 people lost their lives in horrific circumstances when a stand caught fire and burned to a cinder in a mere 4 minutes. Now I'm normally cheerful (um, OK, that's pushing it. Shall we say "aiming at humour"?) on this blog, but it needs saying: people remember Hillsborough (and rightly so), and Heysel (at which 39 died); people forget about Bradford. Unless you're a fire safety officer (my husband watched the video of the disaster in Fire Safety Training) it isn't necessarily something you'd know about. But whole families were erased in an instant.The youngest to die was a boy of 11; the eldest a man of 86. Now, after every match, if you pop round the back of the stadium to have a peek at the simple, understated memorial you will not be alone. People pay their respects there week after week, and flowers are still left there. Silences are held each year; church services commemorate the dead on the anniversary. The club, despite its own financial problems, raises thousands every year for the burns unit at Bradford Royal Infirmary. And in the area directly around the stadium you don't generally find the undercurrent of racial resentment that can at times plague other parts of the city. In Manningham, local shopkeepers and residents, mainly of Asian origin, flocked to help, taking victims into their homes, making tea, letting people use their phones.

So yes, football does bind people together and instil a sense of community through its very power. But so does tragedy. I intend to write about both, if I get the chance, but in the meantime, I probably ought to stop sulking and be grateful for what I have. May God bless the victims of the Bradford City fire, and, of course, may God bless Bradford City.

Oo Areeee Yer?

Who ARE we?

Seriously?

You don't know?

We're Bradford City! The Mighty Bantams! Stuart McCall's Bradford Army!

Ring any bells?

No?

That's probably because we're now languishing somewhere towards the lower end of League 2. For the Americans (and the less sportily inclined - Oi Frank, you there?!) who read this blog, I should point out that "League 2" is what the FA et al kindly call what should rightly be termed "Division 4", to make the likes of us feel better. In British football, we have the Premiership, where Manchester United, Liverpool and all those other teams with fanbases far beyond those fair cities bask in glory and vastly inflated wages; then we have the Championship, where embittered sides jostle with one another for the much-covetted prize of promotion, that they may too sleep with each others' wives and sip champagne in far-flung jacuzzis; then we have League One, which, confusingly, used to be the name of the Premiership, before it was downgraded to the Championship, before it became the new name for the Third Division (are you with me so far?) League One is full of plucky underdogs, championed by news presenters and TV chefs (Delia's precious Norwich are here... but not for long, if the current table is anything to go by!) and those clubs who are down on their luck (Leeds United. Oh, how the mighty have fallen!) League One is actually where the interesting football happens - often nail-biting games, a whiff of violence mingled with fried onions hanging in their air, cold, seatless terraces open to the elements...

...

And then there's us. Are you still here? Here we are, in League 2, previously Divsion 4... well, you get the picture. I'd like to say League 2 was also full of plucky underdogs. But that would be lying. League 2 is, for the most part, a little bit sad, both in terms of the level of football played and in terms of the attitude of some of the players - a sort of listlessness tinged, on occasions, with simmering resentment. League 2 has much of the menace of League 1 (as my mate says "this is proper football - people get hurt") - without, unfortunately, any of the skill.

Take my experience at one of my beleagured team's matches as an example. Aldershot, that bastion of unity in a faceless, squaddie town, are currently languishing in League 2, though, it must be said, doing so with somewhat more finesse and rather higher up the table than the Mighty Bantams. I went to Aldershot last year and felt they were trying to replicate a sort of small-scale Millwall experience for their visitors. There were police everywhere, and a minute or so before the game their fans (and the terraces were packed) started banging on the stands and chanting "Aldershot Call The Shots". This carried on. For the entire game. That's over two hours, assuming they didn't stop at half time - and I'm not convinced they did. The hardcore amongst them carried on doggedly throughout. An element of polyphony was achieved only when our goalie was approaching the ball after a failed attempt on their part to actually score anything - which happened quite a lot. On such occasions a small, adventurous group strayed from the main chant long enough to shout "You're Shit! Uh!" at us.

So there's the menance. But what about the incompetence? Well, I'm a Welfare Adviser. I'm a Welfare Adviser whose sport of choice is cricket. I play the violin, sing, and write plays. Whenever I watch the Bantams I find myself frantically shouting "Get in a space! Where are you?" And that, my friends, says it all.

I shouldn't be so mean. The average age of our team looks to be about 16, after all, so I presume they have to fit in their training around their maths homework. But still, it doesn't bode well, and perhaps it explains why, despite our colourful, exhuberant and (some might say deludedly) loyal fan base, we are still doing so horrifically badly.

It's true, and it's sad, because, fan-wise, we're still attracting some of the biggest crowds in lower-league football to both home and away fixtures. We even managed to take a 200-odd crowd to Torquay a few weeks back, and who in their rights mind would travel from Bradford to Torquay in the middle of winter (or, indeed, at any time?) This is a team that went on an open-top bus tour through the wonderful city of Bradford, attracting massive crows, and even released a DVD called "We Are Stayin' Up!" when they narrowly missed relegation from the Premiership, beating Liverpool (I kid you not!) in 2000. I still remember the "Bye Bye Wombles" posters - which (oh ye of little faith) I thought a tad optimistic as the time, but we did of course wave bye bye to Wimbledon that day, and look what happened to them! Oh how the Not Always Totally Crap have fallen.

And this week we waved bye bye to Stuart McCall, a previously fine midfielder who's led us, admittedly with an impressive lack of success, since 2007. And now we are floundering more than ever, if that's possible. Not waving, not even drowning. We sunk long ago.

I'll tell you what sums up the current state we're in, and that's two defeats by...wait for it... Barnet. I kid you not. That's Barnet, the team that plays on a sloped pitch that would shame most schools; a team whose fans - the smattering that turn up - act as though they've accidentally taken a wrong turning on the way to the theatre, but don't want to be rude and slip out during the interval. Barnet fans are more like cricket fans are in 1920s short stories - they clap politely at every shockingly-aimed kick - balls can sail off metres above the goal, and the true Barnet fan's response will be "Oh, bad luck!" To my great amusement, while this was all going on, the Bradford fans, who'd come down en masse for the occasion (there were more of us than them, crammed onto stone terraces) were keeping themselves amused by hurling abuse at a giant bee - Barnet's mascot, Mr Bumble - to the tune of Guide Me Oh Thy Great Redeemer, cleverly amended to "What the fucking, what the fucking, what the fucking hell is that?"

A good point well made, I feel. But we still lost 2-1. Shame? That doesn't even begin to describe it.

We sighed with relief at today's tedious 0-0 draw against Grimsby, and trudged back to prepare for next week's battle... and dangerous mixing of the counties... against Accrington Stanley.

Who are they? I hear you cry.

Exactly.