The right fit is not always the first thing we look for. The right fit for you may not be the most stylish, most popular, most coveted, most followed or most acclaimed. Sometimes you get lucky, you know from the first moment. Sometimes the process will help you find what’s right.
Whether you’re a smitten schoolboy, or a grown-up football fan.
I’m still under the spell of Gregory’s Girl, the much-loved Scottish film from the early ‘80s, written and directed by Bill Forsyth. It’s just so utterly charming, funny and warm, like you’re being hugged while you watch.
Gregory’s Girl is a coming-of-age film about awkward teenage boys, with the central character, played John Gordon Sinclair, desperate to win the affection of Dee Hepburn’s cool, glamorous, mature Dorothy, the only girl on the football team and by far the best player - dribbling around hurdles in an era of ingrained sexism and lack of opportunity for women’s football (issues I’ve written and reported on a lot over the years).
The film depicts a very different era and attitudes but has a soul that it is timeless. Gregory’s hapless pursuit of Dorothy is hilariously misjudged, but we are rooting for him - go for it Gregory, what harm can it do?!
What ends up being important is where the process takes him. Dorothy may not be interested in dating gawky Gregory, but she helps him find someone suitably kooky - Susan, played by the enchanting Clare Grogan. When the two of them lay on the grass like two peas in a pod in the gloaming, dancing without music, it’s an iconic scene that still has us lovers of the film beaming.
To develop three such loveable, charismatic characters was a triumph of casting, but the script gives countless opportunities for the cast to deliver wry, deadpan lines that have stayed in the memory, such as Gregory describing Dorothy to his older brother.
“She’s got lovely long hair…and she smells…really gorgeous...even if you just walk past her in the corridor…she smells gorgeous. She’s got teeth…lovely white teeth. White, white teeth. “
“Oh, THAT Dorothy. And she’s on the football team?”
“Yeah… I think she’s taking my position”.
Any excuse to recall Gregory’s Girl. It’s a beautiful piece of Scottish culture, and it carried a clever little life lesson wherever you are from. Treasure, fulfilment often can be hidden. Where will you find home?
In football many of us are finding our match with our local club in Non-League football. By ‘many’, this is not an assumption or exaggeration. I know these people. They are football fans who have got to experience the considerable charms of ‘proper’ football, below the top four divisions in England.
Mark, James, Katie, Adrian, Chris, Nick, Steve, Lesley and others. They have all embraced non-league football in recent months, partly for its merits, partly because they’d had enough of how we were treated by the elite game. An old friend Peter (@Dmitrius Old on Twitter) shares beautiful in-depth accounts of game-changing, life changing experiences watching lower league football (mainly across teams in South East London and Devon). He captures the soul of it, saying: “If you love Non-League football and it really does love you back.” Is that still the case with the big clubs?
Dorothy wasn’t right for Gregory, and these days the Premier League just isn’t working for me. But just as Dorothy was part of his bigger picture, I can’t ignore its successes and failings, and their part in the story. I summarise what the Premier League has become in The Tip of the Pyramid, a key chapter of my book The Dilly Dong Bell. Many changes to football, mainly safety and inclusivity, have been positive. But it’s been hard to love for years.
The prices. The taking fans for granted. The dubious owners, the sportswashing, the subscription fees, the hype. The kick-off times. The nonsense talked about getting into the top four and avoiding relegation. These are not existential issues. Bury FC’s demise was existential. Which one does sports media spend its time on?
In Non-League football, and my beloved hometown team Horsham FC, there is everything you could possibly need from a match day experience. The sheer friendliness, the surprising quality of the football, the connection with players, the excitement of the pyramid and the fixtures lists. This is not two average top-flight teams sharing a wildly oversold 1-1 draw on Monday night football. Where a dull mid-table game of chess is treated like it’s a privilege for us to pay and watch:
“Watch the football…watch it it’s gonna moooove!”
The one issue I have with non-league football shouldn’t matter. And that’s the name on the tin. Why is it still called non-league? It couldn’t possibly be presented less attractively. Non-League? Why not just call it ‘non-good’? In Germany the term unterklassig (under-class) is used to describe football below the top three flights, but I suspect the same values we find lower down the pyramid here will be found in German Non-league football and elsewhere.
The quality of English non-league football has pleasantly surprised every single person I’ve introduced. Every one of them, and it’s now a couple of dozen. Humility and community values are at the core of non-league football, so I wouldn’t dream of suggesting a rebrand. Yuk. But a rewording at some stage? Why not consider it.
How about calling it ‘Pyramid football’? Because that’s the beauty – a pyramid offering opportunity to all. Your team probably won’t keep climbing the ladders. But might. And if they don’t, 3pm on a Saturday still gives comfort. A slice of proper football.
The FA needs to capitalise on opportunities to showcase many hundreds of community clubs across England. Last season there was a quirk on the calendar with no Premier League and no international football one Saturday in winter. But there was no joined-up thinking in promoting non-league clubs and matches. As a former Sky News Sports Editor, BBC Radio Prog Ed and long-serving international sports correspondent, I’d be happy to help avoid such missed opportunities.
The Isthmian League is a region of steps 3 and 4 of men’s non-league football, seven below Premier League, covering Greater London, East and South East England, including my county of Sussex. When this season’s fixtures were released on a baking hot Thursday in July it was genuinely exciting. The possibilities of the season suddenly appear. Hundreds of clubs were part of the draw for the FA Cup extra Preliminary round on August 6. I’ll be going to watch a local team, Horsham YMCA, at the start of nine months of the world’s best domestic football Cup.
On the same day, Roffey FC, two roads from where I live and formed in 1901, will play their first ever FA Cup match on the Sussex coast in Lancing. Put yourself in the shoes of the volunteers, including tireless Chairman Phil, who work every day to run and develop the club, makes it something for the community. And now they are in the FA Cup. This is what sport should be, can be. Community spirit, togetherness and daring to dream. Elite sport is not to be trusted, but I’m not writing about community clubs to be contrary. I’m writing it because it’s bloody important. Please give your local club a chance.
Dorking Wanderers FC, a club three tiers above Roffey at the second level of non-league, brought their team here a few weeks ago to play a match for the mental health charity Mind.org.uk. These clubs, these people, do not miss an opportunity to give. Phil, Craig, Trevor, all of you, including those running our veterans’ team, thank you.
Turning up to non-league football, with its fan-friendly grounds, beer flowing, families, volunteers, dogs and community spirit gives the kind of glow the opening titles of Gregory’s Girl brings. You know your heart will be lifted. You know you’ll smile, laugh.
For Horsham FC’s magnificent Lardy Army fans the starting point is wanting the team to play good football, and win. But humour and camaraderie underpin the trips to watch the team. Seventh tier fans travelling to watch their club. World class fans. There’s a lot of humour to be found in football and you won’t find it in the TV rights holding studios - what you get there is ‘banter’. They are different things.
The Lardy Army’s flags and chants have made an impression well beyond Sussex. Fans of league club Carlisle, 350 miles away, haven’t forgotten the noise made by hundreds of HFC fans, who never stopped singing, chanting, encouraging in our FA Cup defeat in November. One banner declares HFC ‘Conquerors of Europe’ (we beat Guernsey a few years back). A Peru banner is also brought to games. “It’s just like watching Peru,” sing the fans. Not quite Brazil.
This week I travelled down to the West Sussex coach to watch Horsham, Isthmian League Cup holders, take on League Champions Worthing in the ‘Charity Shield’. Horsham’s chosen charity is Papyrus-uk.org, a charity for the prevention of suicide amongst young people. Worthing were playing for loveyourhospital.org. Please support them if you can.
Every non-league ground has something interesting and unique and Worthing is no exception. Sport has been played here since 1892, and at this level you can wander with a pint and stand where you like. On the screen in the bar it is whites v yellows, so fans can keep an eye on England v Sweden in the Euro semi, apart from Mark who didn’t want to know the score until he got home. Outside it’s also whites (Worthing) v yellows (Horsham), on a perfect English summer’s evening. The seagulls dip in and out of the action, ‘rival’ fans compare notes. A few hundred are in the ground, it’s serene before kick-off, the calm before the season.
That calm is broken by us Horsham fans when we are denied a penalty for Lee Harding seemingly being tripped. Biased? Nah, it was a penalty, unlike the three Worthing were given on New Year’s Day. Not that we’re bitter!
But Worthing are a really good team and in the second half they tear us apart. 3-0 to Worthing, and as the final whistle sounds someone tells Mark that England’s Women have won 4-0 in Sheffield. He puts his head in his hands at his post-match TV viewing being spoiled before the scoreline sinks in and he’s delighted, I’ll check that he managed to see that backheel goal.
The assistant manager Adam, who typifies the graciousness of the club, and this football, comes over to the few dozen Horsham fans, thanks us for coming and apologises for the score. The players applaud us as we applaud them. They will be back. So will Mark and I.
They will win some and lose some. Nobody will panic, or ring a radio station, or cry on social media, or create a You Tube channel based around hysterical over-reaction to your team’s results. No man with patronising delivery and shiny shoes will adopt the serious brow of a war correspondent to dissect the performance for two hours with some equally humourless former players.
The Community Shield between Liverpool and Manchester City is already being advertised like the greatest show on earth, how refreshing that it’s the Women’s Euro final, on free-to-air TV, that my 10 year-old son and his friends, girls and boys, are talking about. History is being made, and new generations will have these England games as magical memories for decades.
But the development of women’s teams for all clubs, league and non-league, needs to be a priority using the momentum of the unprecedented attention and inspiration from the Euros. Lewes FC, one of Horsham FC’s fellow Isthmian League teams, are a perfect example, blazing a trail by giving equal billing and equal pay to women’s and men’s teams. All clubs need to offer opportunity to women’s football. Let’s please not waste the opportunity, as Ian Wright said so perfectly on Tuesday.
This season will provide a unique opportunity for small clubs in England and beyond. For over a month from mid-November there will be no Premier League. Please don’t sit at home and fill the Premier League gap with matches like Qatar v Ecuador in the World Cup on TV if there’s football close to you to be found and savoured instead.
While Gregory is waiting under a giant clock for Dorothy, wearing his brother’s ill-fitting cream jacket, Dorothy’s friend Carol arrives and directs him elsewhere, on a path that eventually leads to his perfect date with Susan:
“I’ve just got a funny feeling….that something nice might happen.”
Lee Wellings is a UK-based author, broadcaster and film maker specialising in sport and ethics. He has worked on and off screen at the BBC, ITN, Sky News and Al Jazeera, covering major sports news stories across the globe.
His first book on sport and society, The Dilly Dong Bell (a wake up call for sport) is available fromwww.ProjectisPublishing.com.
Media enquiries for analysis on sport and ethics, including TV, podcasts and public speaking direct to leewellings@hotmail.com
"Something Nice Might Happen"
Another great read thank you Lee 👍🏻 ⚽️ 💙