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  Superintendent Screwer fixed Hawks with a beady eye. When would they ever learn? “Where there is football, Sergeant, there is football hooliganism. Having previously been stationed at Leeds I know that for a fact; and I know all about the cancer in our society that football hooliganism has become.”

  “With respect sir, what few supporters the Town still have are nothing like Leeds United supporters.”

  Screwer glared at him. If Hawks had been the office door the paint would have blistered. “Respect?” he screamed. “Respect, Sergeant Hawks? You aren't showing me any fucking respect! If you were you wouldn't be arguing with me, you would be making plans to adequately police Frogley Town's opening game of the season!”

  Hawks bit his lip. Retirement and that cottage in the Lakes suddenly seemed very far away. “Yes sir.”

  Screwer drew in his horns a little. “Football supporters are the same the world over, Sergeant. Animals. Nothing more, nothing less. Take my word for it, just because the fans of Frogley Town have yet to reveal their true colours doesn't mean to say that one day they aren't going to.”

  “No sir.”

  The horns shot back out again as if spring-loaded. “Well just let them! They will not find the Frogley Police Force wanting. Not while my name is Herman Screwer they won't. We'll be ready for them, Sergeant. Ready to whip them into line; ready to break them; ready to smash the brainless bastards into submission!” He suddenly smashed his right fist into his left hand. The splat of the bone of his knuckles colliding with the flesh of his palm made Hawks wince. “Crowd control, that's the name of the game. Do you know who my hero is, Sergeant?”

  Hawks didn't, and didn't want to, he just wanted to leave. “No sir?”

  Screwer offered a clue. “He rode a white horse.”

  Hawks thought for a moment. “Attila the Hun, sir?”

  Screwer smiled in fond recollection. “'The Policeman on the White Horse', Sergeant. 1923 Cup Final at Wembley. One man controlling the uncontrollable; a crazed mob of over two hundred thousand. Now that's what you call crowd control! What are we like for tear gas?”

  FOOTBALL CRAZY

  Copyright © Terry Ravenscroft, 2009

  Cover by Tony Colligan www.tctoons.com

  A RAZZAMATAZZ PUBLICATION

  ****

  About the author

  The day after Terry Ravenscroft threw in his mundane factory job to write television comedy scripts he was involved in a car accident which left him unable to turn his head. Since then he has never looked back. Born in New Mills, Derbyshire, in 1938, he still lives there with his wife Delma and his mistress Divine Bottom (in his dreams).

  email [email protected]

  facebook http://on.fb.me/ukZ78e

  twitter http://bit.ly/t0mVyB

  website www.topcomedy.co.uk

  ****

  Also by Terry Ravenscroft

  CAPTAIN’S DAY

  JAMES BLOND - STOCKPORT IS TOO MUCH

  INFLATABLE HUGH

  DEAR AIR 2000

  DEAR COCA-COLA

  LES DAWSON’S CISSIE AND ADA

  STAIRLIFT TO HEAVEN

  I’M IN HEAVEN

  THE RAZZAMATAZZ FUN EBOOK

  ZEPHYR ZODIAC

  (Will be published early in 2012)

  Sample pages of each of these titles can be read at the end of this book.

  ****

  FOOTBALL CRAZY

  PROLOGUE

  “Football isn’t a matter of life and death. It’s more important than that” – Bill Shankly

  When the Frogley Town Supporters Club pre-season meeting was due to begin only six people occupied the hundred or so chairs set out in rows in the upstairs concert room of the Shoulder of Mutton. Stanley Sutton, the Chairman of the Supporters Club, suspected that even one of the six who had bothered to attend was a tramp who had come in out of the cold.

  Aged sixty four, Stanley was about five feet four inches tall and no more than seven stones wet through; which he frequently was, by virtue of his tramping the mean streets of Frogley every spare moment he had, stoically selling tickets for the Frogley Town Development Fund Weekly Prize Draw.

  He decided to give it another five minutes, even though he knew it was unlikely that anyone else would turn up. He looked with sadness at the sea of empty chairs. What was the matter with folk, he asked himself for the umpteenth time, didn’t they want a football team in Frogley?

  Five minutes passed. Nobody else turned up and one who had turned up went, claiming he thought he might have left the chip pan on. Stanley hoped he had and that it had set fire to his kitchen and burned his house down, then quickly got the meeting under way before anyone else came up with some other lame excuse to leave.

  He rapped on the trestle table with his knuckles. “I declare t’ meeting open. First item on t’ agenda is approval of t’ minutes of last meeting. Do I have a proposer?” He scanned the rows of chairs. No one seemed interested in proposing the motion, not least the suspected tramp, who had by now fallen asleep and was gently snoring. Stanley asked the pitiful assembly again, this time almost pleading with them. “Anybody?”

  “What’s t’ point, Stanley?” It was Alf Nadin, a man of about Stanley’s age, from the front row.

  “T’ point Alf?” said Stanley, surprised at such a question from a man who was chair of the local pigeon fancier’s club and thus knew full well the formal procedure adopted by official meetings. “T’ point is we can’t have a meeting until we’ve approved t’ minutes of t’ last meeting.”

  Alf sighed. “I mean what’s t’ point of having a meeting at all?”

  “What does tha mean, at all?”

  “Well, tha were at t’ club’s AGM last week so tha knows as well as I do that if t’ club doesn’t pay off their overdraft t’ bank has threatened to foreclose on them. And there’s about as much chance of them paying off t’ overdraft as there is of them winning t’ European Cup. I don’t know why we bother. They’re t’ worst team in whole of t’ football league; a right load o’ wankers they are, and no mistake.”

  Stanley knew there was some truth in this but would have chosen death in preference to admitting it. Instead he defended his beloved team, his jaw thrust out in defiance. “No they aren’t, Alf. No they’re not.”

  “No, you’re right Stanley,” Alf conceded. “Wankers know what they’re doing.”

  “Don’t make fun of my football team, Alf,” Stanley admonished him. “I love t’ Town. Sometimes when I’m slaving away on that Bone Pulveriser at Price’s Pie Factory t’ thought of seeing t’ Town of a Saturday is t’ only thing as keeps me sane.”

  “Well tha’rt not going to be sane for much longer then, is all I can say,” said Alf, with an air of impending doom. “Because mark my words, Frogley Town is going to finish up like another Accrington Stanley, Stanley.”

  Fully aware that Accrington Stanley had been re-admitted to the Coca-Cola League in 2006 after spending years in the wilderness, Stanley was about to seize on this as a probable likelihood if ever Frogley Town, God forbid, were to suffer a similar fate, when Alf continued, “Except that Accrington Stanley got back in to t’ league eventually. If t’ Town drop into t’ Conference they’ll be there till kingdom come.”

  Deep down Stanley knew Alf was right in his forecast of what would happen if ever Frogley Town lost their league status. The feeling of abject misery this gave him could not have been worse if the entire dark forces of The Lord of the Rings had suddenly descended on him.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Following a defeat at White Hart Lane a Tottenham Hotspurs supporter ran to the Spurs dugout and threw a punch at their manager, Glen Hoddle. It was the first recorded case of the fan hitting the shit

  Standing on the Lancashire/Yorksh
ire border, directly on the flight path of airplanes landing at Manchester Ringway Airport, Frogley is a town of some ninety odd thousand souls (and a hundred and thirty two odd souls, who reside in the local mental hospital, but more of that later). Someone once called Frogley a sleepy little town, and if that is the case it’s probably because there’s never very much going on there worth waking up for. Nor could it ever be accused of being pretty; old mill towns never are, and Frogley is no different. Once, when the town council erected a notice 'You Are Now Entering Frogley, Please Drive Slowly', it wasn't long before one of the more astute residents had painted out the word 'Slowly' and replaced it with 'Quickly'. The notice, changed from a polite request to a piece of helpful advice, was considered by most residents to be entirely appropriate.

  The airplanes pass over the drab millstone grit houses at a height of about five thousand feet, and if a passenger were to look down he would be able to pick out the home of Stanley Sutton quite easily - not because it was a large house, it wasn't, it was a two-up two-down in the middle of row up on row of terraced houses - but because Stanley had painted every inch of his house in the Frogley Town Football Club colours of red, green and yellow stripes. From that height it stood out, as the captain of an American Airlines Boeing 757 had once remarked to his co-pilot, in language no less colourful than the Suttons’ house, ‘like a nail in a black’s ass’.

  If, maybe due to severe turbulence over the Pennines or the pilot making a bit too merry with the duty free, the airplane had happened to be flying over Frogley at a height of five hundred feet instead of five thousand feet, and the date happened to be August 2nd 2010, a passenger looking down on Stanley Sutton's house might have seen Stanley serenely applying a fresh coat of paint to one of the yellow stripes on the front of his house. However one would have had to be passing the humble house on Abbatoir Street on foot to have overheard the conversation that was taking place between Stanley and his wife Sarah Jane, after she’d returned from shopping and observed what Stanley was doing.

  “I see as you've enough money for paint then, Stanley Sutton,” she snapped.

  Stanley didn't pause in his brushwork. “T' house has to look right for t' start of t' new football season, Sarah Jane.”

  Sarah Jane sniffed her disapproval. “I haven't had a new coat in ten years. T' house has had ten new coats in that time.”

  “Nine”, Stanley corrected her. “I didn't paint it in 1998.”

  “Only because tha fell off t' roof in 1997 and broke thee back. Six months tha were off work and not a penny coming in apart from t' pittance tha got off t' sick. Not as it would have made any difference because t' more money we have t' more tha spends on that Godforsaken football team of thine.”

  Stanley stopped painting for a moment and regarded his wife. It was completely beyond his comprehension that he should have to explain such a thing, but he did nevertheless. “Town's my life, Sarah Jane. I’d do owt for t’ Town”

  Sarah Jane scowled at him. “Aye, and don't I bloody well know it.”

  She made to go inside.

  “Have you seen owt of Fentonbottom?” Stanley enquired of her. “Only I haven't seen him all morning.”

  “And can you wonder?” Sarah Jane said, pouring more scorn on him. “When it saw thee with that paint pot it probably ran off with its tail between its legs if it’s got any sense.”

  Stanley was indignant. “I didn't paint Fentonbottom, Sarah Jane. I dyed him. Painting a dog could kill it.” He resumed painting, then added, “According to that bloke at B and Q.”

  *

  Nowadays the Coca-Cola Football League, of which Frogley Town is a member, has a minimum standard for the stadiums of the football clubs who wish to play in its competitions. Fortunately for Frogley Town this minimum standard doesn't apply to clubs who were already members of the league when the standard was introduced, as it is doubtful whether their stadium at the present time would get them into the Tonga League Division Eight.

  This was not always the case. In their glory years in the 1930's the stadium was reckoned to be one of the finest in the north of England - indeed at one stage there was talk of it being used as a venue for an FA Cup semi-final - and as late as the 1960's it could be compared with stadiums such as Maine Road and Goodison Park.

  But in the 1960's the fortunes of the club began to decline, and although it was a gentle decline they nevertheless found themselves in the old Third Division, now the Coca-Cola League Two, by the 1980's, and thereafter in a constant battle to stay in that division and miss the drop to the dreaded Nationwide Conference; which they only just managed to do year in year out by the skin of their teeth.

  Like breeds like and the decline of the stadium went hand in hand with the decline in the team's fortune. It was the same old story, lack of success on the field equals fall in attendance, equals fall in revenue, equals less money to maintain both stadium and team, equals more lack of success, equals more fall in attendance, etcetera etcetera.

  There was a time when the stadium could, and did on occasions, hold sixty thousand spectators - twelve thousand in the grandstand and forty eight thousand standing. Now, due to the old grandstand having fallen into such a bad state of repair that it had had to be demolished in 1995, and the entire 'popular' side having been fenced off as it had been deemed to be too dangerous, the ground capacity was much reduced. What remained of the stadium in Offal Road was terracing behind each goal, one end covered, one uncovered, although the covered end might just as well have been uncovered, so many and so large were the holes in its corrugated iron roof; and a temporary grandstand, hastily erected when the old grandstand had to be demolished - but for 'temporary' now read permanent, since there was about as much chance of the club ever having the money to build a new grandstand as there is of Arsene Wenger ever seeing one of the Arsenal players committing a foul.

  Compared to the sixties the stadium today had a capacity of just twenty thousand, two thousand spectators in the grandstand and eighteen thousand on the terraces. It wouldn't have mattered if the capacity had been reduced to only two thousand, there would still have been empty places; the average attendance at Frogley in the previous season had been just eighteen hundred and thirty.

  Now, three weeks before the new season was due to begin, the stadium having lain fallow over the summer months, there was more grass on the terracing than on the pitch. For the past couple of days the groundsman, old Rutter, had been weeding it, but the weather was fine and sunny now, after a week of solid rain, and it seemed to Rutter that the grass was growing faster than he could pull it out.

  The club didn't run to a practice ground, and while Rutter was removing clumps of grass from the terraces the Town players were kicking out clumps of it from the pitch. Due to all the rain the pitch had taken recently it wasn't really fit to play on, but the new season wasn't far away, and needs must. A practice match was in progress, nine a side, for the club only had eighteen players on its books. There was no referee in charge of the game. No coach was in attendance either. Donny Donnelly, the man who performed the dual role of manager and coach, was in his office, one of three portakabins stood on bricks in a corner of the ground that served as the club's offices and dressing rooms. Every so often Donny would open the window and offer encouragement or criticism to his squad, usually the latter, but at the moment the window was shut.

  The players of Frogley Town were a mixture of a few older players who at one time had played in a higher league but were now on the way down, a couple of younger players who were on their way up, but mostly players in their mid-twenties who weren't on their way anywhere. Their football reflected this. That isn't to say they were bad - when judged alongside amateur footballers they were good - but they weren't good enough, as is the case with the personnel of most lower division teams, the Premiership being as far removed from such players as the planet Neptune.

  In his office Donny Donnelly, wearing only a leopard skin thong, was lying on his sun bed topping up his tan. Pro
minent on the wall of the office that faced the door were two large framed photographs, a spotlight playing on each of them, thus guaranteeing that any visitor to Donny's inner sanctum would need to be as blind as a bat to avoid seeing them. One of the photographs was of Ron Atkinson, who was Donny's hero, despite his recent problems (of which Donny claimed Atkinson to be totally innocent, preferring to believe that the disgraced pundit hadn’t called Marcel Desailly a lazy nigger but a mazy dribbler, and had been misquoted). The other photo was of Ron and Donny together, Ron with a friendly arm around Donny's shoulder. It was signed, 'To my mate Donny, Big Ron'. All the money in the world could not have bought it.

  Apart from their respective heights, Ron being about six two and Donny nearer five two, the images on the photo were quite similar, both in build and features. Both of them had pudgy bodies and fat faces sporting a Mediterranean tan, and both had blonde hair worn combed over the top of their head in the manner favoured by Bobby Charlton when he still had some hair to favour. However if you looked closely at the photo you would see that while Ron was naturally blonde Donny was blonde courtesy of a bottle of peroxide, his black roots giving him away. Furthermore Donny had plenty of hair and, unlike Ron, didn't really need to comb it over the top of his head in a vain attempt to camouflage a balding pate.

  His thirty minutes up, Donny swung his legs off the sun bed, got to his feet, and went to the mirror to check his tan. It was spot on, midway between light and George Hamilton. Pleased, he went to the window to check on his squad.

  As he looked out at them one of the players, Higgs, a man short in stature and even shorter in talent, was about to take a throw-in near the corner flag. About ten players were jockeying for position in the penalty area. Donny nodded his approval. He had recently put in a lot of time coaching Higgs in the art of the long throw-in and now the player was putting his newly acquired skill to good effect.