The last post - blow the bugle or should it be a fanfare!

So, after blogging for over a year now I reach the last post. Blow the bugle for the last post or maybe it should be a fanfare.

Before rounding things up, I want to thank my youngest daughter Morag and her dog Dougal for helping me to promote this project. From the first time I saw it I have loved the ‘crazy baldheads’ logo that she designed. Special thanks also to Mo for designing the cover for this book.

The Road to Wembley from Scotland t-shirt worn by the designer

Barking Mad! Dougal shows off the crazy baldheads

It is in this post I will try to make sense of what it was all about. There were so many reasons for doing this project and the experience ticked every box. I met some wonderful people, I saw some great football matches and I have now completed one of my lifetime ambitions and written a book.

Football is essentially a silly game. As my father in law John ‘Johnny Boy’ Phillips is wont to say ‘22 grown men kicking a bit of leather around a field and people getting excited about that. Ridiculous’. And of course in many ways he is right. When he was a working man in the Post Office he used to often say to me ‘imagine if every time I sold a stamp all my colleagues descended on me kissing and cuddling me. If a footballer scores a goal he is only doing his job’. His dislike of the sport is, in my opinion, borne out of a lack of understanding of what makes football tick. So what makes the beautiful game so compelling and enables it to dominate the lives of so many people? I offer three possible answers: (i) the sport itself is both beautiful and magnificently simplistic; (ii) football clubs are at the heart of communities and provide a focus and a sense of identity for many and (iii) being a team sport football brings people together and promotes friendship. This is what makes a silly game wonderful. I have seen all of these three things in trumps on the Road to Wembley from Scotland.

When I was growing up in Teesside and then later in Midlothian, football was everywhere. My peers and I played it all the time. In the street and in the fields - in two a side bounce games or in organised matches. All you needed to play football was any old ball and any expanse of land. The game is simple. You do not need expensive equipment or a costly subscription to a sports club to play it or excel in it. Most of the superstar players come from very humble backgrounds. The scorer of the winning goal in the FA Cup Final, Aaron Ramsey, emerged from a very ordinary upbringing in Caerphilly in Wales. Although his Arsenal team mates are now highly paid international footballers from across the globe most of them come from working class backgrounds as do most Premier League players. As everyone (everyone I know at least) has played football at some stage of their life, everyone can appreciate the beauty and athletic skill when the game is played well. Football is art. To reach a stage where you become a semi professional footballer you must be pretty good at the game and even if you are playing in the lower echelons, you will be on occasions capable of great play. Hence when you see Oli Leedham of Dunston UTS flying down the wing with trickery and pace it can be as exhilarating as seeing Manchester City’s Sergio Aguerro strutting his stuff. I have seen some truly beautiful artistic performances by talented players at every stage on the Road to Wembley from Scotland.

Following the non league clubs in the qualifying rounds of the FA Cup, I was struck by how closely linked the clubs are to their local communities. Penrith, Dunston UTS, Skelmersdale United, Chorley and Spennymoor Town all provide the local residents with a sporting event to watch every week and also give a focus to the community. As the Moors from the Brewery Field progressed in the FA Cup, they helped put their town on the map by attracting national media coverage. As I have observed very recently in the case of Skelmersdale United when the local football club are failing the local community rally round to provide support. As the rounds progressed I suspected that this sense of community my not be as obvious but I was pleasantly surprised to note that bigger teams such as Lincoln City, Milton Keynes Dons, Burnley and Manchester City all serve their community and give their locale a sense of identity. MK Dons were perhaps the biggest shock in this respect as they are a new club who have been dismissed as the ‘franchise club’ but they are proud of where they play and the town that they represent. In an era where social isolation is a real issue it is genuinely heart warming that football can help to bring people together to support a local team representing the local community.

I have always enjoyed the team aspect of football. When playing I loved the fact that your pals would do their best for you to achieve a common aim and in turn you would reciprocate. Playing for the same team promotes friendship and some of my best and longest lasting friendships have been forged through football. The football ‘team’ mentality goes beyond the game. What I have found on the ‘Road to Wembley from Scotland’ is that there is a wider football fraternity. A promotion of friendship stemming from a shared interest. I have acquired some new pals along the way over the last 11 months on the road. Fellow Road to Wembley-ers Peter Tissington and Andy Phillips will no doubt be long lasting friendships. On most days since November I have been in touch with Nick Hedges and Colin Butler from MK via the internet and I am looking forward to catching up with these pals at a MK Dons match next season. In the last few weeks the friendship shown to me by Kev Panther of Skelmersdale has been astonishing. Many many thanks for helping me to put the book together Kev and I will forever be in your debt. The Road to Wembley from Scotland has also given me the opportunity to renew some old friendships and it has been great to see the likes of Howard ‘Howie Baby’ Nimmo, Jim Morrison, Derek Poots, Joe Black, Kevin Oliver and John Rees along the journey. The football fraternity also helped me out when I have struggled for tickets. The fraternity can also be a real focus for good in the world. The ‘Fists up for Frankie’ campaign for the Geordie toddler Frankie Sherwood stricken with a life limiting disease was both touching and poignant in the way that the football community in the far north of England supported the cause.

In the opening pages of this book I advised that I hoped to also learn how the game is evolving in England and find out about the Scots influence on the game south of the border.

The game is in rude health at grass roots / non league level in England. The football pyramid is now well established and the ambitious community based teams can aspire to move through the tiers and eventually, through success on the field, progress to the upper echelons of the game. The FA Cup provides a unique opportunity for football clubs at all levels to have a one-off crack at performing beyond their ranking. The true romance of the cup is that on any given day a non league club could knock out a Premier League club. David can defeat Goliath given the right circumstances. I feel truly honoured to have been at Turf Moor in February when Lincoln City knocked Burnley out of the cup. The evolution of the non league scene in England is being driven by the enthusiasm and dedication of the officers and volunteers of the clubs. I have seen many of them in action and met many of them on ‘The Road’ and I salute them all. The pyramid system here in Scotland has been imposed on the clubs and many (the ‘junior’ teams in particular) are not keen to embrace the opportunities that a hierarchical system provides. As a result the non league scene up here seems a bit more stale. Maybe if I live long enough I will see the Scottish pyramid embed and develop, become more inclusive and promote the sort of vibrancy that I witnessed in Penrith, Dunston, Skelmersdale, Spennymoor and Lincoln.

Investigating the Scottish influence on the beautiful game in England has been fascinating. It was such fun unearthing the massive influence that Scots had on the game about 100 years ago. The Scots came down and helped to develop football south of the border. I am indebted to Clifford Vagnolini for the information about his hard-as-nails grandfather Joe McGhie who helped Brighton achieve success in 1910 and it was with teary-eyed fascination that I reported on ‘the wee Scots lad’ Hughie Gallacher who starred for Newcastle and Chelsea in the 1920s and thirties. The Scottish influence continued to be prominent and when I was growing up Scots ruled English football with icons like Billy Bremner, Denis Law, Kenny Dalglish and Joe Jordan all starring in the English league. It was clear also that the Scots influence had helped to establish clubs like Skelmersdale, Sunderland RCA and even latterly MK Dons. It is sad to report that this project notes that the Caledonian influence on English football is waning. In the last few chapters it was hard to identify a current Scottish influence on the teams reaching the later stages of the FA Cup. The 2017-18 season will kick off in a month and for the first time in many years none of the managers of the 20 competing teams is a Scot.

I have travelled nearly 10,000 miles, made many new friends, become re-acquainted with a lot of old friends, seen some fantastic football matches and had the experience of a lifetime. As Sir Alex Ferguson, the most famous Scot to have plied his trade in English football, once said: “Football eh! Bloody Hell!”