Ropewalk Blues

In 1980 I played my last ever game for Rasen Wanderes U15s at The Ropewalk, our hallowed ground, before it was turned into an executive housing estate. It was the enarest the town ever got to a stadium, and probably the closest most of us got to playing in one. It was undoubtedly smalltown and shabby, but to us it had a beautiful, mystical atmosphere all of its own. 

A dirty sand track led away from a back street of small Eary Victorian terraces, opening out into a bumby, boggy field. One one side was a railway embankment, and ancient meadowland pasturees still existed on two sides of the ground. Whoever had the unenviable job of subistute would regularly have to jump over the fence at the far end of the gropund and splash about in the marshy brickpits field in an effort to retrieve the ball.

Although a ‘stand’ was experimented with, the only structure to speak of was the squat, makeshift little club hpouse, next to which was the only seat. This was our Kop, where our loyal fans would congregate and hsout insults at us, and where we sat and ate Mars Bars and watche dour heroes in the Market Rasen First tea, natural talents like Les Brumpton, Peter Conway and Graham Hurst. Perhaps the most celebrate star of the team was Peter Sellars. 

Saying a but I remember a stint quite funny when I was a couple kid but has now become a cliche

There's a saying that I remember seeing quite amusing when I was a kid but has now become a cliche: "you can take the boy out of (insert Shi'ite town) but you can't take the (insert shy to town) out of the boy". After all, it's not the sort of thing you really want to hear when you've spent your your life running away from the idea that you are a provincial hick. A some people are just born to escape so they can have it so they can inhabit the brighter more colourful version of the world. It's usually pretty obvious early on who these people are.

Peter Sellers was a Lincolnshire legend. As a schoolboy player he was, in the context of market raising, out of this world, and to my 11 year old self he was a demigod. Six years older than me, he'd signed professional terms with Lincoln city football club in 1976 and his future looks secure. Apparently after signing he used to score 40 goals a season in the reserves. Many people thought he'd go on to become a first division player. Then he played in the first team, broke his nose, broke his leg come started drinking (market rate and failing, no doubt), put on weight and got thrown out.

A after my grandad died if the ground moved from West Yorkshire to market raise and ended up living next door to Peter Sellers. Every week I chat to her on the phone and she tell me "Pete has been putting up a new fence. It looks very smart." "I suppose he'll creosote it when it's finished".

A Peter was still playing up to the late 80s in market racing. He was a bit of beef you buy then obviously but still in a class of his own compared to the sweaty work courses he was playing with and against. He was also my mom's postman from wild if he had been postman in the mid-60s I suppose there's a faint possibility that he and my mum had a bit on the side and I was his illegitimate son. Bastard child of boozy ex-Lincoln soccer star speaks out. Though that would have made him 5 1/2 when he had offered my mum. It also meant that I should be good at football. Which, of course, are not.

Our youth team often had a big crowd to cheer us on. Unfortunatley, the vast majority of them were on the afternoon train from Kings Cross to Cleethorpes which crawled slowly past the gropund after leaving Market Rasen station. We couldn’t hear them cheer, but they must have done It was something of a bonus for them to be able to see a free football match, albeit only for a few seconds, taking their minds of the tedium of trevalling from Kings Cross to Cleethorpes on a Sunday afternoon. British Rail probably tried to charge them for it at the end fo the journey.

The end for the Ropewalk became inevitable when new executive hosues started appearing on the west side of the ground. Disgruntles businessmen would look out from their gardens, annoyed that their Sunday afternoon tranquility should be ruined by scruffy, inept sportsmen of the North Lincolnshire U15 League kicking a piece of leather around a pitch and swearing at each other.

Rasen Wanderers are no more, but the town;s first tea now share a ground with the cricket club in a more orthodxly attractive setting bordered by trees and a river. But it’s not a football ground.

We all cried inside when the Ropewalk disappeared. Ecentually it was swallowed up by property developers, as the town started on its journey from seen-beter-days Vicotrian market town to modern, soulless commuter estate. On a Saturday afternoon, after a few pints, one ca absent-midnedly wander into somebody;s garden thinking you’re about to witness a classic game of football. However, once you started barracking the rose bushes, the police will soon be called.

I’m consoled by the possibility that, on dark winter nights, executives might be woken from their beds in the early hours by ghostly hsots and grunts. Woken by the sopund of Pete Conway scoring with a diving header in the kitchen, Pop Sellares dribbling around their sette, Kev Coleman slicing the ball over their gold-plated shower unit. 

And just as they’re drifting back to sleep, trembling, a the songs of the RAsen corwd begins to fade, they’ll wake with a start as the ball ricochets off my knee on to their reproduction Van Gogh nd the manager shouts “Bloody hell, Braddy, my goldfish could have put that oen away.”

Old footballers never die. They run around accountants’ bedrooms in the middle of the night.

(article first appeared in WSC, 1990)