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The Fifteen ~ (12) David Basset
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The Fifteen ~ Introduction & (1) Alfred Hovenden Neve
Mark Smith - referred to (affectionately), on this site, as Club Shop Guy; as much for his facial hair as for his encyclopaedic knowledge - is the Maidenhead United historian, the main man behind the Heritage website, and author of multiple books on the subject of the football club; most notably the holy writ that is One For Sorrow, Two For Joy (copies still available; please get in touch if you'd like to buy one). In addition to the book(s), he's also supplied me with various facts and figures, upon request, over the years, to help pad out the usual tomfoolery-filled articles on here.
Further to his highly-acclaimed - by me, for one - series on the Maidenhead footballers who died in WW1 and WW2, and our home kits through the years, which featured in our match-day programmes during the 2018/19 and 2019/20 campaigns respectively, he'd put something special together to mark the club's 150th anniversary season in 2020/21. These plans were thrown into chaos, however, owing to match-day programmes - or hard copies, at least - biting the dust.
I'm happy to announce, though, that his latest series - biographies of 'The Fifteen'; those who appeared for Maidenhead FC in the very first game back in 1870 - will be published on this blog; one per week, starting today. This will fill the void created by the lack of football in the flesh and will also help celebrate ten years (yes, TEN YEARS!) of Go Mad or Stop Caring. The first instalment is below; preceded by a copy of the match report, listing our team from the aforementioned game. Enjoy!
Monday 22 June 2020
Away Day Diary: Berlin (March 2020)
Fat Boy Slim- lookalike N.O'G. - groundhopper royalty - had answered with "Berlin … if we're not including
London," when asked by me, in the bar after our 2-2 draw at Halesowen in January, to name the best
European city for a football weekender; I was pleased with this response as,
unbeknownst to him, the Macleods and I had already booked a trip to the German
capital
Rot-Weiß Erfurt sadly going
bust in early February meant that plans for a three-game weekender were dead in
the water before departure (they had been due to play at BFC Dynamo on Friday night); at least "the game of the weekend" (N.O'G. had agreed), Lokomotive Leipzig vs Berliner AK 07 at the historic Poststadion,
was still on …
I'd expressed an interest in
visiting the Dorotheenstadt Cemetery after perusing a list of 'favourite venues beyond the tourist haunts' that Kev - Tartan Army veteran and Berlin
aficionado - had sent across and, after meeting with him as planned at Tegel
Airport (following the obligatory early morning T5 beers and routine BA flight) and checking in at our centrally located hotel, this is where we were going … when it started raining, so we
instead ducked into a Brauhaus Lemke (or two)
Disappointingly, Zillemarkt
was closed for renovations, and so, after pizzas in a nearby Italian restaurant and
beers at "the least hospitable pub in the city" (backhanded compliment that, I think,
from Kev), we headed out to Prenzlauer Berg for a
mini bar crawl: Lucky's Bier Bar ("Der Club Tropicana"), Badfish
(smoke-filled; How Soon Is Now? playing on the jukebox prompting a discussion re
our favourite Smiths: "Alan [Arsenal version], Emmitt, Wolfie") and Schwalbe
(loads of 1.FC Koln supporters in to watch the Goats on live TV)
After the four of us were inadvertently split up, on the journey back to the hotel, Macleod (M) and I did a quick recce
around Alexanderplatz - on the lookout for somewhere to continue the festivities - before a photo with the
Fernsehturm; our
respective hotel rooms would beckon soon after
Yours truly and Macleod (C) did
venture back outside again, but only for a short time; the wind was bitterly cold, and judging by the reviews, the bouncers of the Traffic nightclub did us a huge favour
by turning us away!
Silly-coloured drinks are usually consumed at the end of the day rather than at the start, but Berliner Weiße 'rot' went down an absolute treat (as it had done on my previous
visit to the city); indeed, time spent in the Bierbar Alkopole (one entrance from the street, another from Alexanderplatz Bahnhof) - post-breakfast, pre-train to the football - was one of my highlights of the
entire weekend
A handful of away fans on the
train out to Babelsberg;
more home fans, understandably, on the straightforward walk from the station, along Karl Liebknecht-Str., to Karl-Liebknecht-Stadion
Ticked off before kick-off: food
(currywurst/ bratwurst), a trip to the club shop (Kev was delighted with his
pin badge purchase), beers (Astra), plus photos of a floodlight and a graffitied
club crest
Underwhelming game of football, but
at least there were five goals (the home side cashing in - after the game's standout player, a rotund Lichtenberg midfielder, had been sent off for a professional foul - to record only their third win of the season); I spent some of the second half
taking photos of the ground, its surroundings and the fans (the Youth - with a
protest banner - behind the goal; Corbynista Ultras down the side) … much to
the annoyance of a suspicious local who became pacified, to some degree, only upon
learning that I was an English football tourist (and not a member of the Stasi,
or the modern-day equivalent)
Rather than head straight to a
bar on the outskirts of town, owned by a friend of one of Kev's
Aberdeen-supporting mates, we caught a tram into the centre of Potsdam (Kev getting into
trouble, presumably for having the wrong ticket, with a female conductor who
couldn't speak much English) and ate in a Mexican restaurant close to the picturesque Nauener Tor
Disbelieving looks on the faces
of the other passengers as we - four British tourists - then took the tram into
the south-eastern outskirts of Potsdam, disembarked at Gaußstr., and
proceeded to walk into a housing estate dominated by high-rise tower blocks; I
didn't feel particularly enamoured at the prospect myself, TBH, but the next
few hours in Sternstübl ("the Berlin equivalent of the Clansman") were most enjoyable as Markus - bar owner and a friend of a friend of Kev's - plied us with free schnapps, regaled us (with the help of Google Translate) of
away days with BFC Dynamo and Aberdeen (make of that what you will), introduced
us to some of his regular patrons (incl. a local who regularly travels to
Moscow to watch Spartak!) and generally helped me and the Macleods get over the
news that Maidenhead United had lost for a fourth time on the spin
A taxi straight back to the
hotel, rather than to the nearest train station, was an extravagance, but it was also a memorable experience to pass the Großer Stern and
Brandenburg Gate, lit up at night, and it did ultimately enable an earlier
start to our Friedrichshain
bar crawl: The Castle (where we stood on the stairs; some folk wrongly assumed that we were
bouncers!), East-West Bridge (absolutely packed; Kev and Macleod [M] went back
to the hotel after this), Paule's Metal Eck (conversation at the bar with a drunk, exiled Welshman
called Gareth), Himmelreich
(I think that we were only heterosexuals in here; one of the patrons - absolutely
loving the music - had no arms or legs), and Blechbilderbar
(where we were stood regrettably close to a group of annoying trust fund kids with plummy English accents)
Yours truly then bade farewell to
Macleod (C) - who jumped in a taxi to the hotel - and, after initially getting lost
in and around RAW Gelände, finally found the entrance to Matrix; despite the incredibly loud music, I would ultimately fall asleep in a
corner … surrounded by a group of transvestites, all with cheekbones that looked
like they could cut glass
Sun was coming up as I, and a fair few other die-hards, were herded out of the club at closing time, and I went with the flow as some made their way down a pathway that ran alongside railway lines; soon I was stood watching - incredulously; it was, after all, approximately 7am on a Sunday - a handful of people queuing outside a large industrial building with splashes of graffiti ...
Ushered inside by a tall,
shaven-headed gentleman - after nodding in response to him asking if I was
English - I found myself in a dark, cavernous nightclub with a sticky floor and
loud techno music blaring; I was reminded of Level One in Reading (not in a
good way) and, after inadvertently ripping in half my remaining €5 note, left not long after I'd arrived … with my ears still ringing
Now, the sensible thing to do at
this point would've been to head back to the hotel - with the Fernsehturm an
excellent indicator of the direction that I should be going - but, as it was
such a pleasant morning (and, TBH, I was merry), I decided to cross the Spree into Kreuzberg and go for a
wander: past the Köpi 'housing
project' and an eye-catching 'hand mural' (opposite what I later learned was the KitKatClub; it was just before 8am on a Sunday and some people were leaving 'Life is a Circus'), up past the Gendarmenmarkt to a
near-deserted Pariser Platz (by Brandenburg Gate), back past a memorial to Albrecht von Graefe,
the Altes Museum, the Cathedral and,
finally, the aforementioned Fernsehturm … I'd covered just shy of 11K in total,
according to Google Maps, when 3K would've done it!
Dorotheenstadt Cemetery (we made
it!) - following breakfast (I'd bumped into Kev, coming in, as I was leaving), and a quick shower - en route to the Poststadion; the walk was long - the
aptly-named (for I was hobbling, due to a painful blister on my right foot) Invalidenstr.
seemed to go on forever - and worse, football fans were
conspicuous by their absence as we approached the ground
After belatedly finding out that
the match was off due to a waterlogged pitch (hugely frustrating, as
we could've gone to Tasmania
or Viktoria
instead), we embarked on another long walk - past the Großer Stern and the Michael Jackson memorial tree in the Tiergarten - to Café am Neuen See (where I'd gone with the wife and in-laws, back in the autumn
of 2015); several enjoyable hours here, drinking Löwenbräu in the sunshine,
before a bus back into the city centre and dinner (schnitzel for everyone, bar
Macleod [M]) at Hackescher
Hof
Yours truly - after a trip to the
hotel, with Macleod (M), to get plasters for my foot - lasted for only a couple
of rounds, in Hackbarth's
and then Sharlie Cheen's (I was drinking water in the latter!), before bailing; later I was woken up - startled bolt upright - by the Macleods bounding into the hotel room,
in the early hours, after they and Kev had spent the rest of the evening in the
company of "the best barmaid in Berlin"
My foot was feeling a bit better
in the morning - and I was unsurprisingly (more) refreshed after *some* sleep - and so, as a light rain began to fall, Macleod (C) and I went for a stroll: up
past Köpi, across the Oberbaum Bridge, and back past the East Side Gallery
Offices and swish apartment
buildings are evidently springing up along both banks of the Spree; a clear
indication of the urbanization - and associated gentrification - that the city is dealing with
Nice to see a few bars and clubs still dotted among the remaining warehouses and train sheds, so all is not yet lost;
the Holzmarkt 'urban village' - built, I would subsequently learn, on the former site of the legendary Bar25 - was impressive to walk around
Drinks - albeit not silly-coloured
ones this time - in Bierbar Alkopole, then a bus ride to Tegel
Airport goodbyes - Kev was
returning to Stansted - before an unremarkable flight home; my Dad was our taxi driver
Yours truly would miss Maidenhead's 2-1 defeat to Stockport at York Road the following Saturday - a fifth straight defeat for the Magpies - and football got suspended soon after; as such, SV Babelsberg 03 vs SV Lichtenberg 47 - the one live game we managed during our Berlin weekender - remains, as I write, the last football match that I've attended … which I hope isn't the case for much longer!
Yours truly would miss Maidenhead's 2-1 defeat to Stockport at York Road the following Saturday - a fifth straight defeat for the Magpies - and football got suspended soon after; as such, SV Babelsberg 03 vs SV Lichtenberg 47 - the one live game we managed during our Berlin weekender - remains, as I write, the last football match that I've attended … which I hope isn't the case for much longer!