It wasn’t Luke Freeman’s skill, Joe Bryan’s crosses, or Aden
Flint’s heading. It wasn’t the goals of Aaron Wilbraham or Matt Smith and it
wasn’t the agility of Frankie Fielding. It wasn’t even the astute summer
purchases, tactical nous and tremendous man management from the gaffer, Steve
Cotterill. Hell, it wasn’t even Steve Lansdown’s millions.
Nope, the reason Bristol City have had such an incredible
season, such success, is down to my lucky purple and lime loom band bracelet!
Football people are funny folk, “queer as”, they might have
said in the olden days, before it became so politically incorrect.
Tales of superstition amongst sportspeople are commonplace,
not least with Bristol City’s own manager. Steve Cotterill revealed more than a
shade of belief in old gypsy tale style stories in this tremendous Guardian
blog http://www.theguardian.com/football/football-league-blog/2014/oct/30/bristol-city-chelsea-steve-cotterill-jose-mourinho-unbeaten
and it is clear he is the type to hold great store by these matters.
I grew up in a household where matchday rituals were commonplace.
From having to have the same, specific cereal and toast/jam combination on a
Saturday morning, to not washing my shirt/jumper/jeans between matches after a
win.
These most essential of actions last for me to this day. Why?
Because this is the part I play. How else would your team win if you weren’t
playing some part? Indeed, I must apologise to anyone I saw at the title-sealing
Coventry home game, for my purple shirt was into its third outing in a warm,
excitable, jumping-up-and-down kinda week!
So let me tell you the story of the real reason City have
stormed through the season. Why they won the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy, strolled
to promotion and have now won their first title in sixty years.
It goes back all the way to the first day of the season…
Long before the release of the fixture list, with a
mouth-watering opening tie away at the biggest club in the league and the
bookies favourites, I had committed to a weekend family camping trip in
mid-Wales, with seven other households from our street.
Damnit, I thought, that would be a cracker of an opening
game, but never mind, family commitments and all that. Plus, we never win at
Bramall Lane.
Then Sky, perhaps unsurprisingly, announced they wanted us
to kick off the season live on TV. Hmm, we always do quite well live on Sky,
perhaps all is not lost…ah well, at least now I’ll be able to catch it
somewhere on TV.
The summer had been exciting, if methodical. The summer
purchasing strategy will be reviewed elsewhere once the weekend’s celebrations
have died down, but City’s season was bubbling before it had started and the
prospect of a possible title decider (for the glass half-full brigade) on day
one had done little to dampen the excitement.
A few days before the start of the season, rumours began
growing of the prospect of a return to the (in)famous purple and lime outfit we
wore so successfully 21 seasons earlier, the most striking moment of which was
that famous win at Anfield in the F.A. Cup.
A lucky strip for a lucky season? Maybe…
So when it was formally announced that those colours would
indeed be chosen as our third strip, to be worn in the couple of necessary matches,
the lad who had been 16 years old on that famous night in Liverpool started to
wonder if this feelgood factor might help our team out over the next few
months.
So it was that on the Friday preceding that season opener, that
I travelled with my family, via delightful South Welsh places such as Abercynon
and Merthyr Tydfil, en route to the picturesque market town of Builth Wells in
the middle of the Principality, thinking little more of it.
For those with children aged between 3 and 13, you may
recall this was the summer of the loom band. Where they came from, who knows.
Why they became such a hit – I haven’t got a clue. But for 36 hours on this
quiet campsite, the half-a-dozen girls from our street developed their own
little cottage industry; producing loom band bracelets, necklaces, bag tags and
all sorts – for a price of course, with all money donated to a Dog’s Protection
charity. The thoughtful little things….either that or savvy, as they realised
after the first few that the adults were growing bored of being pestered for
money for their output, so they came up with a more enticing angle. Lord Sugar,
eat your heart out!
Anyway, to get to the point, after the first one or two I’d
been persuaded to part with my fifty pence for, I suggested that they make to
order and I’d pay them an extra premium. So for the princely sum of £2, I asked
them to make me a purple and lime loom band bracelet, to be worn for luck that
lunchtime as I parked myself in a nearby hostelry for the live match and
watched my boys wear the purple and lime strip to kick off their season.
So they made it for me.
And I wore it.
And we only went and bloody won at Bramall Lane for the first
time in six decades!
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The lucky purple and lime loom band bracelet. My faithful companion
That was it. I was hooked. No such happening could have possibly
occurred without some sort of outside influence, some supernatural phenomenon,
so it must have been because of my lucky purple and lime loom band bracelet.
For the first few weeks I wore it constantly. It felt a bit
like the weeks following Glastonbury, where people would look at your tatty,
dirty, sweaty access wristband and know where you’d been. It was a bit like a
badge of honour, except nobody else really had a clue what significance this
bracelet held.
And we kept winning. And winning. And winning. And the team
kept wearing purple and lime even when our original away white strip would have
been perfectly adequate. And it was all down to my lucky purple and lime loom
band bracelet.
As the season moved into October and City went to the top of
the league, the importance of this lucky omen became such that I realised the
need to nurture and care for it. For those that don’t know, loom bands are like
a mini elastic band, that via lessons on YouTube the kids learned to weave
together to make larger, wearable bands.
The strain of taking it on and off my wrist was beginning to tell and
some of the elastic was starting to look frayed, so I started to only wear it
on matchdays.
We went through October without losing a game and had
remarkably gone three months into the season without having to deal with a
defeat. This was virtually unprecedented; truly incredible – the stuff of
dreams…..and lucky loom band bracelets. After all, I had worn it every time
City had played. What other factors had possibly coincided to such a degree?
Now the second (of three) truly unfortunate missed games for
me came in mid-November. I had a work trip to Cape Town (aaah, tough life I
hear you say!), and unfortunately this meant I would miss the increasing
crucial top-of-the-table clash at local rivals Swindon.
I arrived in Cape Town on the Saturday morning and started
to unpack. The shirts and suits – carefully folded so as to hopefully avoid the
inconvenience of ironing – came out. The washbag, the work materials, the flip
flops and shorts (it was their early summer).
But where was my lucky purple and lime loom band bracelet?? Mayhem
ensued! The case was upturned onto the bed. Pockets were checked and every item
of clothing unfolded and checked.
I HAD LEFT MY LUCKY PURPLE AND LIME LOOM BAND BRACELET AT
HOME!!!!!
This was it. The end of the season. The joyous outpouring of
fun we’d all had would end right here, right now. I was distraught.
There were a few hours between that moment and kick off and,
as the time passed, I realised there was little I could do about it. I started
to reassure myself it didn’t matter. Of course it didn’t. It couldn’t, could it?
So I stuck on the afore-mentioned shorts and flip flops and
wandered down to the gorgeous V&A Waterfront in South Africa’s second city.
I had some lunch, had my first Castle lager of the trip and settled into a seat
to watch the Springboks take on England at Twickenham – having pre-paid for 24 hours
of data roaming on my phone to watch the goals flow in at the County Ground via
Twitter.
The game kicked off. Seemed like a feisty start which you’d
expect in a big local derby that appeared like it was going to really matter
but City sounded well up for it….
DISASTER! RED CARD FOR WADE ELLIOTT.
I couldn’t believe it, did the curse of the loom band really
take less than 200 seconds to strike?! The feeling of desperation came flooding
back as I realised that this simply wouldn’t have happened if I’d only
remembered my lucky charm. Well that’s it, I thought. That’s the unbeaten run
gone and we’ll inevitably slide down the table now. The lucky streak had been
broken all because of my stupidity.
But then we got to half time and it was still 0-0. Good
battling, I thought, but a long 45 minutes to go. Then there was an hour gone,
then there was just quarter of an hour to go. At this point I was chuckling to myself again
– the adrenalin was pumping and I was hopping about in my chair as I realised
that of course it was nothing to do with my loom band. Actually, we were going
to snatch a draw from the most unlikely of circumstances and actually
strengthen our position. The relief, the joy I felt as I realised that me
forgetting my loom band had nothing to do with……
Bugger.
I didn’t get back until the following Saturday so the loom
band was also missing for defeat at home to Preston. From thereon in that lucky purple and lime
loomband has been wrapped in cotton-wool!
Of course, going back to wearing the lucky purple and lime
loom band bracelet meant City returned to form after this minor blip, most
noticeably the win at Peterborough with our double lucky omen of Sky TV also
present again. That combination right there seems to be gold dust!
Although a defeat or two followed through the season, generally
success followed success as I preserved my now slightly tatty, well-worn lucky
purple and lime loom band bracelet, moving down from wearing it all day on a
Saturday to removing it once the result was known. With bands fraying and one
or two coming loose, being damaged by the heavy sleeves of winter, I took to
just putting it on at lunchtime and wearing it for those crucial few hours.
It was on the night we won at Gillingham, it came to Milton
Keynes and Orient with me and it most certainly enjoyed its first visit to Wembley
as it notched up its first trophy of a glorious season.
And that was nearly that. We were nearly up and I headed to
Preston in optimistic mood, although I noticed that morning the old bracelet
was looking particularly unwell. Two of the bands near the s-shaped plastic
join (you parents will know what I mean) had frayed to the extent they were
hanging off.
Defeat at Preston would have left our opponents within touching distance
of us with their game in hand. Surely, having been top for so long we couldn’t
miss out on our first title for sixty years? I was really worried that right at
the end, just when it really mattered, the chain would be broken and we’d fall
away. Promotion was probably safe, but I willed my lucky purple and lime loom
band bracelet through for just another few days.
A great game followed, with their keeper in top form before
we found ourselves a goal down. I looked down at my wrist for hope and
salvation and couldn’t see it. It had gone. Broken. I couldn’t believe it.
I started scrabbling around in my clothing, my pockets and
eventually looked to the floor below where I had been sitting and there it was.
Finally it had had its day. It was now just one long chain of bands – a
bracelet no more. I hastily retrieved it and stuffed it into my pocket. At
least I still had it and we salvaged the game. A draw meant that the title was
now very much within our grasp, but I wasn’t prepared to take any risk
whatsoever!
Normally in the mornings when the family stirs, I take the
two kids down for a cup of milk. Pretty ritualistic in itself, but on this
Sunday morning there was a far greater priority. As soon as my daughter was up
I asked her to repair it for me, to add a couple more purple and lime coloured
bands in to the join to make sure it was able to live another day. What on
earth might happen at Bradford if I didn’t, I wondered?
She didn’t even question it. The repair was complete within
seconds. She gets it already! She even drew a picture for me with the words
‘Come on City’ written on it “to give them luck and make them win, Daddy”. She’s five years old. My work here is done!
So all was well and we headed together to Bradford on that now-famous
Tuesday evening. The rest, as they say, is history.
And do you know what? As much as I wanted to win, I made a
very deliberate, conscious choice not to wear it last Saturday for the trip to
Chesterfield. I just wanted to test the theory and see what happened. I felt
nervous, and a bit worried.
Clearly, the lucky purple and lime loom band bracelet has
done its job. The inevitable, fateful unlucky streak simply didn’t materialise
as the champions put on a truly befitting display.
It can now be retired. Put away as a memento of this
fantastic, incredible season. But I, for one, will never forget the crucial
part it played since that very first day of the season.
My lucky purple and lime loom band bracelet. The best £2 I
have ever spent.
You can all thank me later.
hi
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