The Premiership isn't everything in the tale of English soccer
Southeast Asia, with the exception of the Philippines, knows the great club names of English soccer -- Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool and now Chelsea -- or so it seems.
This can in large part be attributed to aggressive marketing, but in Singapore and Malaysia at least it precedes the television age, the interest being born in colonial times.
If names like Beckham and Owen, Gerrard and Lampard trot off millions of tongues in this part of the world, it is because English Premiership soccer is beamed into millions of homes.
That's the glamour side of the game assiduously promoted by the clubs, the press, the admen and of course the TV companies.
But for many soccer fans in the UK and indeed elsewhere loyalties are attached to other names. In the case of two Jakarta-based British expatriates, namely myself and Chris Springer, our teams are not even in the league as such.
Our hometown clubs are in what is effectively English soccer's Fifth Division, the Nationwide Conference. Mine is Carlisle United, who fell through the trapdoor last season after 75 years in the League, and Chris' is Aldershot Town, who dropped out mid- season in the 1980s, bankrupt.
As I write they are gripped in a battle to reach the playoffs and the chance to follow champions Barnet back into the League.
Not for Chris and I all that razzmatazz of super-rich mega- stars such as Wayne "Small Vocabulary" Rooney and Roy "I Destroy Opponents' Careers" Keane. No, for us our heroes may not be household names at home and abroad, but they are no less loved for all that!
I very much doubt if Indonesian soccer fans are aware of this but Carlisle United once topped the Premiership's predecessor, the old First Division when Manchester United were not even in it!
Yes! The year was 1973-74 and in the first week of their only season in the top flight the Cumbrians, as they are known, beat Chelsea (pre-Jose Mourinho, of course) away 2-0,
Middlesbrough away 1-0, where the sporting home crowd gave them a stand ovation, and Tottenham 1-0 in Carlisle in front of an ecstatic crowd. Bliss it was to be young then!
"Cock of the North!" crowed the tabloid Daily Mirror. The soccer-watching public was agog. What was this "little" club from the England-Scotland border doing on top of the table?
Of course it couldn't last and it didn't. Although widely acknowledged to play some lovely passing (they hammered champions Derby County 3-0 at home, drew 0-0 away), lack of resources told against them and they were relegated.
I will always remember that first game way at Chelsea's Stamford Bridge. A quite remarkable thing happened before the game; the Chelsea players applauded United onto the pitch (you don't see that these days)! The Chelsea fans, of course, thought our lads were lambs for the slaughter.
In the second minute the gifted Chris Balderstone, who later played Test cricket for England, chipped the ball onto the Chelsea bar, and out of nowhere came United's big center-back Bill Green to put in the rebound.
A moment's stunned silence, and then the Carlisle fans, scarcely believing, erupted. I danced on the benches.
More was to come! When the tireless little Les O'Neill floated in a second goal over Chelsea's England goalie Peter Bonetti the Chelsea supporters were stunned some more and, yes, I danced my heart out, in fact like I have never danced since!
Yes, we have had our heroes. And that day none was more heroic than our Scottish keeper Alan Ross. Chelsea could have brought up the Royal Artillery to shell the United goal but Rossie would have kept it all out!
Ah, but dreams sometimes turn to ashes and there followed many disappointments until, at the end of last season, Carlisle joined Aldershot and other erstwhile League clubs such as Accrington Stanley and Hereford in the Conference.
By a remarkable coincidence, in the very first League game I ever saw at Carlisle's Brunton Park in the early 1960s the visitors were none other than Aldershot (a 2-0 home victory).
When the Shots dropped out, it was United that finished one above them. Aldershot is a famous old military town in the south of England, and by dint of hard work the club has hauled itself through the minor leagues to get another glimpse of life in the Football League.
Chris Springer and I will have a friendly bet on the outcome if both our teams get to the playoffs. By the time you read this it will all be decided. And you can bet your last rupiah that neither of us gives a tinker's cuss for the giants at Old Trafford and, yes, Stamford Bridge as we dream of a life outside the Nationwide Conference! -- David Jardine