Up And Down The English Pyramid

Sorry I've been quiet but as some readers know, I spent last week in London.  My plan on returning was to recap the two games (DC and Chicago) that I had missed but, really, nobody needs to suffer through a recap of those messes.  Instead lets talk about something more interesting, my trip up and down the English pyramid.

Last month I wrote an article for the Blackburn fanzine 4,000 Holes (its from a John Lennon song) about how a guy in Denver ended up being a Rovers fan.  I mentioned my Twitter handle in the article and after it was published the week before I left Rob from the London branch of the Rovers Supporters Group reached out to me and invited me to a special meeting of the London group the night before the QPR-Blackburn game.

Picture from Rob's Twitter

After a day at the Natural History Museum and Camden markets my wife and I had dinner in Leicester Square and I headed to the pub where the group was meeting while she went back to the hotel.  The Red Lion pub across the street (literally) from St. James Palace is a small place that claims to be the second oldest drinking house in England.  Upstairs was a small room where I met 25-30 fellow Rovers supporters who had gathered for a chance to have a Q&A with Blackburn Rovers CEO Steve Waggott.

CEO Steve Waggott, picture also from Rob's Twitter

Surprisingly I was one of the 4-5 youngest people there.  Rob and some of the old-timers joked about their average age being 95 and hoped I could bring that average down a bit.  After a bit of socializing Steve Waggott took the floor and talked for a few minutes and then spent close to an hour answering questions from the group.  I didn't have anything to ask but just listening in and hearing about how the business side of a major club works was very interesting.  Rovers may be a recently promoted Championship club, but they are one of only six teams to have ever won the EPL.  Something Steve said probably couldn't happen today with current UEFA Financial Fair Play rules and the ridiculously to-heavy English system.

After talking with him I came to the conclusion that the English system is fundamentally broken and will either result in a collapse or a breakaway of the top teams while the rest of the pyramid resets itself in a new paradigm.  Right now Huddersfield Town is guaranteed to finish in last place in the EPL and be relegated.  They will have gotten $130 million from this year's EPL TV deal plus another $40 million as a parachute payment for being relegated.  Meanwhile (at least) one of Leeds Sheffield United, and WBA will not get promoted and will start the 2019-20 season in the Championship as the strongest non-promoted team.  They will have gotten $7 million for this year's EFL TV deal.  Their $7 million will be competing with Huddersfield's $170 million for promotion next season.  That's almost a 25 to 1 ratio just from TV and parachute payments.  And it only gets worse as you go down the table.  Its no surprise that its hard for any team to stay up for any length of time and even harder for them to compete for anything other than avoiding relegation.

Overall though it was a fascinating evening.  One thing I took away was Steve's understanding about the need to attract and "hook" the next generation and how the digital age and ability to follow any team from almost anywhere on the planet makes it hard to get kids interested in their local team, something that MLS teams have struggled with as well.  Generally though i came away with the feeling that Blackburn should be a pretty solid Championship team for a long time to come and while we may never get back to the EPL, I'd rather be competitive in the Championship than to just fight for survival a level up.

The next day was Good Friday, a bank holiday, so the lower league games had been scheduled for Friday instead of Saturday. After watching the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace, I headed to the Shepard's Bush neighborhood of West London to see the Rovers take on QPR at Loftus Road.

Loftus Road opened in 1904 and, well, you can tell.  Its a great experience to go but the stadium has very few amenities and the seats were obviously put in to a stadium designed for standing terraces.  I literally could not sit with my legs closed without kneeing the person in front of me in the back of the head.  That said, the viewpoint, even as an away supporter, was great.  I was dead center behind the goal in the School End Upper Tier, the deck traditionally given to the travelling fans.  It was a gorgeous day for football and everyone was in high spirits.  Blackburn took an early lead when Lewis Travis was taken down in the box and Danny "he scores when he wants" Graham stepped up to put the penalty away.  

The second half started quickly with Bradley Dack getting a goal in the first minute right at my feet (or at least that's how it felt) to put the good guys up 2-0.  After that it felt like Blackburn was going to coast to their 3rd straight win but a goal by QPR just at the start of 6 minutes of stoppage time made thins a little tense before the final whistle and a 2-1 win.  Then it was a quick tube ride back to the hotel to meet my wife for dinner.

On Saturday I had my choice between four games in the London area that were easily accessible on the Tube.  In the EPL West Ham was hosting Leicester City, Arsenal was hosting Crystal Palace, and Chelsea was hosting Burnley.  Also in the National League South (level 6 of the pyramid) Wealdstone FC was hosting Dulwich Hamlet.  After a morning at the British Museum I headed out to the northwestern suburb of Ruislip to Grosvenor Vale, the home of Wealdstone FC.  I've always wanted to see a non-league game and given the price difference it made sense to go see the lower-league game over the EPL.  Ruislip is on the Metropolitan and Piccadilly lines of the Tube with the main Ruislip station a 5-10 minute walk from the stadium.  The Vale is down at the end of a cul-de-sac in a residential area, without the signs on the main drive nearby you wouldn't even know it was there.

The ground reminded me a lot of high school football here in the U.S.  No in areas like Texas where high-school football is a religion but in areas where its something for the town to get behind but not the main topic of the town.  Its listed at a capacity of 3600, with about 700 seats.  There are three different stands with seats, none more than 7-8 rows deep, and the rest is terrace area for standing or just spots on the fence around the field.  The club shop/snack bar, with the PA announcer on top, is clearly built from a converted shipping container but other buildings, such as the locker rooms and clubhouse, are older fully built structures.  Amenities are pretty minimal, a snack bar and a burger place, one team store, and a long-time fan selling pins of every team in England and most of the rest of Europe ever game, and the clubhouse with a couple of different bars.  But at 13 pounds for a general admission ticket you don't expect much.  I wandered around the whole perimeter of the field, stopped in and bought a scarf at the team store, a soda at the snack bar, and a couple of pins from the long-time fan, and settled in on one of the terraces behind the goal Wealdstone was attacking.

Now I'll be honest, the soccer wasn't great.  But these are guys who are semi-pro and hold down other jobs.  They show up to practice 2-3 times a week after work and then show up for the games.  For this they get 200-400 pounds a week.  They're playing for the love the game and, for the younger guys, the hope they can be the next Jamie Vardy (Vardy played non-league football for 5 years before being signed by Leicester City and leading them on their miracle run to the EPL title).  In reality, the best of them might make it to full time professional contracts in League Two or maybe League One.

At halftime I noticed that since the whole stadium was general admission the supporters had an understanding that they would switch sides at half along with the team.  So the Wealdstone supporters moved to the other end of the field and the Dulwich Hamlet supporters filled in around me for the second half.  Dulwich Hamlet is based in the Southwark borough of South London so they had ha decent (relatively speaking) crowd of travelling supporters who came up on the tube.  With the shuffle of fans a spot opened up on the fence and I moved up there for the second half.

As you can see, when I say "on the fence" I mean literally "I could touch the nets".  That last picture is a PK that Dulwich Hamlet earned and I'm pretty sure I was closer to the ball on the spot than some of the players on the edge of the box.  In the end Wealdstone needed a result to keep their promotion hopes alive but Dulwich came to play and ran up a 3-0 lead before giving one up late for a 3-1 final score in their favor.  Dulwich's pink & navy color scheme needs some work though.

I'm really glad I went to see what the non-league game is like.  I'd be happy to go back to Wealdstone or another non-league game on a future trip.  These two teams play in the National League South, with the top team and the winner of a playoff both being promoted to the National League.  The top team in that league and the winner of a playoff gets promoted each year into the English Football League League Two becoming one of the 92 fully professional teams in England.  (Dagenham & Redbridge, the team Tim Howard and his investors in Memphis 901 bought, are in the National League and play in the east of London.  I wanted to go see them but their game was the same time as the Blackburn game.)  I highly encourage any soccer fan who's in England to go check out a non-league game at least once.

So that's a look at the higher and lower levels of the English pyramid.  All these teams have good social media presences and websites where you can follow the team, so if you're interested take a look around and find a team you like and keep an eye on them.  I've been keeping an eye on Chester FC since I visited Chester on our England trip two years ago and now I'll be watching Wealdstone as well.