Two things that were typical of the 90s, we'd play Luton - alot, and Ian Grant would no doubt cover it in BSaD.
So in that spirit what could be better as a taster of what to expect from our latest book than Ian reflecting back on those games played at...
Eleven O'clock Under Grey Skies
By Ian Grant
To paraphrase The League of Gentlemen, ‘This is a local derby, for local people. There’s nothing for you here’. And if that’s what you’ve grown up with, a vital part of your club’s timeworn fabric, then that’s how it should be. Not for us the grandstanding bigotry of the Old Firm or the historical pomp of El Clásico, but instead a grubby parochial squabble, the product of decades of petty grievances and absurd accusations, of piled-up whataboutery and daydreamt vengeance.
On that basis, the nineties were the very best that fixtures with Luton have ever been, although I’m well aware I’m making that claim with the benefit of hindsight, on the other side of a happy ending. A proper local derby requires two teams whose horizons have shortened and whose landscapes have flattened, dominated by the pride that can be salvaged from beating That Lot. Two teams whose fortunes have become intertwined by present and future as well as past. It requires rank desperation, gritted teeth, red-faced finger-jabbing fury. Two neighbours decades into a savage feud that started with a minor disagreement over a parking space, even though neither of them has ever owned a car.
It really doesn’t require anything even slightly resembling decent football, and there was absolutely nothing for anyone outside of the two towns to take from any of these games. Many of them were live on the television anyway; I can’t imagine that the viewing figures were much to behold, given that all interested parties were in the ground, shouting abuse at each other, but there you go.
If you want a summary – not a historically accurate one, but the general flavour – every single game kicked off at eleven o’clock in the morning under grey skies, and featured a frightened teenager hauled from the reserves to cover an injury crisis at an hour’s notice. Every single game finished goalless, somebody was sent off, somebody missed a penalty, someone else missed a sitter in the last five minutes. That sort of thing, you get the idea. Any national reporters sent to cover proceedings could ink in ‘Both sides remain in the relegation zone’ as the final sentence of their match reports well ahead of kick-off.
Either that, or it kicked off at eleven o’clock under grey skies, frightened teenager and so on and so forth, and we galloped into an early lead, perhaps even added a second for good measure. And this would be the day, the famous day, when all of these accumulated demons would finally be banished, when the curse would be laid to rest. Except it wouldn’t, of course, because the second half would conjure up some kind of culinary masterpiece from various bitter and foul ingredients – injustice, misfortune, humiliation, disgrace – and we would go away begging forgiveness for ever having dared to imagine that it might turn out differently.
It was miserable. Relentlessly miserable. Nothing else quite captures the nineties like these memories, strung together like frayed bunting drooping in a muddy puddle. From high up on the Vic Road Terrace, I remember Roger Willis missing an unmissable chance late on. Two sent off in Glenn Roeder’s first game, Kerry Dixon knackering Darren Bazeley. Bruised knees and scraped shins from the confined rows and cheap seats of the away end. Staring blankly at the Rookery or the Lower Rous as it celebrated another unfolding disaster. Throwing away a two-goal lead, Alan McCarthy giving away a late penalty. Darren Ward’s debut and annual appearance thereafter for at least five of those goalless draws, or so it seemed. Robbo’s debut. Gary Fitzgerald’s forty-five minute career in a howling void of a defeat at Vicarage Road. Kevin Phillips adding ‘Super’ to his name by rescuing a point. Darren Bazeley sparking a pitch invasion with a chaotic last-ditch equaliser.
And throughout it all, both clubs circled the plughole. We’re not so very different, that’s the thing. We could claim a certain moral superiority during the eighties – we were the original family club, while they were owned by a loudly obnoxious Tory, played on plastic, banned away fans – but all of that had evaporated by the nineties. Two clubs in a process of steady atrophy, chained together, inseparable, indistinguishable from any distance. And even then... even when it came down to two drunks arm-wrestling over some fag-ends and slops at closing time... even then, we couldn’t bloody beat them. (Yes, the Anglo-Italian Cup. Yes. And also... no. Didn’t count.)
So, really, we couldn’t even allow ourselves to hope too much when we took an early two-goal lead on 4 October 1997. We’d fallen for that one before. We’d played them a dozen times since the last League win; John Barnes and Worrell Sterling the scorers ten years previously, another age entirely. It wasn’t until Peter Kennedy scored the third and then the fourth followed it with delirious immediacy that we knew, that we believed, that it was all finished, all done with. Few moments have ever felt quite so cathartic, quite so furious and final. Vocal chords shredded, limbs bruised, everything abandoned, everything forgotten. In that moment, we claimed local bragging rights, as they say, but it was so much more than that. It was a watershed. 4-0. No returns. Unchained, we went our separate ways.
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