40 years at Ewood Park 1964-2004 continued...
Football doesn’t smell the same as it used to. Before smoking was considered to be anti-social, the football match was a place where you could puff away at your pleasure. Cigarettes, pipes and the odd cigar abounded and I remember being disappointed when the pipe I had surreptitiously bought on the strength of the sickly sweet smell of pipe smoke that hung over the Riverside terracing turned out to taste acrid and fiery and not a bit as I had hoped it to be. Another smell I associate with the old Ewood is that of recently consumed beer arising from the outdoor and uncovered men’s toilets at the Blackburn end of the Riverside. The closer it got to three o’ clock the more noticeable this was as latecomers fled the pub in the hope of making it into the ground for kick-off. The tea bars too had their own smell, not of grease as no frying took place, but of steaming urns of tea and coffee and of hot pasties and pies fresh from the warming oven.
The seventies were a thin period. Crowds became smaller and the possibility of promotion back to the First Division became more remote with each passing season. By the mid-nineteen seventies the club was in financial difficulties. A thriving army of supporters’ clubs carried the club through these dark days, unsung and unacknowledged. I was attached to the Chorley Branch which did magnificent work organising fund-raising socials and undertaking, week in week out, a waste paper collection, the receipts of which enabled the players’ wages to be paid. Things were that bad. At the first home match of the 1975-76 season I joined the rest of the Chorley lads in a sponsored walk from Chorley to Ewood to raise money for the club. There wasn’t even anyone there to say thanks when we arrived. At least the Rovers won 4-1 which was some sort of consolation. If things picked up on the pitch in the eighties, they couldn’t have been worse off it. Watching football through the mesh of a perimeter fence was the lowest point of my career as a spectator, a perverse reversal of a zoo where the fences protect the spectators; these were there to protect the players from us. It was sad that it took a tragedy to end this practice.
Watching football at Ewood is certainly more comfortable now as we are all seated. It doesn’t seem to be as exciting as it once was though – those muddy pitches and swaying crowds may have added to the atmosphere but I suppose the better surfaces and seating do make the game safer for those on and off the pitch The sense of freedom - to pay at the turnstile, stand where you wanted, move around if you wanted to change place - has been diluted, a process not helped by the armies of stewards, CCTV cameras and policemen (and women). The slow transformation from football supporter to football consumer is only a reflection of a general social trend for which football alone cannot be blamed, but something seems to have been lost on the way. The feeling that the club belonged to the people of Blackburn (always true in a cultural if not a financial perspective) doesn’t seem to be as much in evidence now that those convoys of buses no longer ferry fans back to the town centre at five o’ clock on Saturdays, but perhaps it’s as well that the geographical fan base of the club has widened. No enticing smells float around Ewood these days and having a permanent seat means you can’t move around and enjoy differing pockets of company. Still, when the Rovers’ No. 9 hits the ball into the opposition net, it’s Plus ca Change, Plus c’est la meme!
Bob Snape
August 2004
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