Hartlepool Away

Gaz's last away day was Hartlepool on a Tuesday night and we lost the toss on the weather. We'd talked about picking a better one. There was a Saturday at the seaside in April. There was a possible cup run that was never going to happen. But his flight was the 3rd and the fixture list is the fixture list, so it was Hartlepool, in February, in what the forecast called "persistent rain" and what the away end called something else. Twenty-two years, me and Gaz. Started when we were both twenty-three and couldn't afford it. I've seen him at Morecambe with a black eye that wasn't from football. I've seen him at Carlisle the week his dad died, not talking, just standing, and then singing louder than anyone in the second half. I've seen him hold a pie at Crewe the way a man holds a newborn. We've got a car with a hundred and ninety thousand miles on it that has been to every ground in the bottom two divisions and some that aren't in any division any more. His wife's Canadian. Got a job in Calgary. He's been telling me for months that it's only three years, and I've been telling him that's fine, and neither of us believes the other. We drove up in silence mostly. Radio off. Which is unusual. About Scotch Corner he said, "Do they even have football in Calgary?" "They've got a team. It's in a league with about eight teams in." "That's not football." "No." Hartlepool's away end is a stand behind the goal with a roof that keeps the rain off the back three rows and nobody else. We stood in row four. Two hundred of us, maybe. The same faces. The bloke with the drum. The two old girls who bring a flask and share it with strangers. Gaz got a hand on the shoulder from about thirty people between the turnstile and the step, and each one said the same thing, which was "Calgary then," and he said "aye" and they said "you'll be back" and he said "aye."

The match was terrible. I want to be clear about that. Nil-nil. Not a good nil-nil. Not a battling, backs-to-the-wall nil-nil. A nil-nil where both sides seemed to have agreed beforehand that nobody would embarrass anybody. Our keeper made one save in the second half, a decent one, and the away end sang his name for three minutes as if it were a cup final, because it was something to sing about and we were wet. Gaz sang all of it. Every song. The rude ones about the ref. The one for the left-back that's been the same tune since 2009. He sang the one we sing when we're losing and the one we sing when we're winning, and it was nil-nil so he had to pick, and he picked the winning one. Full-time whistle. The players came over and clapped us and we clapped them and everyone looked at each other like, well, that was that. In the car park he stood by the boot for a bit with the rain going down his neck. "That was rubbish." "It was." "Hartlepool." "I know." "I'll be watching this lot on a stream at two in the morning." "You will." He got in. I got in. I put the radio on for the drive home and there was a phone-in and someone was very angry about a club we'd never heard of, and Gaz laughed, and about Scotch Corner he fell asleep with his head against the window and I drove the rest of it slower than I needed to.