Lifelong Brentford fan and Bees journalist, Jim Levack, looks back at a very spiritual day last Saturday and reminds us of what makes our club so very special.
Standing alone in a churchyard talking to the sun as it burst through the clouds was a strange way to start the day.
I always try to visit the place where my mum and dad’s ashes are scattered at least once a year. There’s never a specific date, it usually just comes to me.
So, West London derby day seemed as good as any, a spur of the moment decision that didn’t seem quite so inspired as I drove through rivers between my home in the Midlands and Wiltshire.
Somehow the harder it is to get to this tiny little cemetery near Melksham, the happier I am. Like a kind of penance, similar you might say to the 220-mile I make for every Brentford home game.
I usually chat away, tell them what then kids are doing and of course the fate of the Bees who my dad loved and my mum put up with him loving unconditionally,
Which brings me to my point. As I updated him – always out loud and sometimes with a tear or two in my eye – I couldn’t help but think to myself ‘he’s never going to believe this. It’s just not credible’.
Obviously, he’s seen every goal at Griffin Park since that terrible day he took his season ticket in the sky back in 2007, but saying out loud what Brentford has become almost makes it sound like a fairytale. Try it.
I told him I was going from there to the Fulham game and then headed for the M4 – past Swindon and Reading with flashbacks of Lee Luscombe and Lasse Vibe goals – and the elevated section.
From one spiritual place – btw the cemetery is in New Road – another suddenly hoves into view and my pulse quickens. I’d breathed in as I left flowers to take in any last lingering ashes, and I breathed out now I’d brought a little bit of him ‘home’.
Writing this down it all sounds as ludicrous as Hong Kong Bee’s lucky pants, or taking the same route to the ground every time, but it shows how Brentford is part of our lives and, weirdly, afterlives.
I met my cousin and his little boy before the game but he’d gone into the New Road so I couldn’t give them their Christmas presents. I asked the stewards if I could “just nip through”… no problem, they said. A proper family club where jobsworths need not apply.
A lot has been written about the game, the passion, desire, sometimes untouchable skill and our players’ understanding of the fixture’s meaning, that Fulham’s lacklustre side simply didn’t get.
Their fans have responded with jibes like “tinpot”, “scumbag”, “Griffin Park dive” to add to the misguided Richard Osman’s “irrelevant” tag, but the thing about Brentford fans is we are “real” like a proper family, not a dysfunctional one where tofu-munching Uncle Robert knits his own yoghurt and takes sponges to the game. Call us what you like – it simply drives us on to prove you even more wrong.
My old man would have loved it as much as the time he called out the Millwall fans in the midst of their halfway line home for their racist abuse of Francis Joseph after he’d scored the winner in a 2-1 success. We love being the underdogs, under the radar and we always will.
Rarely do I ever offer a personal opinion in the press conference but perhaps caught up by the emotion of the whole day, I approached Thomas Frank after he’d done his media stuff and said simply “That was brilliant”.
I’d had a spiritually enlightening day in every sense. I’d seen Pontus make an incredible recovery run on 22 minutes, Rico chase down a lost cause and some simply beautiful attacking football – both long and crisp short ball – that epitomised the desire coursing through the camp… a testament to the performance and medical teams.
Of course, it’s easy to get carried away. We are, despite the euphoria, two bad games off 14th (and yes a few more games like Fulham away from an automatic promotion spot). “Don’t get carried away”, I can hear my old man saying.
It will be tough to hit the levels of Saturday every week but, if we can, and strengthen judiciously in January, there’s no reason why we can’t be an unwelcome guest to the Premier League party.
West Brom, Romaine and all, will be a massive test. Lose it, and we’ll fight another day at Griffin Park or the new ground… because it’s people and that spiritual bond that make our club great.
Win it and I might be forced to make weekly pre-match visits to a little corner of Wiltshire.
Jim Levack
@JImblee1
Brilliant stuff. I do a similar thing thinking of my old man and what he would think of where we are now. (He passed in 2006).
Thank you Jim. Simples.