Potential: Northampton Town FC, big county, huge prospects

Words: Tom Reed

Images: Tom Reed

Potential, the transparent perspex prison that surrounds us all.

Northampton Town FC is full of it, having popped two viagra but the whorehouse is always closed.

A county of 750,000 with only one Football League club.

No other serious outfits within 45 minutes in any direction.

One season in the top flight in 126 years.

©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Northampton Town centre.

When asked what club has the most potential, football finance guru Kieran Maguire always says Birmingham City and of course he’s right that the Blues, recently acquired by a group including NFL legend Tom Brady, have stratospheric prospects.

But League 1, Northampton Town remain one of the most underachieving clubs in English football, in their own way.

The anti-Burnley in terms of percentage of locals who go up the football, 2.5% on a good day at Northampton, compared to the 27% who push through the turnstiles every other Saturday at Premier League Turf Moor.

Northampton’s population, at 243,00 dwarfs Burnley’s 73,000, even if their trophy cabinet doesn’t.

It’s a sporting town with Premier League rugby union, first class cricket and Formula 1 racing just down the road at Silverstone.

©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Northampton Town FC.

The centre of the high-end shoe industry, hence the nickname of the Cobblers, with the factory shops of such quality manufacturers as Churches and Crockett and Jones thronging with Chinese clients.

They are digging up the town’s market square at the moment, finding all sorts of architectural relics and taking away the burger vans and mobile phone stalls has uncovered a European style piazza.

It feels the Cobblers are waiting to be uncovered too in a town that hasn’t done much to love the football club and where the football club hasn’t given the town that much to love.

The six goals scored by George Best for Manchester United at the old County Ground in 1970 did much of it, with the mercurial Irishman seemingly just needing to divert his gaze to send forlorn Northampton goalie Kim Book into a floundering camel routine.

And yet, that potential is always there, bubbling up and then down like a quickly poured half-time pint of Carlsberg at Sixfields.

The Cobblers took 41,000 to Wembley for the Second Division Playoff in Final in 1998, a record following at the time.

It was the second appearance at the national stadium in as many years and the club began to take back its villages that have been encroached upon by chippy Leicester and Coventry fans.

But, Cobblers lost that ’98 final, and everything fell away, the mooted stadium capacity increase at the tight 7000 odd stadium never happened.

Then the ITV digital crisis came along and the Cobblers were acquired by the Cardoza family in what was a fateful move in more ways than one.

The one man who could have altered Northampton’s past, Max Griggs, of the Doctor Martens Empire, had by that time, spent vast sums on the folly at Rushden and Diamonds, some 25 minutes down the road but never big enough to sustain the sort of enterprise he created.

Griggs had been on the board of Northampton Town and the reason for him taking his millions elsewhere remains a mystery and a great “what could have been”.

You can understand then, Cobblers boss Jon Brady’s frustrated post-match outburst after Northampton’s recent 4-1 caning at Portsmouth.

He’s taken the club to the brink of the League 1 playoff positions, but there’s another injury crisis and the transfer window was a quiet one, leaving fans worried whether the progress will drop away like it so often does.

There’s been back-to-back defeats and Bolton Wanderers up next.

Cobblers fans fall out all the time, some of the most loyal supporters you’ll ever find and it’s that potential to blame.

The supporters’ trust have their own ideas about infrastructure at the club and the owners aren’t talking to the supporters’ trust.

With football’s continuing boom in attendance, the compact Sixfields is near-enough full every week but the longstanding project to finish the East Stand won’t add many new seats it seems. A deal on the huge piece of land behind the stadium looks like it will yield warehouses, a car park and a few executive boxes.

The once famed atmosphere on the Hotel End at the old county ground has been replaced by a tinny hum in all-seater Sixfields.

Not much to tempt those shy potential Cobblers out to turn them into a force.

Back in the 80’s when there was a cash crisis, the local paper put out a headline saying “if there’s a millionaire out there, please call Northampton 71553”.

Maybe the number still works and the advert can be added to the Los Angeles Times for the next Ryan Reynolds moment.

Until then, Cobblers fans, plodding up the famous Sixfields hill after the match, will cheer short runs of wins and bemoan knee-capping losses, while the sun struggles to breach that perspex, and the pints go flat real quick.

Tom is Terrace Edition Editor and can be found on X: @tomreedwriting

ecstasy, agony, cobblers

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