Book Review: 'My Boro Debut: Ayresome Park to the Riverside…fans and former players recount their first ever Boro experience', edited by Robert Nichols.
My Boro Debut cover
Review by Dr Tosh Warwick, Heritage Unlocked
Going to the football match has been one of the favourite pastimes since Middlesbrough’s days as a Victorian Ironopolis and attending a Boro match for the very first time has often proven to be the start of a lifelong relationship full of excitement, jubilation and often despair. Robert Nichols’ new edited collection of supporter memories of their first Boro match provides a welcome journey down memory lane that spans a bygone era of standing on the terraces of Ayresome Park to recent recollections of the Riverside Revolution and its unprecedented highs and lows.
Collated amidst Covid-19 lockdown that brought the first lockout of fans from Boro matches since a smallpox outbreak swept through the town in 1898, My Boro Debut features contributions from over 150 supporters and goes beyond misremembered match action or events reconstructed from a combination of family stories, rewatched end of season videos or online searches. Instead, Fly Me To The Moon fanzine supremo Nichols has drawn upon his extensive and impressive Teesside address book of Boro supporters - including an array of actors, artists and Ayresome Angels - to provide a fresh insight into going through the turnstiles (or been lifted over or squeezed through them in some cases) for the first time. Contributors include academic Dr Alex Gillett, former Middlesbrough Poet Laurette Andy Willoughby, football writers Daniel Gray and Harry Pearson, former Mayor Dave Budd, Boro chronicle Harry Glasper, former Middlesbrough Ladies’ star Maz Wieczorek, artist Mackenzie Thorpe and World Darts Champion Glen Durrant alongside a whole host of familiar names. As well as supporters, former Boro players’ memories feature including keeper turned councillor Jim Platt, marksman Billy Ashcroft and Riverside striker Mikkel Beck.
It is of course not the first book to focus on memories of Middlesbrough matches of yesteryear, with a number of publications over the years featuring recollections of the matchday experience. Paylor and Wilson’s Memories of Ayresome Park is a staple for any fan looking to revisit the former ground, Thompson’s Talking Middlesbrough provides player perspectives, and my own recent Memories of Mannion: South Bank’s Golden Boy and Memories of Middlesbrough in the 1970s and 1980s have included recollections of players and life at Ayresome Park. However, Nichols’ edited collection brings something unique in capturing contributions from across the generations at a time when supporters are, for the first time, not only unable but also not permitted to go to the match and undoubtedly this has shaped and added poignancy to some of the reflections featured.
A number of common themes emerge beyond the matches and memories of the likes of classic displays by Clough, Hickton, Wilkinson et al. Many contributors focus in particular on their first sight of the Ayresome Park pitch and the floodlights illuminating the hallowed turf. There are tales of the smells of booze, Bovril or the fresh cut grass, and a number of fans reveal that Ayresome provided an education in explicit vocabulary (one even courtesy of Willie Whigham) that many have since duly adopted for use amongst their own matchday repertoire. There are also some curious first matches featured, with friendlies and testimonials proving a common choice of testing the water on the Boro front. Amongst these recollections are Gillett’s first Ayresome visit as FC Seattle Storm visited Teesside and seven-year-old John Wilberforce’s Boro baptism as the People’s Republic of China visited Middlesbrough. There is also a continental flavour added through the contribution of Bjarte Hjartøy, whose first Boro match was in Norway as Jack Charlton took his side to Scandinavia to face SK Brann, an experience that has made Boro Bjarte’s English team ever since.
As a lifelong Boro fan (my own first match, a 6-0 home win over Sheffield United as a four year old. is featured), reading My Boro Debut evokes my own memories and allows comparisons between my own first matchday and that of those decades before me, and in some cases, a couple of decades after me. The accounts also provide an opportunity to revisit long-lost Middlesbrough landscapes that go far beyond Clive Road Corner or the Holgate as you join the supporter walking from the town centre, leaving the pub or jumping on the ‘match special’ from ‘Doggy Market’.
Inevitably - as Nichols points out and concedes he cannot remember his first match - some of the accounts are contrary to the historical record but these personal reflections are very much from the heart. They convey the deeper meanings associated with going to the Boro match for the supporter in this fan-centred contribution to Boro history. Limitations of space means there are few images in the book and it would have been interesting to see more from personal and public archives. Whilst the book does touch upon more contentious sides of football including mild references to hooliganism this is largely absent, although rather than reflecting a sanitised version of the beautiful game’s troubling elements, this is more likely a reflection of the contributors and the minor role this played in the majority of first matchday memories.
At a time when the ‘simple action of going to the match that we have all taken for granted for so long’ has been taken away from supporters, My Boro Debut is a timely book for fans wanting to re-engage and remember when we could enjoy the matchday and all its trappings.
Over the past couple of decades, courtesy of the internet and rise of social media, a number of new platforms have emerged for sharing memories of football past and inevitably some of the accounts or similar can be found online. Whilst the book is available digitally, the paperback collection provides a welcome retreat from electronic fatigue and attachment to the laptops, mobiles and tablets that in our Covid-19 world are the conduit for everything from matchdays to meetings in the digital realm. At a time when the ‘simple action of going to the match that we have all taken for granted for so long’ has been taken away from supporters, My Boro Debut is a timely book for fans wanting to re-engage and remember when we could enjoy the matchday and all its trappings.
My Boro Debut is available to purchase at local retailers, including MFC Retail.
Dr Tosh Warwick, Heritage Unlocked, info@heritageunlocked.com
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