Cod Almighty | Diary

Let time bring the glory

9 September 2016

Retro Diary writes: Britain’s best-loved comedian of all time was born Eric Bartholomew, but changed his surname to that of his place of birth - Morecambe. He never rejected his Lancashire home – indeed he was very proud of it. But following the football team was never a serious proposition because they were silly non-League minnows at the time.

Later in life and living in Harpenden, Eric’s son Gary suggested that he and his dad might start supporting a 'proper' football team. Luton and Watford were the two closest to where they lived, and they tossed a coin. Luton won, so that was it - they started going to watch Luton, and mercilessly took the piss out of Watford thereafter, based on nothing more than heads or tails.

Eric Morecambe went on to become Luton Town’s most celebrated standard-bearer and cheerleader (indeed I can’t really remember another), and eventually went onto the board at the club, at the same, and for the only time in his life, growing a rather feeble moustache. "It’s a football moustache", he would say, with a wiggle of his glasses. "Eleven-a-side".

Then in 2007, Morecambe FC entered the Football League. The first league meeting between Luton and Morecambe was in the fourth division in December 2008.

Although 24 years after Eric’s death, both teams were quick to claim the comedian as their own. The fans had a lot of fun with the idea, with some of Morecambe’s following turning up in identical fancy dress as 'The Erics'. The two managers, Mick Harford and Sammy McIlroy, also did their post-match interviews dressed in flat caps and trademark dark-rimmed glasses. To this day, nobody really knows what they said about the game – it was just too surreal to listen properly. As we stand today, with Luton and Morecambe sitting first and second in the same - our - division, we wonder whether Eric might have had a pang of guilt about deserting his hometown club.

In the division above ours, much to my dismay, at no point yet have AFC Wimbledon occupied a higher league position than their bastard spawn, Franchise Scum. But that day will surely come, and what a day that will be. At one point it was even suggested that Luton Town might move home to Milton Keynes, 22 miles up the road. The Luton fans, to their credit, gave the idea short shrift.

Only 14 miles away from Luton the other way, however, is Stevenage, another bunch of contemptible minnows popping up late in the day to try to upstage the bigger club. Indeed Stevenage won the season’s first meeting 2-1 just two weeks ago with a winner in the sixth minute of injury time, to give the Hatters an early season humbling. If it all happened now, do we think that Eric and son in their Harpenden home would have tossed up between Luton, Watford and Stevenage?

Glory-seeking makes you a hostage to fortune. Indeed, if you wait long enough it simply must go wrong

If there’s a moral to any of this, it’s that glory-seeking is a very risky business. It makes you a hostage to fortune; indeed it’s worse than that - if you wait long enough it simply must go wrong. Best to keep the location constant, and let time bring the glory. Let history, not geography, do the work. But we knew that. Unless, of course, you live in Milton Keynes, in which case going by geography to find your team would make you a wanker. You can’t win a marathon by taking a short-cut through the houses.

Tomorrow Town travel to the very same Luton - a team who played in the top tier until 1992, and won the League Cup in 1988. More recently in 2008 they suffered the ignominy of a 30-point reduction, which completely wasted a whole year of their history and dumped them out of the League.

Despite their pedigree they have a rather small ground, including a wooden Main Stand dating from 1922 which is way past its sell-by date. Views from the away end are largely obstructed by pillars, and if you’re much over 5'9", the seats in there are so close to the ones in front you literally can’t sit down. The club has a perennial problem formulating a business forecast because their ground capacity is so small, and there’s no room for expansion because of the proximity of housing. One side of the ground contains their 'Bobbers Stand', which is barely a stand at all, and needs a huge piece of netting to stop endless balls going into the road. The away turnstile is an extraordinary arrangement, being no more than a gap squeezed into a row of terraced houses.

I know, much of that sounds sort of familiar doesn't it? But somehow much worse – and yes, their fans are neurotic too. They are passionate, arsy and sometimes a bit out of control, but thoroughly understand what football is all about. And they certainly need football, because Luton itself is a bona fide shithole. This year, Reddit readers declared Luton to be "the worst place in Britain". It has been comedically described as "a large hole in Bedfordshire created in 1950 when a refuse truck overturned". It is said that it has "no known language". It is "Hiroshima with a Co-op". If we’re honest, Luton is really the town that should have been called 'Grimsby'.

Which, when it comes to football, let’s face it, is sometimes exactly what you want. Luton fans really know how to get stuck into a fixture in a way that some of the League’s newbies plainly don’t. Tomorrow’s is a proper game of football between embattled veterans who’ve been to both ends of the scale, Luton even more so than us. We both have small but unique, characterful, flawed old grounds, whose support is filled with toxic levels of latent anxiety. In all, this meeting is one of the basement’s more meaningful, and I think lovelier, 'ordinary' fixtures, if nuance is your thing. A great prospect for tomorrow, which would be made even better if we could do 'em.

We must enjoy such games while we can, as both clubs seem on the brink of solving their ground problems, Luton, at least, with real style. The plans for their new town centre Power Court stadium look really smart, and as far as I can tell, seem to be agreed upon by everyone, which is something we here still can’t seem to achieve. Town's project is at last creating the first stirrings of optimism after many years.

I still think though, that with plush new stadia for our two teams - although we must, we are told, move with the times - something precious will also be lost. Without entering the ground through a hole in some terraced houses, Luton, especially, just won’t seem like Luton any more. Indeed it may make the town itself seem even more of a dump. Actually forget that, it’s not possible.

For us, Shaun Tuton would like to play despite a slight ankle problem, but it seems likely the boss will order him to rest. Browne, McAllister and Jones are out, but Kayden Jackson is available again. James McKeown will start despite now being pushed by young buck Dean Henderson, a keeper who believes he "can grow to become the best in the world". Didn’t we all at nineteen.

Luton are talking like they’ve won the league already, and the ref has the made-up-sounding name of Darren Deadman.

UTM