channys6thswan
Lingers Long On Cank Street
It’s entirely fitting that Notts are playing are playing Huddersfield tomorrow, for the right to get relegated next season. For a brief moment in their history, Notts under Clough and Taylor, and Huddersfield under Chapman, those two clubs reached the absolute pinnacle in the beautiful game. The difference is, Huddersfield haven’t spent the many years since then trying to keep that era alive, in a pitiful and deluded way. You haven’t had the Terriers playing for the ‘Herbert Chapman Trophy’ against the Arsenal, in one one draws watched by next to no-one on a dank Sunday lunchtime. Huddersfield have never had the audacity to portray themselves as innately superior to the other clubs in Yorkshire, in the many years when those other teams have enjoyed much more success on the pitch than they have done.
Those differences are what makes the now shrunken Notts so sad and pitiable. It started off long before with all of that Robin Hood mumbo jumbo, that they’ve recently re-attached to themselves, in ways that even Cornwall towns haven’t tried to do with Camelot (no ‘King Arthur’ Airports down there, I see). Then there’s all that other more recent nonsense about the superiority of their ‘retail offer’ (when they never even had a branch of Brierley’s), their showcase housing estates, like the Meadows, their nightlife (what, no Il Rondo?), even their fine industrial traditions in being the first town in the world to make bobbins and bin bags. In fact, it’s no surprise, when you think about it, that the likes of Liverpool, Manchester and even Cov, ffs, have produced iconic bands, as we have, while Notts’ biggest contribution to sixty plus years of modern culture is Paper Lace. So even if Billy’s old team turn out to be heroes tomorrow, there’s nowt for any of us to take any notice of. Up the road, it’s all been fakery, for centuries on end. Clough aside, it’s all been one long sham.
Those differences are what makes the now shrunken Notts so sad and pitiable. It started off long before with all of that Robin Hood mumbo jumbo, that they’ve recently re-attached to themselves, in ways that even Cornwall towns haven’t tried to do with Camelot (no ‘King Arthur’ Airports down there, I see). Then there’s all that other more recent nonsense about the superiority of their ‘retail offer’ (when they never even had a branch of Brierley’s), their showcase housing estates, like the Meadows, their nightlife (what, no Il Rondo?), even their fine industrial traditions in being the first town in the world to make bobbins and bin bags. In fact, it’s no surprise, when you think about it, that the likes of Liverpool, Manchester and even Cov, ffs, have produced iconic bands, as we have, while Notts’ biggest contribution to sixty plus years of modern culture is Paper Lace. So even if Billy’s old team turn out to be heroes tomorrow, there’s nowt for any of us to take any notice of. Up the road, it’s all been fakery, for centuries on end. Clough aside, it’s all been one long sham.
