The never ending story. Northampton vs Barnsley, ad infinitum.

Words: Tom Reed and Alex Cadman

Images: Tom Reed and Alex Cadman

Show no fear

For she may fade away

In your hand

The birth of a new day

Not every match is memorable, worthy enough to be stored away in a little file in the football part of the brain that seems to be so significant.

Not all afternoons leave you with a scratchy throat, sticky Diadora and on a comedown which lasts into Sunday.

Sometimes, football just washes over you in a gentle, hazy way, after all we’ve lived fixtures like Northampton vs Barnsley over and over.

For Sam Hoskins see Jamie Forrester and for Devante Cole see Mike Sheron and repeat till you go back to men throwing their caps in the air when they thought a goal was going in, only for the ball to roll harmlessly wide.

The Sixfields Sounds DJ played the Northern Soul classic “The Night” and people shuffled like they’d been at Blackpool Mecca without ever attempting a spin on the day of the football that might not lead to a night on the tiles.

Late into the ground because the pints were going down too good and Brendan was talking about shooting Kalashnikovs in Vegas.

Trasferta stickers in black and white.

Barrington Levy “Here I come”

©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Northampton Town vs Barnsley.

Missing the first goal but getting a reckoning of it because the Northampton goalkeeper was blaming his defenders but with a look on his face that it was his own fault.

One-nil-to-the-Barn-ser-lee sang the away fans, adding to the niche subsection of chants with more syllables than the club name.

The Cobblers trying their best to force a goal from a knock-down but just not working out to stick a foot on it and trouble the net.

Fingernails pulled through beards and Tykes shivering as the wind whips through the half-built stand.

A sloppy Cobblers corner and Cole moving from the shadows to the light with a full pitch run and finish that Burge wafted into top bins.

A Northampton substitute forward with an alice band tapping home a consolation and charging back to the centre spot for an equaliser that was blatantly never going to come.

Barnsley fans on the M1 services buying both a boost bar and a chicken triple sandwich, fat on the win.

Both teams won’t amount to much but that’s not important. We were there at this soon forgotten game.

Tom Reed

As my Cobbler colleague alludes to, this game wasn’t one for the ages.

Barring this game being the first professional match I’ve taken my camera to, and me nervously shuffling past the “No cameras” sign at the turnstile, this match has nothing to cling to as it drowns in the sea of boozy days out in the Barnsley_Away_Games folder of my brain.

Tarn have seen some extreme highs and lows in the last few years, and somehow, I fear scraping together a win away to Northampton won’t stand out enough to find its place in the tapestry of our fan base’s collective memories either.

That said, we each take something away from every game we go to. It could be something as small as a new in-joke starting between the lads you travelled to the game with, or it could be a new recurring argument that first kicked off during the game. (Was Rick Astley ginger in the 80s or was it just the lighting on the “never gonna give you up” video? - All because I dared to say the game’s ref was a dead ringer for him.)

©Alex Cadman/ Terrace Edition. Northampton Town vs Barnsley.

It could be the quiet little parking spot I’ll always aim for whenever Barnsley return that helped us beat the traffic out. And it definitely will be the “Sixfields Sounds” concept, itself transported across Europe from Hamburg to Northampton in the vessel of a footballing memory.

“Concept” may be too strong a word, but a guy with some DJ decks blasting out the music of the terraces from the back of a car was certainly enough to win me over. Ska, Punk,Indie, Soul, Reggae, with a brief interlude of McFly’s “it’s all about you” to wind up Tom of this parish, what better way to find out that despite travelling two hours down the M1 you’re still among your own people ?

I shall be attempting to take something similar back to my beloved non-league club Emley, (if I get permission from the committee to bring a speaker into the Shed End of course), and that’s what it’s all about.

We are nothing if not the sum of our lived experiences, and our culture, our terraces, and our way of life are no different. A slow, creeping accumulation of the in-jokes and things we remember enjoying, left over from these dazed days out. The stats get eroded over time, but all of these tiny, seemingly insignificant details all get chucked into the tin pot.

Alex Cadman