Fresh Nutmeg

The latest issue. I am so clearly in the sweet spot for this magazine. The richness of the connections in every issue is always a delight. In this edition there is an article about Johan Cruyff in Scotland, written by someone who has just published a book about Cruyff's last season as a player when he moved from Ajax to arch-rivals Feyenoord in 1983. In that summer of 1983 I was on a ten-day holiday in the Netherlands with three friends and we managed to fit in four football matches in that time. We had considered travelling around but decided the transport across the country was so good we could just stay in Amsterdam and explore the country from there, using a national rail pass. We saw an international match in Groningen mid-week - the home team beat Iceland 3-0 - and then went to see PSV play in Zwolle on the Saturday. I remember a passionate discussion with R on the best way to play football, and in particular how best to defend, on our way back to the station to catch the train back to Amsterdam.
The next day we went to Rotterdam to see Feyenoord play Groningen, and the link to the Cruyff article as the great man was playing, along with a rising star, Ruud Gullit. It was a wet day and the crowd sheltered from the rain under the upper tiers of the stadium so it looked almost empty despite there being more than twenty-five thousand people there. Cruyff didn't have a great game and looking it up I see he was substituted at half time. We had time to fit in one more game before the end of our trip, a midweek European game in Amsterdam as Ajax played Olympiakos in the European Cup. We had bought our tickets the week before and found ourselves on the terracing behind one of the goals as Ajax, with a young Marco Van Basten, failed to break down their Greek opponents. All those memories are brought to mind by just one article. 
There are other connections in other articles. Like the piece about photographing the floodlights at every Scottish ground that goes on at length about the floodlights at Dens Park. Floodlights that I too have photographed for my own Football Landmarks project. A picture of the ground from a distance across the site of a demolished mill that I think beats the one in the Nutmeg, but perhaps that's just me.
Another article about the embarrassment of going to the game with your mother, and the way that so few women used to be seen at games in the 70s and 80s. I never went to the football with my mother, and in fact don't know if she ever went to matches, but she always had an interest in the game, following her home town team - Huddersfield Town. And she had her favourites, most memorably Denis Law, the subject of yet another piece in the magazine as well as an oft-told family anecdote about the time my mum had sat behind the young striker on the top deck of a Huddersfield bus. Law was born five months after my mum and started his football career as a teenage with 'Town. I have memories of going to games with women when it seemed a bit of a novelty, most often on holidays, although there was one trip to Hampden for a League Cup Final when I won a couple of tickets in the main stand and M who I went with commented on the length of the queue for the women's toilets - woefully under-provided even for the number of women present at that time. M and I went to games in Istanbul - the main stand at Fenerbahce was more welcoming than the terraces at the ground in the old cistern, although it was more surprise at seeing a woman go through the turnstiles than any hostility. L and I have seen a few matches together - United at Easter Road and at Celtic Park for another Scottish Cup final defeat, as well as visits to see Ross County and Inverness Caley Thistle on Highland holidays.
Other pieces about the father and son Hibs fans who decided not to go and watch the 2016 final because they felt their presence would bring the team bad luck. A feeling I have felt myself as I missed out on both of United's successful Scottish Cup Finals but been there for three of their defeats. Which brings me to my own article in this edition, last one on the cover, about Scotland's most gut-wrenching team.
Apologies for the football-inspired ramblings - I should probably create a separate blog to write about football!