Neil Nixon, a big fan of Carlisle United football club, wants his son to be a big fan too. No chance.
On May 6th last year I had cause for reflection on the whole issue of generations and the way the world changes. On that day, I took Thom, my youngest son, to see my team - Carlisle United - fight out a grim relegation struggle against Brighton and Hove Albion. Over the last two and half seasons Carlisle United have spent a depressing amount of time teetering on the edge as a league club. Our survival was at stake last May and we were a shapeless mass of confusion, stuck for any idea of what to do if - against the run of play - we’d actually managed to string more than a couple of passes together.
In the middle of the first half Thom turned to me and stated the obvious. 'Dad, they're useless!' And they were. My reply, from the depths of a depression so grim I could feel it in my chest was.....'If you could have seen what I saw at your age son........."
And I'd never thought of myself as that kind of dad.
I was ten when I first saw Carlisle United play. We won what was a meaningless encounter by the odd goal in three. What grabbed me that night was the pace and fury of the game. The icy sheen of the floodlights against the black sky and the skill and bravery of one player in particular. Carlisle goalkeeper Alan Ross. What I saw at that age was a man who could do the things I dreamed of doing as I crashed down on a skidding plastic ball in morning break. Ross was a hero. A local hero. The sort of hero a schoolboy like me could aspire to be.
Alan Ross was dead by the time Thom and I watched a team barely fit to call themselves professionals heaping shame and disgrace on a once proud blue shirt last May. Thom watched with ill disguised indifference as we leaked five goals and as my head disappeared into my hands. I don’t seriously believe that Thom, with his Southern upbringing and Arsenal replica shirt could ever come to support Carlisle United but I’d do anything to link the age old experience of two hours spent on a windswept terrace with some deeper sense of excitement and belonging.
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