Keep it simple probably: “The Aerial Shop, Warwick Road,
Luton” a radio advert from my youth used to say. You know where you are with
that. Expectations managed. “Zobra Auto Parts”. Sexier branding definitely, but
still functional.
I recently drove past a shop emblazoned with “ISIS Insurers”.
Once you’ve got the business cards printed, your hands are tied caliphate or
not I s’pose, Fletch.
Welcome to the stage Luton
Town 2020 the consortium that would save our football club. They were
here, they said, to take the club back to the Championship and they were
putting the deadline on the fucking tin.
In the words of Joe Kinnear, owners with “Champagne ideas
and Coca Cola pockets” never did play well round here. Given what had gone
before, some of us would have settled for a group named “Luton Town: We Promise
Not To Asset Strip / Move You To Milton Keynesey” let alone 2020.
Sitting here today, with LuaLua’s ice buckets scattered at our
feet, champagne ideas made concrete – and a year ahead of schedule - I am at a
loss.
It’s too ridiculous, all this. The reality of this
renaissance might be to do with shrewd planning and investment and facilities
and nutrition and talented staff and players but… when it finally happened… when
we finally made it back… it was Mick at the wheel. It was OUR MICK.
You see Harford was here when minus 30 hit in 2008. He was here
when 40 thousand Luton said “Fuck the FA” at Wembley a year later and then he
was here when we dropped out of the football league. In 88 he was here to hold
the Littlewoods Cup aloft and even when he left he was there to keep us up in
1990 with that own goal for Derby.
He was here when we eventually left the top flight in 92, here
again standing with the fans by refusing to work with Gurney as the club faced
crisis years later and here once more as Newell’s number two as Town hit tenth
in the Championship. Mick was here for all of that. Almost the entire modern history of
the game’s most turbulent town.
He’s endured the very best and worst of Luton. Of me and
you. Open top buses and open revolt in the stands. A club that punches above
its weight one moment, then kicks you in the guts the next. A messy, emotional,
seething contradiction of a place, that even on Saturday could dampen victory
songs from the grassy-trainered choir with boos from our own seats.
He didn’t do this by himself, far from it, but the man is a
timeless symbol of whatever the fuck this is. A battle-scarred redemption song of
his own inside a Russian Fucking Doll of an operatic resurrection. A club they couldn’t
kill managed by a massive great metaphor with a Mackem accent.
Saturday was
Lutopia. The footballing stars have finally aligned to dole out poetic justice
to its most maligned. Once the hangovers of this week subside, take a second to
drink it all back in.
From singing shoulder to shoulder with my oldest mates in the world, with
their kids and their Dads. Hatters from Tottenham to Rotterdam. Meeting my heroes
in High Town. It. Was. It.
The more I go back to Kenilworth Road these days, the more
it has begun to feel at home as the symbol of resistance to football’s future. But
just as Harford can take a well earned rest as his statue is prepared for Power
Court, it’s almost time to kiss goodbye to the other monument to our
footballing soul. But not just yet.
I’ve given up explaining how it felt to those not of this
Parish, they’ll never really understand what it meant. Not like you mate. I
think I’ll give up doing that.
Because for every tale of Harford Heroism and Hatter-ache, you’ve got a hundred more.
Because for every tale of Harford Heroism and Hatter-ache, you’ve got a hundred more.
‘kin football.
