| Tangerineland-by-the-Sea | |
The 90 minutes before the 90 minutes
Life is tough you know. Selling fanzines - every week, every match, everywhere. Home and away, home and away, home and away.
Blackpool Away
We like the sea and we like the seaside. We also like Bloomfield Park and Tangerineland. Blackpool is an old-fashioned place with an old-fashioned ground. And a busy forecourt - club shop, club offices, club everything - where you’re bound to entice a few people into parting with a pound (‘One pound only you know - and 76 pages you know’) The RP sales squad is looking for an effective away performance - to bump up the already fairly healthy post-Chesterfield sales figures. But it’s never easy going away: you’ve got to adapt to new conditions, a hostile environment and lots of nasty home fans blocking the pavement. You’d be happy just to come away with pride intact. Just get rid of a few extra: 20, 50, 100? Unpredictable. That’s football, that’s fanzine-selling. The busy forecourt is, well, still busy. That nice Jon McEvoy is doing a bit of pre-match research in and amongst. He says he’s just been for a stroll down the prom and is feeling all the better for it. Nick Hilton, of Daily Post fame, is also cruising the perimeter of the ground and pops into the club shop for something (something that’s, more than likely, tangerine). And just to add to the uncontainable excitement, the opposition turn up (at last): Another view from the Tower. Two lads empty their bags and AVFTT goes on sale. They’re friendly enough: two blokes who look as though they don’t take the fanzine-selling business too seriously. But they make an early tactical error. They’re standing together. Together! Why not split up and double sales? It’s a suicidal back-pass that leads, almost inevitably, to a needless own goal. Woeful, as Alan Hansen might have said. A quick exchange deal is finalised: one copy of RP for two copies of AVFTT. It’s a nice fanzine: nicely produced and nicely tangerine in colour, I wish Wrexham wore tangerine. Fancy having a fanzine that, every issue, was tangerine in colour. Brilliant. Better than red every other issue and blue. Blue! ‘That’s Chester City mate. No way am I buying that! Sorry.’ They’re still worried about the colour - still tortured by that blue colour. They hate it. They despise it. They really do. After the journalists and the native fanzine-sellers come the fans: Carl and Neil Tunnah (staying the weekend in a downtown B&B), a very nice bloke from Llay who says he wants to order an RP subscription for his brother in Grantham (birthplace of Mrs Thatcher) and also that Neil Roberts chap. You see him everywhere. He follows Wrexham all over the place these days. He’s always with his mates, always eating pies, always supping coffee. They say he’s quite a decent footballer as well. Flynn should give him a try some time - give him a game, see how he does. He’s one of those loyal fans who dreams of playing for Wrexham. Flynn should have a look, Really. And then there’s this bloke from Leicester. He doesn’t follow Blackpool, he doesn’t follow Wrexham. Rather, he’s one of those ‘92’ guys - on the trail of the ‘full set’. He’s got six grounds left to ‘conquer’: ‘Chelsea, Plymouth, Torquay, Carlisle, one other, and, oh, Blackpool.’ He’s with his girlfriend/wife/partner as well. She looks thrilled. Has she endured the previous 86? Good effort. RP’s tactical formation is slightly different for this away-game encounter. Lapsed Evertonian Neil Pye is employed again in a Ginola-esque ‘free role’, again, but Ukranian international Dean Domerecki is asked to go man-on-man at the away end. He marks the turnstiles out of the game; a great effort which his teammates fully acknowledge. But he encounters some problems: ‘Hey mate, is this a Les Evans reject on the front cover?’ (‘No’); ‘Hey mate, d’you know who that is on the front cover?’ (‘No’) ‘Well mate, it’s me. Me! Bloody me! Fame or what?’ Domerecki sticks tight to his task though; the turnstiles are marked totally out of the game. But back on the forecourt there are amazing things happening. Allan Thomas - yes the Allan Thomas - is spotted. He tells the RP sales squad that he gets to most away games - but not the London ones. We say: ‘It’s an away game Allan - it must be a bit more relaxing for you?’ He says: ‘A bit’. He works hard that Allan Thomas. I bet he’d love to sell those Blackpool fans a Rockin’ Robin pencil case or a Rockin’ Robin laundry bag. He could do them in tangerine as well - at no extra cost. It’s tough fanzine-selling - because when you want the loo there’s nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. The woman in the Blackpool club shop tells us just to use the club toilet. But it’s not easy. There’s loads of offices and loads of toilet-looking rooms. If you’re not careful you can end up in the chairman’s office or the sponsors room. Another own goal, I’d say. But it’s outside where the action is. There’s also that car - that decrepit orange car, sponsored by the fans, which seems to be making a massive anti-Oyston point. They hate Oyston here - they totally hate him. Fancy having your chairman in jail. Fancy having a chairman who’s never met your manager because he’s in jail. It’s a funny game football, but we put in a decent performance at Blackpool - on the pitch and just outside the perimeter of the ground.
RAY SCORSE