Close Quarters

Neil Harman

Description

Close Quarters is the inspirational, against the odds story of Wycombe Wanderers, the poorest club in League One, and how it shapes into a side that sustains a nine-month challenge for promotion before the global pandemic stops the team in its tracks. When the season restarts, Wycombe finds itself in the play-offs behind closed doors, an unprecedented opportunity through unprecedented turmoil. Led by the longest-serving boss in professional football, the charismatic Gareth Ainsworth, this becomes an astonishing campaign, witnessed up close by award-winning sportswriter Neil Harman thanks to his special access. Harman gets to the heart of the team, joins them in the dressing room, on the coach, in the medical room and in team meetings to chart this unparalleled challenge. He gets the inside story of Ainsworth's rise from a working-class upbringing on the back streets of Blackburn, through a rumbustious playing career, to a one-club manager moulding Wycombe while dealing with an American takeover that could make the difference between the club's life and death. Close Quarters is a book that resonates, not just with Wycombe supporters, but fans of underdog clubs everywhere.

Sujets

• Buckinghamshire

Informations

• Publié par: Pitch Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 17 août 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781785317156
• Langue: English

Extrait

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2020
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
Neil Harman, 2020
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Any oversight will be rectified in future editions at the earliest opportunity by the publisher.
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A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library
Print ISBN 9781785317170
eBook ISBN 9781785317156
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Contents
Introduction
1. The Madness Awaits
2. The Boys from Bolton
3. The Life of Darius
4. When Wycombe went Top of the Table
5. Balderdash
6. Going Dutch
7. The Jump Start
8. Up (and Down) for the Cup
9. The Peaks of Performance
10. Mind the Gape
11. A Singular Goalkeeper
12. The Rock and the Glue
13. Red, White, Black, Yellow and Cerise
14. The Disciples
15. The Kashket Chronicles
16. A Matter of Life and Death
17. Mr Barton s Boys
18. They Think It s All Over
19. It Is Now
20. Fasts, Philosophies and Variables
21. A Game of Integrity
22. The Fourth Quarter
Introduction
IT had to be a team that wore blue. Nothing political, mind. I had been that odd one out in my road, at school and on the local playing fields, wearing the Manchester City kit of the 60s, imagining myself as Colin Bell or Francis Lee. There was something about the colouring that was so distinct.
I was lucky enough to report on my home-town club Southend United - the Blues - and cover Billericay Town when they won the FA Vase in 1976 and 1977 wearing blue. A career graduation offered the opportunity to become the Blues writer on the Sports Argus , delivering a full page every weekend on Birmingham City in the days of the beloved Frank Worthington, Colin Todd and Archie Gemmill. Then I moved to Manchester, where Maine Road was a regular work stop and I got to meet Colin Bell and Francis Lee.
At that time, Trevor Francis, the first 1m English player, had moved to City and manager John Bond regularly dispensed champagne at press conferences before the club entered another of its twilight zones. Bond resigned, City were relegated and I befriended the new boss Billy McNeill, a hero forever in my eyes. Green became a second-favourite colour.
It was when I was collaborating on a book with Harry Findlay, the gambler, who regaled me with stories about how much supporting Wycombe Wanderers had played a part in his teenage years that an idea sprung into my head. It wasn t a novel one. Hunter Davies wrote the acclaimed The Glory Game , spending a season with Tottenham Hotspur in the 1970s and, contemporarily, my old pal Michael Calvin had done the same with Millwall when he penned the excellent Family .
Wycombe Wanderers, though. Would anyone care? Could it be a sell? I d met Gareth Ainsworth the manager a few times, chatting sport and stuff. We lived 15 minutes apart and would see each other in church or at the local Caffe Nero. He definitely wasn t your archetypal football manager.
I checked on the club and it was clear they had something disarming about them. A proud non-league history, an FA Cup semi-final in 2001 when they lost to Liverpool, a cup tie a few years back at Tottenham Hotspur when they should have won but lost deep into injury time and what seemed like an annual flirtation with either promotion or relegation.
There was the penalty shootout loss in the 2015 League Two play-off final at Wembley against my Southend. Wycombe didn t appear to do plain sailing. They were also skint.
Martin O Neill had managed them, so too had John Gregory, John Gorman, Peter Taylor, Paul Lambert, Lawrie Sanchez, Tony Adams and Gary Waddock, which was a pretty esteemed list. I chatted with O Neill before setting out. I loved it, absolutely loved it, he said of his five years in charge. I was actually late with my application and the job had been offered to Kenny Swain who was at Crewe at the time. But he changed his mind, I was interviewed and took the job.
O Neill was 37 when he was appointed, led the club back to the Football League from the old Conference, and then into Division Two (now League One) after winning the Division Three (League Two) play off final at Wembley against Preston North End. O Neill s side also won the FA Trophy twice, in 1991, his first full season as the manager, and 1993.
Brian Clough used to say that it didn t matter what trophy it was, it could be the Anglo-Scottish Cup or the European Cup, it meant you had won something . All the Wycombe teams I managed had a special bond.
From a distance, I sense Gareth has the same rapport with his squad I had. He has excellent charisma. He may not look like your average manager but what he s done has been absolutely terrific. He s been able to attract players while working under a real handicap. Players want to play for Wycombe and I m sure it s because they want to play for him. And it is a lovely club.
The fear in starting something like this was that nothing would happen, the team would be average, the season free of incident, the players failed to engage, the storylines were few and far between and the writer would have to overindulge in imagination. Trust me, I didn t. There were occasions though when there was a distinct blurring between non-fiction and fiction.
I am indebted to Jane from Pitch Publishing for coming on board with the concept, who helped shape its structure and prodded me along. Andy Rowland of Prime Media Images has provided most of the pictures, the others I took with my iPhone. Thanks, of course, to Duncan Olner who designed the cover, Michelle Grainger who edited the book and Graham Hales who organised the picture section.
Along the way I have met and become great mates with so many terrific people. Matt Cecil and Conor Shaw from the club s media department were exceptional from the word go and I have forgiven their insistence on keeping me abreast of the goal flashes from Roots Hall rather too smugly for my liking.
These introductions are inevitably tricky in case you miss someone out, so could I please thank with the utmost sincerity the staff, management, executive and matchday volunteers at Wycombe Wanderers FC for going out of their way every day to make what was an historic and unforgettable season that bit more special.
As for the players, manager, the coaching staff and all at the training ground that became a second home (a special shout out to chef extraordinaire Ahmed Maaref) there s little I can say about them that they didn t say for themselves. They are a truly remarkable bunch of people who, in the year I was side by side with them, did truly remarkable things.
Wycombe is, indeed, a lovely club.
Neil Harman,
31 July 2020
The Madness Awaits
THE morning of Thursday, 25 July 2019 had broken and found the United Kingdom in a similarly shattered state. For three years the old country had been up to its nostrils in divisive angst and days like this compounded both misery and the loss of a common sense of direction.
A deep blue British sky was usually to be cherished but the heat was becoming too oppressive. The mercury this day would near 100 F, causing overhead railway cables to crackle, lines buckle, points fail and thus services were cancelled, concourses choked, thoroughfares clogged and buses rammed.
Queues formed everywhere. One of the longest was outside a London lido where even if you were patient enough to make it through the throng, stripped off and entered the cooling waters, there was only enough elbow room to bob up and down as if you were impersonating a buoy.
Rather than acknowledge that this shared keeping of heads above water was necessary to contend with the Brexit mayhem ahead, Boris Johnson was characteristically late to the Downing Street podium and welcomed his first full day as Prime Minister as the herald of ambrosia for all the UK s citizens.
This cuffing of reality was to become a common theme in the months ahead, on the football field almost more than in the corrosive chamber of politics. Particularly on one football field in Buckinghamshire.
The day s bananas football news was topped by manic scenes from north London where a couple of knife-wielding car thieves attempted to steal the 90,000 Mercedes SUV of Arsenal s Mesut Ozil (with him still in it) before his team-mate Sead Kolasinac leapt from the passenger seat and took them on with his fists as a quivering Ozil sought sanctuary in a nearby Turkish restaurant.
Nothing quite that exciting was happening in High Wycombe, although there was a bit of a buzz developing. An animated group of young men in light and dark blue football kit filed into a room of balsa walls and splintered window frames where the shade was provided by brown-striped curtains that once hung in a household 20 miles away.
Gareth Ainsworth, the manager of League One Wycombe Wanderers, grew weary of complaints that his players couldn t be expected to work on deployment of forces if they couldn t see what was being explained to them. Any early afternoon sunlight fell directly onto the flat screen at the end of the room, rendering it impossible to define shapes and forms.
Ainsworth s request for spend on curtains was met with the Old Mother Hubbard shoulder shrug that had become the cash-starved Wycombe board s go-to response to housekeeping requests. They said No and insisted this was prudent control of the c