Tag: dad

Going to the football was the thing me and my dad did together.

Dad was 48 when I was born. He had the son he had always wanted – someone to kick a ball around with and watch the match with him. Yet I was a latecomer to football, and to his obsession with Norwich City. I can remember protesting that I wanted to watch cartoons when dad had sat himself in the living room ready for the Super Sunday game on Sky Sports.

It is an old family tale that dad was a very handy footballer, who scored plenty of goals for teams such as Gothic. He was part of the Norwich Boys team, a side made up of players picked from local schools. He played at Carrow Road several times. He always insisted that someone from Norwich City asked his father about him turning professional, but his father refused and made his son go and get an apprenticeship. Whether that’s true I’m not so sure, but it’s a lovely story.

At some point, I became interested. Perhaps through sheer osmosis. I remember getting very excited at England beating Germany 5-1 a week after my 9th birthday. The next May I went through emotional turmoil watching the now defunct ITV Digital, who were showing Norwich’s agonising penalty shootout defeat to Birmingham in the Division One play-off final. I was in tears at the end of that game. At that point, the Canaries had got me. From then on I was a Norwich City fan, and I always would be.

Dad had got up extremely early that morning and travelled to Cardiff on a minibus to be at the match. On his return, our conversations about football would become more knowledgeable on my part, and increasingly partisan. He must have loved it. I can imagine him thinking ‘Finally! After nearly a decade my boy has got the football bug!’.

Less than a year later, in March 2003, I went to my first Norwich game. We lost 2-0 to Ipswich, of all teams, but that didn’t put me off. I was part of the enormous crowds as our Division One champions of 2004 celebrated with an open top bus parade. I recall both me and dad jumping up and down in pure elation as we went 2-0 up against Manchester United in what would be a brief stay in the Premier League. Dad was 61 at that point, but he certainly didn’t look it or move like it.

As the next few years passed dad’s memory became something of a concern. He had to give up working after more than 40 years. He was eventually diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

In August 2008, me and dad took our seats at Carrow Road for our first game sitting next to each other as season ticket holders. I had only been to the odd game a season up to that point. We sat three rows back in the upper Barclay, just to the right of the goal. We watched a 1-1 draw with Blackpool. We got relegated to League One that season. In fact, our first seasons with those tickets saw us witness a relegation, a promotion and another promotion. We sat through the 7-1 defeat to Colchester, through the 2-0 win over Gillingham that confirmed Norwich as League One champions, through the joyous last game of the season against Coventry as we celebrated promotion to the Premier League.

Dad’s undying faith in Norwich City showed in his score predictions. Ask him what he thought would happen in that particular game, and he would ask who we were playing. When I told him, he would usually say ‘we should beat them shouldn’t we?’ in a fantastically confident voice as if to say ‘of course we should beat them, we’re the mighty Norwich City!’. His predicted score would usually be 5-0 to City, but if he wasn’t feeling quite as confident that day we might only win 3-0.

Gradually, getting dad to and from Carrow Road became increasingly difficult. His particular type of dementia appeared to strike his mobility. He found it hard to walk, hard to negotiate stairs, and on one occasion he found it impossible to walk over the Novi Sad Friendship Bridge. A very kind couple stopped and helped me get him to the other side, where they waited with him while I ran to get the car. It was a desperately sad and worrying state to see him in, someone I had looked up to so much.

Dad cut down on his trips to see City play. I took him to what would turn out to be his last visit to Carrow Road on Boxing Day 2012, a 1-0 defeat to Chelsea. From then on I would carry on going to home games, but would go and sit with him in his care home to listen to the away matches on Radio Norfolk.

On 1st February 2014, just over a month short of his 70th birthday, my brilliant dad finally gave in to this most evil of diseases. This classic Norwich City song was played at his funeral. I still sit in the same Barclay seat as I did for that Blackpool match nearly seven years ago, and I have often wondered what my dad would make of the latest goings on in yellow and green.

These feelings have been particularly felt in the last week, with Norwich of course preparing for the Championship play-off final at Wembley. He would have been there, without a shadow of a doubt. And he would have loved the sight of around 40,000 fellow City fans inside the home of football.

I have decided to wear dad’s old City shirt to Wembley. This way, I know a part of my old man will be with me at the biggest game I’ve ever been to.

What would he say about the result?

‘Middlesbrough? We should beat them shouldn’t we?’