Lockdown Letters: Football, family and a trip down memory lane

With time on his hands to indulge in nostalgia, Jochan Embley realises his love for the beautiful game runs much deeper than half-time beers and the rush of a goal
Red and blue army: Aldershot Town fans watch on from the East Bank terrace during an FA Cup match against Torquay United in 2014
Getty Images
Jochan Embley5 May 2020

The first Aldershot Town game I ever went to was a 1-1 draw against St Albans City in April 2002, when I was seven years old. I don’t actually recall anything of the match, but I do have vivid, rosy memories of celebrating our goal with my grandad, a Shots fan since he moved to the area in the 60s. I also remember wishing our fans would shut up with all their chanting so I could focus on the football.

My last Aldershot Town game — who knows when they’ll play again — was a 1-0 loss at home to Dagenham and Redbridge in March 2020. I remember their goal, a quick breakaway that we really should have defended better. But my overriding memory is of a distinct unease felt while watching the players shun their pre-match handshakes, lest they spread this new lurgy, before engaging in sweaty, virus-friendly jostles for the next 90 minutes.

Aldershot played two more games after that but since then the football, like pretty much everything else, has ceased. I’ve spent my time in lockdown like many others: working from home, watching films, washing my hands with manic vigour and baking banana bread. I’ve also spent lots of time thinking about how much I love and miss Aldershot Town Football Club.

I’ve spent the last 18 years of my life following the Shots up and down the land, home and away, as a proud devotee of the red and blue army. I was brainwashed from an early age. My mum’s dad — the grandad I celebrated with those years ago — was an Aldershot fan, and passed the love of the team down to his two sons, my uncles. Grandpa on my dad’s side was a fan too. For me, there was no escape.

Since then, I’ve witnessed some highs — in my first full season, we won the Ryman Premier League (the sixth rung of English football) with 105 points. Our goalie even scored a penalty in one match. Later, we had a brief dalliance with the Football League, spending five giddy years in the fourth tier. But in 2013, we got relegated and the club slipped into administration, teetering perilously close to extinction. I did my A-levels that summer, and while the looming prospect of exams weighed heavy, I was far more concerned that I might not have a football club to support come August.

Miraculously, we survived, and since then Aldershot Town have been floating around the non-league. My loyalty has remained steadfast, and with all this spare time, I’ve often found myself wandering back down memory lane, reflecting on all that the club means to me.

My trips have been aided by a YouTuber called Kappadeano, a Shots fan who has access to an incredible video archive of old Aldershot matches. During the quarantine, he’s been uploading some of the best ones. A recent gem was the time we trounced local rivals Woking 4-0 in 2005, in front of the Sky Sports cameras. Beating Woking? 4-0? Live on national telly? Glorious. The footage transported me right back to the game, peering over the barrier down the front of the East Bank terrace for an unobstructed view of our striker heading home the fourth goal.

It’s allowed me to relive some other classics: clinching promotion away to Sutton in 2003; Scott Davies scoring a last-minute scorcher at Torquay to effectively secure the league title in 2008; and coming back from three goals down to draw against Bury later that year.

It’s made me reminisce on all the things I miss about being a non-league football fan. It’s the familiarity of the same friendly faces, standing in the same spots on the East Bank every week. It’s the naff, brilliant ephemera of the away day — dodgy pies, hastily necked pre-match pints, cramped car journeys, National Rail adventures and, if we’re lucky, a decent game of football. It’s the lunacy of spending a cold winter’s night in some gusty nowhere town, huddling together with 80 other fans as we collectively shiver on a concrete slab masquerading as a terrace, losing 2-0, but still thinking: ah well, there’s always next week, eh?

But more than anything, it’s made me think about my family, and how the club feels like part of that. My dad wasn’t an Aldershot fan when I caught the football bug — in fact, he wasn’t even a football fan. But after a couple of seasons of me going with my grandad, my dad decided to come along too, as a way to spend more time with me at weekends. He’s now a season ticket holder, and we go together every week. Aldershot gave us that.

When both my grandad and grandpa’s health started to falter, the football was something to cling to. My grandad came to matches for as long as he possibly could, even if it meant we had to move from our usual spot stood on the terrace to the comfier seats in the South Stand. And even when my grandpa’s dementia meant his memories began to elude him, he still could always talk about goings on at the club — good results, bad results, new players, old players — with heartening clarity. Aldershot gave us that.

Grandpa passed in February 2010, and Grandad left us in January 2011. Later that year, we played West Ham away in the League Cup, somehow beat them 2-1, and then went on to draw Manchester United. It was by far the biggest game in our history: little old Aldershot Town hosting the most famous club in world football. It was a literal dream come true — from my earliest days of supporting the Shots, I had fantasised about what it’d be like if we ever played the giants of United.

Dimitar Berbatov of Manchester United sees off challenges from Aldershot's Luke Guttridge and Danny Hylton in 2011
AFP via Getty Images

The day of the game was an odyssey. We were actually on an ill-timed family holiday in Cornwall, so the Aldershot-supporting section of the clan — me, my dad, my uncles and my cousin — embarked on a 10-hour round trip to make it back to Hampshire in time for the match. As I watched Sir Alex Ferguson take his place in the dugout, and saw our players walk onto the pitch besides the likes of Owen, Berbatov and Vidic, I wished more than anything that Grandad and Grandpa were there to witness it as well. I wondered what they would have made of the whole spectacle. In the end, we got thoroughly beaten, so it probably would have been something along the lines of: “Typical bloody Aldershot.”

I miss Aldershot Town Football Club. I miss the rush of a goal, the fervour of the derby days, the jollity of the away days. But more than anything I miss it because of all that has become inextricably attached to it. And this lockdown, with its endless unfilled hours, has given me an excuse to immerse myself in all that. It’s an excuse to think about how much I love spending time with my family, and to remember those I wish were still coming along to games with us. It’s an excuse to reflect on all the joyful, hilarious, heartbreaking, ridiculous, wonderful times we’ve shared following the club together. It’s something that binds us, even when everything else is in flux.

It might be a while until the football returns to Aldershot. A club of our size is in choppy financial waters at the best of times, let alone now. I hope the hideously wealthy powers of the Premier League find some money down the back of their jewel-encrusted sofas to chuck our way. But even if they don’t, I still have faith — somehow, we always find a way to survive.

And right now, I don’t care if it’s playing Manchester United in the cup, or if it’s losing at home to Dagenham in the league. I just want my Aldershot back. Until then, though, I’ll make do with the memories.

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