A year on the terraces
Words: Tom Reed
Images: Tom Reed
A year is a long time in football.
We feel the seasons change more than most, the winter hardness against Adidas Handball Spezial, the spring shower gloop underneath a Samba.
Standing on the terraces can be a way of escaping your problems but being in a crowd can tease out emotions as unexpected as a goal from the striker you’ve decided can’t hit a barn door.
We build CP Company shells round ourselves which are easily pierced when memories which illicit a tear sneak in and even though you’re packed shoulder to shoulder, you’re vulnerable.
It’s probably that extra pint of crap lager on the concourse that did it, the price of which is liable to make a grown man cry, or those shots of rank digestif, made for German grannies, so give your head a wobble and get on with the game.
I cried thick, melted Mars ice-cream tears at Rugby Town in January for my mother who had died on Christmas Day of all days.
The goals rolled in and the rain poured down which made the tears seem just another part of the deluge.
The sweeping terraces gave me space for myself and I didn’t feel the need to join the old boys huddled under wafer-thin cover.
©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Rugby Town FC. January 2023.
One thing that can bring you out of your own sadness is the collective misery of others. I went up to Everton to join the Toffees protesting against an ownership which didn’t befit the great club they supported.
It felt like the poor bastards, who have so much pride for their team and more that it deserves, were in up to their knees in thick dockland mud, where the new ground is going up.
Not cheering but drowning.
I got a shot of the Bramley Moore Stadium, which is symbolic of the pressure between the old and the new, with time (and pigeons) flying by.
©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Bramley Moore Dock stadium. Everton FC. January 2023.
Southend fans might think that Everton’s problems are just a drop in the Thames Estuary as to the crisis going on in Essex by February.
I went down there out of solidarity with the brave Shrimpers picketing the mansion of the club owner and shutting down the main road out of town towards Roots Hall in a protest march that showed real bollocks.
“Making a killing, killing our club” chanted the Southend supporters startling the Saturday shoppers outside Marks and Spencer.
In between the club’s appearances in court for unpaid HMRC bills and the closed doors of the boardroom it would have been easy for the Southend fans to let events wash over them but they said “no” and in doing so made a clear representation of the club belonging to the fans.
©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Southend on Sea. February 2023.
At Cardiff-Swansea in March I saw the strange juxtaposition of the South Wales Derby, where both sides make out they don’t really care about each other when they very much do.
“In the Swansea slums, they look in the dustbin for something to eat, they find a dead rat and they think it’s a treat, in the Swansea slums” sang the Cardiff fans and then the tannoy played “Rat in mi kitchen” by UB40, summing up the ridiculousness of the whole damn thing.
A last minute winner for Swansea saw white smoke rise up, while Cardiff fans were down, with their heads in their hands.
©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Cardiff City vs Swansea City. April 2023.
“Kaiserslautern is not known as a beautiful city but it is known for its football club” was the opening line from our April trip to K-Town in Germany, which was one of almost indescribable footballing scale.
The Fritz-Walter-Stadion is more a Super Mario fortress than a football ground, with over 200 calf-burning steps to get to the top.
They held a “Traditionstag” fixture against HSV, with a kick-off at 8.30pm and there were lads from Hamburg pissed up at midday and the Betze fans held a long march to their stadium with pyro and firecrackers that made your ears ring.
They get gates of 49,000 from a town of 100,000 and the whole thing is an assault on the senses, numbed only slightly by the pints of white wine and water they sup.
©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. 1. FC Kaiserslautern vs HSV. April 2023.
“My friend calls me from London and says she is coming home because it is too cold” laughed a Benfica employee showing us round their training ground in May.
While the weather in England wasn’t bad at the time it doesn’t compare to the year-round warmth of Portugal and the football there radiates a different kind of colour.
I was there to write for Glory magazine’s Portugal Edition and we spent our days wandering around the kind of lower-league grounds in Lisbon that would have most football hipsters salivating.
From the crumbling glory of Jamor, to the yellowest yellow at Atlético Clube de Portugal, the azure street art of OS Belenenses to The Sanctuary of Christ the King statue looming over Almada AC, it’s a place to top up the football soul which sinks to your creaking knees in English winter.
©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Almada AC. May 2023.
You can’t beat an early-season grudge match and the Nene Derby saw me return home as all good Northamptonians must, for the visit of Peterborough.
One of England’s lesser known and little understood derbies, Town vs the Posh goes back decades and to the “battle of Abington Park” when the youth of both places fought pitch battles in bovver boots and with scarves tied around wrists.
August sun and summer pints lubricated the hate and the West Stand lads chanted “singing aye, aye yippee yippee aye, fuck the Posh!”
Northampton won with a gloriously shithouse last-minute fluke, leaving the shoe army to take to their pitch and kids to flick the vs at the away end, with the bragging rights, until they all meet again.
©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Northampton Town vs Peterborough United. August 2023.
As the warmth began to fade in October but the sun was still bright, I took the beautiful train ride from Birmingham New Street to Hereford, the City with one of the finest remaining traditional English football grounds.
So many clubs have moved out of town and lost the priceless joy of a pint in the centre and a stroll to the ground but not Hereford FC.
You can down as many ciders as you like and walk to Edgar Street and click through the turnstiles and stand on its curved Meadow End and remember what football used to be.
While modern football strains under the collective weight of the big money game, Hereford does its thing with the simple pleasures of a terrace and a tin roof.
“Hereford United, we love you.
We’ll always support you and we’ll follow you through
Our supporters are the best and they do their thing
When the lads take to the field, this is what we’ll sing”…
©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Hereford FC. October 2023.
Some people laugh when I say QPR’s Loftus Road is the best ground in London. “Its Spurs or Arsenal surely” but they miss that subtle difference between a ground and a stadium.
Brentford’s Griffin Park was the best ground in London but now it’s gone the title has passed to QPR with its nearby housing estate and closeness of the stands which resemble a theatre.
The pubs are full of Scandinavian groundhoppers for they know a proper football ground, sighing at having to go to West Ham’s Olympic Stadium next when they once had Upton Park.
©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Queens Park Rangers FC. (shot on disposable film). October 2023.
December always brings feelings of home and togetherness with reflection of what’s been.
I want to St Albans City, who my late uncle supported, I should have gone earlier but there were no tears for him or for mum, just a growing warmth of a love that only families can feel, even if they aren’t together completely.
The beers were good and the queues were short enough and Brendan and his mates on decent form.
A young Chelmsford fan tottered around with a two-pint santa hat, barely spilling a drop even when a goal went in for the Clarets.
It’s that balance the terraces give us, even when the emotions creep out or the limbs happen, they give us a place of space and time that people who don’t get football will never understand.
©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. St Albans City. December 2023.
©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Chelmsford City fan at St Albans. December 2023.
©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Luton Town FC. 2023.
©Tom Reed/Terrace Edition. Everton FC. 2023.
©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Millwall FC. 2023.
©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Southend United FC. 2023.
©Tom Reed. Northampton Town FC. 2023.
©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. West Bromwich Albion (Lai Out protest). 2023.
©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Cardiff City FC. 2023.
©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. HSV at 1. FC Kaiserlautern. 2023.
©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Northampton Town FC. 2023.
©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Clapton CFC. 2023.
©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Barnton AFC. “The Cheshire Juve”. 2023.
©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Atlético Clube de Portugal. 2023.
©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Reading FC. Sell before we Dai protest. 2023.
©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Hereford FC. 2023.
©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Queens Park Rangers FC. 2023.
©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Aldershot Town FC. 2023.
©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Aldershot Town FC. 2023.
©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Maidstone United FC. 2023.
©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. St Albans City FC. 2023.
©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Aldershot Town FC. 2023.
©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. By plane, train and automobile. 2023.
Tom Reed is Terrace Edition Editor and can be found on X: @tomreedwriting
