Some get strong, some get strange; sooner or later it all gets real...
FA CUP RETROSPECTIVE 1995 The aftermath
One of our regular contributors, whose name we cannot reveal, was so upset by the day's events that he ended up on a pub crawl all the way up Dalton Road and into Greengate St. The story of this Saturday evening is a particularly sordid and nasty affair. But we felt that it merited inclusion here, for it shows how football affects all our lives to a greater or lesser extent... It was all I could do to roll round a couple of pubs and commiserate with a few of the lads. 4-0 wasn't fair was it? If Barrow had come at them more in the first half they would have scored once or twice and it would have been a different story. But now everyone will see the result and think it was a walkover. We all thought that to hold them for an hour at 0-0 was a really great performance. We really got going by the time we wandered into the Greengate. And it's only 60p a pint in there. So we started knocking it back like nobody's business. After all, you could get plastered for little more than a fiver, and boy, did we feel like getting plastered. So we'd sorted out the team's tactics, got together a plan for what Hezza should have done, got promotion to the Conference, and we were about to regain our rightful place in the League when the landlord called time and we had to drink up. So we left the club and all my mates staggered off to their homes. I didn't feel like going home. I didn't much feel like going anywhere. Maybe it was the beer. Or maybe I was just tired after all the emotion of the match. Anyway, I sat down on the kerb outside the Greengate and put my head in my hands. And I just started thinking about the way things change. About the time when Barrow were the League club and Wigan Athletic were the non-League club. And now the positions are reversed and they knock four past us and we have to go back now to the UniBond fixtures. What is it? Boston at home next week, then Accrington and Frickley away. And this is our third season in the UniBond. It's beginning to feel as though we'll never get out of this damn league. Well, the tears just came. One at first, trickling down my cheek. Then another, and another, until I was sobbing gently. I pulled my knees up to my head so no one could see that I was crying. I must have been a pathetic sight. More like a down and out than a sad, miserable Barrow supporter caught up by my own emotions. That's when she came up to me. I didn't notice her approach. The first thing I knew was when I felt her hand on my shoulder. I looked into a gorgeous pair of doleful blue eyes set in an exquisite face which was fringed by fair hair stylishly cut into a short bob. Those eyes! They were mesmerising. Ringed with black mascara they seemed to draw me in with their care and compassion. Then her dulcet voice spoke to me... "I understand what it's like to be alone and abandoned." She had a really posh accent. Home Counties cut glass. Oh Cowps! It was her! The saintly Princess on her one woman crusade to defend all the hurt, damaged and suffering people in the country. Finding people who needed to be loved and holding their hands and talking to them for half an hour just understanding them and giving them the love they needed. And tonight she'd come to Barrow. She'd probably seen the result on the teleprinter and driven straight up here in her Mercedes, recognising that there was only one town in the country on that Saturday night where so many people would need her sympathy and understanding. And I was one of those people. She stroked my forehead with her soft, white hand. "There, there. No need to cry. Here." She gave me a Kleenex to wipe my eyes. I gave my nose a good blow as well. "Now, tell me all about it. How did you come to be abandoned here." So I told her everything. About losing League status so unfairly, the struggles of the non-League years, the dawnings of hope, first with Vic Halom, then with the great Ray Wilkie, winning the Trophy, then everything so cruelly snatched from us, then with the great man passing away so early and so tragically, the betrayals of King and Heathcote, and now, a third dawning of hope with Stephen Vaughan. Another promised resurgence. But would it last? Or would events conspire against us again, as they have so many times before? Then today's game. A real downer. "I understand how you must feel," she said, "I too have suffered. I was abandoned by my mother, exploited by my father, and rejected by my husband. In desperate cries for help and attention I have succumbed to bulimia and I have mutilated myself." I could feel her intense concentration beaming into me. She had this way of looking at me with her head slightly tilted so that those beautiful eyes seemed to be looking up all the time. "Now I wander the streets at night to comfort the desperate and the lonely. All they need is someone and I love doing it. I hold their hands, talk to them, tell them that everyone is on their side. Whatever helps." I could feel myself falling under her spell. No wonder our leading politicians are bewitched by her. Her eyes were just so beautiful, so compelling. "The biggest disease this world suffers from in this day and age is the disease of people feeling unloved. I know that I can give love for a minute, for half an hour, for a day, for a month, but I can give." She could love for a month all right; in fact thirty seconds would have been enough. I was going to invite her back to my place for a coffee, but before I could open my mouth, she spoke again. "Come on," she said gently, "Let me help you to your feet." She held out her delicate hand and I grasped it like a drowning man grasping for a straw. She helped me to stand up and I was so dazzled by her beauty and her endless legs. She'd made me feel that I was the only man in the whole world with the sensitivity to understand her dilemma, her sadness, and selfless desire to give unconditional love to the multitudes of sad lonely people in this country. "Don't worry, it will be all right. I know you lost today, but you did your best and it wasn't worth it anyway. Just watch the third round draw on Monday." and with that she melted away into the night like an angel of mercy whose mission was over. And it was true. "Torquay United or Walsall will play... Wigan Athletic!" So no Premier League club. Just more Endsleigh League dross. She'd been right. We were better off out of the cup anyway. Issue 024 - January 1996