From Boreham Wood FC’s bus to the world of Mugabe, Yeltsin, Bush and Trump

The years teach much which the days never know. This weekend Boreham Wood FC go to Wembley fighting for a place in that treasured home of the global game, the English Football League. Why will I be watching 7,000 miles away? Well, the experience of riding the Wood’s team bus 50-odd years ago taught me much that I have carried across our world ever since. So, I’ll be somewhat possessed this Sunday, Boreham Wood versus Rochdale, even though I live in that footie mecca on the other side of the world, Argentina.

The memories are rich. Back then I’m on a gap year before university, a football captain at school sees an advert in his local paper for a reporter, urges me to apply, and I do, convincing one of the best editors I ever worked for (by the name of Roger Norman) to take me, and I spend a golden period reporting for the Borehamwood and Elstree Post. Elstree, with its film studios, the poor man’s Hollywood. Borehamwood, a working-class hinterland of my north London, with not much to celebrate.

Except, that is, for a football team, in those days amateur, playing in a decent stadium off Broughinge Road, drawing maybe a few hundred spectators, but giving a semi-faceless place a sense of community, identity, even pride. If you beat Hitchin Town or Bishop’s Stortford, fierce local rivals, well that spoke, right? And, of course, my job was to articulate that journey of the team in a local, weekly paper read like the Bible in that town.

Given the lack of resources on the paper, I would journey to away games with the team, editor Roger reminding me “without fear or favour”, such a principle I have carried ever since, certainly to the Arab-Israeli conflict, but likewise to African dictators, or American presidents who lied to grand juries.

It was never a problem calling the team out for a poor performance, let alone a player who had a stinker of a game. It was a little trickier as you rode a bus that had lads complaining about their “boot money”, the fiver or the tenner left for them in the dressing room afterwards (remember the game was “amateur”). Or then consider a goalscorer who took bets on how many he’d get that day, then have us all asking how on earth he missed that sitter late on, as he cleaned up money-wise on the way home. Let’s leave well alone the player apt to have young, female groupies at the back of the bus. Not a word about that.

Truth be told, you didn’t report a slice of what you knew, and we did well that season, beating mighty St Albans in the Amateur Cup, then pushing majestic Leatherhead (The Tanners, as they were called) to a replay in a later round that had those Surrey aristocrats of the amateur game buying up two of our best players in the bar afterwards. Not very amateur. Shush, don’t say a word.

So fast forward with me, to the world of seizing power in Zimbabwe by intimidating folks to vote his way, or Israel’s then defence minister Ariel Sharon telling the world he knew nada about the massacre of Palestinians in Beirut, or via a stiff glass or three in old Russia, even quizzing George W Bush on Air Force One. What did you learn on the Boreham Wood FC bus?