Make Me Feel Like I Need Some More - The Square Ball 23/8/21
REAL
Written by Rob Conlon
An elderly man in a black Harrington jacket came trudging up
the stairs to the North East Upper, took his seat in front of me and my dad,
turned to us and said, “This doesn’t feel real.” It was a nice moment, but what
he said wasn’t strictly true. This was Elland Road gone hyper-real, warts and
all.
Anyone worried about what Premier League sheen might do to
matchdays in LS11 need not have panicked. There was a novel buzz to walking
through the turnstiles and being greeted by a shiny new touchscreen for
pre-ordering pints and, in theory, getting served quicker. But it was nothing
compared to the reassuring thrill of walking to the collection point and
finding three queues of disgruntled fans trying to work out how half the pumps
had stopped working by quarter past two. We’re back, baby. Like we never went
away.
The minutes leading up to kick-off were everything we have
been yearning for, Elland Road becoming a swirling cauldron of different songs
being sung at different times all merging together. We Are Leeds from the South
Stand evolving into We All Love Leeds in the Kop, via stages of All Leeds
Aren’t We across various segments of the East, all rising to a collective
crescendo of Marching On Together that has been 532 days in the making.
And flags. Lots and lots of flags. Elland Road looked like
someone was pointing it out on a map of Beeston with a highlighter pen. An
enclave of fluorescent fury refusing to subside. Across the aisle was a man
wearing a new luminous-striped Adidas training top, unable to sit down,
twisting with the ebb and flow of the game, a ball of hi-vis venom.
Free flags and scarves have been written off as gimmicky,
but they have served a purpose when atmospheres have been flat at Elland Road,
encouraging fans in quieter sections of the ground to actively support the team
and be part of the occasion. That was never going to be a problem on Saturday,
but it was fun watching grown adults trying to work out what to do afterwards,
not really wanting a fluorescent yellow flag to keep, but happy to have a
memento from the day. You get fuck all for free in the Premier League, so
Yorkshire people will quite rightly take anything they can get their hands on.
And put it on eBay. It made leaving the ground more treacherous for fear of
being speared or having an eye poked out.
It wasn’t only people from Yorkshire there. Leeds as a lived
experience is an amalgamation of characters and accents. Each voice is
refreshingly its own; Cornish fans drinking cheap pints in The Holbeck
beforehand, snippets of Scandinavian outside the ground, two Northern Irish
lads debriefing on the walk back into town. Then the flags brought from home;
Bournemouth and Anglesey, and Poland, just above where Mateusz Klich was
celebrating his equaliser in the South East corner. Watching a game on TV while
refreshing Twitter might mean you can stay in touch with the whole world, but
it will never feel as warm, particularly when the small smattering of boos as
the players were taking a knee was emphatically drowned out by applause.
And then it was over. Everton rising to the occasion,
pantomime villains for howling at, and Leeds matching them blow for blow and
earning their lap of the stadium, hailed as champions at long last. After all
that time, we quickly fell into our old rituals, returning to the pub for a
golden hour of post-match counselling, adrenaline slowly draining from our
bodies until exhaustion hit.
It didn’t feel real at the start, but by the end there was
no doubt it happened. We are back.