The 92 Membership: Morecambe, the Utterly-Suzuki Stadium and the finale… for now
There’s an unique group referred to as the Ninety-Two Membership, whose members have watched a aggressive first-team match at each Premier League and EFL stadium. Our Richard Sutcliffe has wanted to join for 40 years however his quest has proved lower than simple.
He began 2022-23 with eight grounds to tick off. After visiting AFC Wimbledon and Oxford United during the opening 10 days of the new season, making two trips to Forest Green Rovers and taking in a midweek journey to Salford, he is able to cross the end line…
“So, how does it really feel?”
As Cheltenham City come below increasingly strain through the remaining couple of minutes of a largely scrappy relegation conflict in opposition to Morecambe, I truthfully don’t know the way I really feel.
Elated, possibly? Proud? Relieved it’s throughout?
In contrast to the remainder of the three,515 folks within the crowd, I’ve no pores and skin on this League One contest.
Certain, we used to go on vacation to Morecambe sometimes after I was a child. And it was there, on a kind of journeys to the Lancashire coast, that my panicking dad and mom, as our rowing boat took on increasingly water within the Bay, as soon as dumped a sobbing three-year-old me on a stone jetty with solely two squawking seagulls for firm.
However that’s not why I’m right here on the sting of the Cotswolds, 160 miles from residence.
As an alternative, I’m right here within the pursuit of what, to this soccer supporter, has been the footballing Holy Grail for nigh-on 40 years. Specifically, membership of the Ninety-Two Membership, an elite group whose members have watched a aggressive fixture at each floor within the prime 4 divisions of English soccer.
I began the season with eight nonetheless to tick off. Cheltenham’s Whaddon Highway is the final one, therefore I’m struggling to inform the bloke standing subsequent to me on the Prestbury Highway Finish terrace how I really feel.
A lot has been in regards to the planning of this journey — particularly in latest months, as I went from London to Oxford and again by way of Forest Inexperienced Rovers (twice), Salford and Crawley — that the ultimate second has barely been thought-about.
“A way of satisfaction,” I reply, finally.
Even because the phrases journey out of my mouth, they really feel insufficient. What I instantly realise I needed to say is how I want my dad was nonetheless alive to share the second. However I’m English, this man is a stranger I solely received speaking to twenty minutes in the past, and such a response would greater than possible result in nothing however awkward silence.
So, in between following Cheltenham’s makes an attempt to maintain Morecambe at bay, we follow discussing our favorite grounds for the remainder of the sport — seems Pete has achieved 58 of the 92 — earlier than going our separate methods on the remaining whistle, me congratulating him on a vital three factors and him congratulating me on becoming a member of the Ninety-Two Membership.
Solely as soon as alone with my ideas on the stroll again into city can I consider Dad. He gave me my love of soccer and took me throughout. Some video games had been extra memorable than others, akin to after we received caught up in a riot earlier than Burnley performed Sheffield Wednesday within the FA Cup quarter-final. Dad needed to shelter me from a hail of missiles thrown by visiting hooligans being escorted alongside the touchline after a punch-up within the residence finish.
Nearly 40 years have handed since that afternoon, however I nonetheless chuckle at Dad’s warning because the cash and God is aware of what bounced off his again. “Don’t inform your mom about this or she’ll by no means allow you to come once more.”
He’s been gone 21 years now. I’d like to say I take into consideration him daily, as one mate, who’d misplaced his personal father a decade earlier, mentioned can be the case on the funeral. However the actuality is any ideas of Dad are primarily restricted to anniversaries, household get-togethers or when one thing notable occurs to his sporting loves of Burnley Soccer Membership, Yorkshire County Cricket Membership or rugby league’s Keighley Cougars. And now me becoming a member of The Ninety-Two Membership.
Earlier than the most cancers got here, he’d been simply as eager to affix. At the least a few weekend mornings every season can be spent at residence with us totting up our respective tallies, each placing a tick subsequent to every visited membership within the Sunday Individuals’s 4 league tables. Within the early years, Dad can be method out in entrance — a legacy of Burnley’s slide down the divisions within the Nineteen Seventies and ’80s, which means he went from cheering the Clarets at Highbury and Maine Highway to the outdated Present Floor and Plainmoor.
However then, aided by a monetary injection from my part-time job stacking cabinets three nights per week on the native grocery store, the hole began to slim till, lastly, I used to be out in entrance.
The race was on, with any setback invariably leapt upon by the opposite — Dad as soon as drove to Exeter and again for a recreation that ended up being postponed. My very own solo go to to tick off Aldershot City whereas a London-based pupil was rendered null and void only a few months later by the membership going bust.
Solely when Dad’s terminal prognosis got here by did the joshing cease. The Ninety-Two Membership was by no means talked about once more.
Everybody remembers their first time. Or so the speculation goes.
The reality is I don’t bear in mind a lot about my first dwell soccer recreation, apart from how big every thing appeared at Preston North Finish’s Deepdale.
A fast scan of the Rothmans Soccer Yearbook 1979-80 tells me the sport completed 2-2, with Burnley’s targets coming from Steve Kindon and Peter Noble. However I’d be mendacity if I mentioned I had any recollection of it.
It’s a related story with plenty of these early matches with Dad. We went to Anfield the season after that maiden recreation at Preston as a result of Kenny Dalglish was my hero.
Regardless of “King Kenny” scoring twice in a 3-0 win over Wolverhampton Wanderers, all I bear in mind is the large Kop terrace that appeared to soar as excessive because the sky from our seats in the principle stand.
These youthful sights and sounds may clarify the enduring attraction of visiting soccer grounds. Certain, the soccer is why we make pilgrimages to look at our staff. And if we win, completely satisfied days.
However it’s so way more than the 90 minutes. It’s the sense of neighborhood, the prospect to let off steam on the finish of the working week and, for this supporter, a chance to benefit from the architectural idiosyncrasies every floor possesses.
For this reason the ebook that began my very own lifelong obsession to affix the Ninety-Two Membership — The Soccer Grounds of England and Wales, by Simon Inglis — stays such a treasured possession, regardless of its most up-to-date revised version being printed in 1996.
Cheltenham, promoted to the EFL three years later, don’t seem in Inglis’ seminal tome. That’s a disgrace, as I do prefer to devour a membership’s entry within the days earlier than visiting, irrespective of how old-fashioned the phrases have been rendered by subsequent constructing work or, in an rising variety of circumstances, a membership decamping to a very new website.
Nonetheless, that sense of anticipation is there as I stroll in direction of Whaddon Highway. What’s the view going to be like? And the environment? Will or not it’s a memorable match? And what’s Cheltenham’s floor truly referred to as nowadays after going by extra identify adjustments lately than the UK has gone by chancellors?
The reply to that final poser, I uncover from my ticket, is the Utterly-Suzuki Stadium, the Japanese motor big having purchased the sponsorship rights final summer time. It’s the newest in a protracted line of less-than-snappy titles, together with The World of Smile Stadium, the LCI Rail Stadium and the Jonny-Rocks Stadium.
Judging by the clean stare after I ask a woman exterior the Sudeley Arms for instructions, the most recent rebrand is but to catch on. No trouble, the intense glare of the floodlights seems within the distance.
The bottom itself is a mix of recent and outdated. From my vantage level on the lined terrace behind the purpose, there are two fashionable all-seater stands to my left and forward. The 83 Morecambe followers are housed within the latter.
To my proper is the principle stand, full with a terraced paddock. In-built 1963, the construction straddles the midway line, leaving area for a small terrace at one finish and a watchtower-type construction that wouldn’t have regarded misplaced subsequent to the Berlin Wall through the Chilly Warfare.
I like Whaddon Highway. It’s a floor, an vital distinction to me — grounds developed stand by stand over time, in contrast to new-build stadiums. Grounds have a appeal a lot of their fashionable brethren lack.
On my go to, there’s loads of humour, too. In a nod to Morecambe’s second-most-famous son after Eric, visiting centre-half Farrend Rawson — large, bald and bearded — is serenaded by a few blokes to my proper with the mantra, “You’re only a shit Tyson Fury”. The one disgrace is the ditty doesn’t catch on with the whole floor.
Ticking off floor quantity 92 — and my 137th league venue, when factoring in misplaced gems akin to Highbury and Maine Highway — is just not the top, after all. Removed from it.
Salford Metropolis’s possible transfer to the AJ Bell Stadium, at present staging each codes of rugby, in time for subsequent season means the membership successfully rebuilt by the Class of ’92 must be revisited.
Then there’s the Nationwide League. Because it stands, I’ve watched aggressive fixtures at Notts County, Wrexham and Chesterfield, so any of those early pace-setters developing in Could received’t require further legwork to stay a member of the Ninety-Two Membership.
However the different quartet of golf equipment sitting within the prime seven — Boreham Wooden, Solihull Moors, Bromley and Woking — are a distinct story. Ought to any of them clinch promotion to the EFL, please don’t be offended if I fail to affix the celebrations.
A bit additional down the road can be Everton’s upcoming transfer to Bramley-Moore Dock. The skeleton of the brand new stadium on town’s waterfront is already up, which means the clock is effectively and really ticking on Goodison Park.
There’s additionally Oxford United, whose lease on the Kassam Stadium expires in 2026. With little signal of an extension within the offing, that’ll imply one other go to to a metropolis I first visited in 1990 to tick off the outdated Manor Floor.
Others are more likely to comply with. Luton Town and Forest Inexperienced Rovers appear intent on beginning afresh elsewhere within the not-too-distant future.
This have to prime up is nothing new for individuals who already get pleasure from membership within the Ninety-Two Membership. Even the 39 founding members in 1978 all misplaced one floor nearly instantly after Southport did not be re-elected and Wigan Athletic had been promoted of their place.
Through the years, the quantity to have certified and joined has swelled to 1,400, round 500 of whom are energetic when it comes to maintaining with the altering panorama. I’m certain each certainly one of them has a narrative much like mine.
The undoubted low level got here when inside Forest Inexperienced Rovers’ New Garden floor and the game with Accrington Stanley was postponed due to a waterlogged pitch amid the hottest heatwave in a generation. The sodden journey residence was made that little extra depressing by the Highways Company closing not one however two motorways.
In contrast, seeing AFC Wimbledon back at their spiritual home on Plough Lane was great fun, as was being a part of a jubilant residence crowd that watched fourth-tier Crawley City dump Premier League aspect Fulham out of the Carabao Cup.
The wide-ranging refreshment choices on provide at The Dugout inside Brentford’s new stadium — a bottle of prosecco at £35 a pop, anyone? — can even not be forgotten any time quickly by somebody whose early life on the terraces had been fuelled by Bovril and Wagon Wheels.
For now, although, the race is run. The membership tie and pin badge I’ve craved all these years can lastly be worn proudly, whereas my membership certificates can be going straight on the wall at residence.
Hell, I’d even purchase the automotive sticker full with the Day by day Star headline — “A really particular soccer membership: the Joyful Wanderers” — that introduced the Ninety-Two Membership to a wider viewers within the late ’70s.
A lifetime’s ambition fulfilled means the celebratory post-match pint I’m cradling within the big upstairs bay window of Cheltenham’s Cosy Membership tastes rattling good. Time for a toast.
Cheers, Dad. Couldn’t have joined the Ninety-Two Membership with out you.
(High picture: designed by Samuel Richardson)
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