Reed 24/25: Train platforms and terraces of England

Words: Tom Reed

Images: Tom Reed

Football is a fine way to measure a year.

You can feel the changing of the seasons in the crunch of frost on railway platforms and cold pints cradled in palms on scorching summer days.

Palace fans danced in the aisles at Wembley this week but the road to the FA Cup starts in August with the Extra-Preliminary Round, that has non-League clubs dreaming an impossible hazy dream.

It was so warm at Racing Club Warwick, that a sign for the next-door horse racing track read “come back in September”.

It didn’t stop a visiting Hednesford fan rocking up in a miners’ helmet with “The Pitmen” scrawled on the front, as a homage to the erstwhile mining industry of the Staffordshire town.

A supporter of England’s Racing Club tied a home-made flag carefully to the tin stand before kick-off.

©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Hednesford Town fan at Racing Club Warwick. August 2024.

At Buxton FC in the Peak District, they have big Summer skies and seasons change four times in the space of 90 minutes.

Their Silverlands stadium is the highest in England at a thousand feet above sea level.

The incline to the ground stretches the hamstrings and the stitching on your Adidas Sambas.

©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Buxton FC vs Leamington FC. August 2024.

There’s a sense of space at Yarmouth’s vast Wellesley Recreation Ground, just a street inland from the sea-front.

It’s more cricket ground in vibe, with its mismatched accommodation for fans, athletics track and rows of quaint benches, that run the length of the pitch.

The star is the 1892 Grandstand, noted as the oldest surviving wooden enclosure in England and an idyllic place to perch your arse and watch a ball fly about.

August holiday-makers sigh on the seafront as the arcade cranes drop teddies at the last second, just as the Yarmouth fans exhale at open goal misses.

©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Great Yarmouth Town vs Cambridge City. August 2024.

They’ve played football in the river every August Bank Holiday at Bourton-on-the-Water in the Cotswolds.

Why? Because it is there maybe? Because you can play football in the stream which is not too deep but not shallow enough and therefore you should.

A player stopped and sipped a pint before throwing the ball in from the crowded bank into the watery melee.

A young forward attempted an overhead kick like Pelé in Escape to Victory but couldn’t escape the river’s pull and landed on his backside in the wet.

His head went under for a second, thinking “what a way to go”.

©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Football in the river. Bourton-on-the-Water. August 2024.

The hills hug tightly, drawing in crowds to one of England’s most picturesque football grounds at Malvern Town.

CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien found inspiration in the looming landscape, where the football is as high and low as the backdrop.

You’re met on the gate by Ron, whose been given a 50 years’ service award by the FA. He’s a former groundsman and referee, full of colourful stories.

“I was refereeing and booked this chap and asked him for his his name.”

“Donald Duck he replied”.

“What’s your real name, I asked?”

“Donald Duck, he said”.

“Right Donald, you’re going in the book as you’re driving me quackers”.

“The next week I booked a man said his name was Elvis Presley and it turned out he actually had changed his name to Elvis Presley”.

©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Malvern Town vs Cleethorpes Town. September 2024.

September brought heavy rain and a trip to Notts County FC.

You get that sense of County being committed to something greater, when you turn up to Meadow Lane on a Saturday, they’re watering the pitch to give the playing surface that extra slickness even though it’s pouring down.

It’ll be a vintage season for neighbours Forest but the County fans are content with what they have and with stories to tell.

While Forest have the advantage in terms of league positions, County provide one of the most authentic days out in English football, combining industrial jaggedness with a feeling of looking to the horizon to see what’s coming over.

©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Notts County FC. September 2024.

Meanwhile, the light dapples at Aston Villa FC, at the Bartons Arms pre-match and on the Holte End concourse as the stained glass refracts and the fans reflect.

“Yippeeh aye aaaayyyy, Yippeeh aye aaaayyyy oooohhh Holte Enders in the sky”, they sing for Gary Shaw, who had not long since passed.

The Holte End remains one of Englands most imposing home spaces, stretching as far as the eye can see, you feel you could get lost in it.

©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Holte End stained glass. September 2024.

“Leyton Orient were doing really well until World War I” says one older O, outside the Supporters’ Club at Brisbane Road, giving away his age or at least his frame of reference.

It was October by then and there was a slight nip in the air, hinting at a coming cold, but even though Orient were hit and miss on the pitch, you could tell they were building something.

A young lad, who dresses in a skinhead revival style, cheerfully showed his checked Harrington jacket, as fans cheered in the stand in the big square shirts, circa 1998 for the Orient connoisseurs.

©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Leyton Orient. October 2024.

The well-respected Spanish football journalist Guillem Balagué has un pasión for Biggleswade United FC.

You’ll see him in the stands in Bedfordshire but he’s just a small cog in the wheel.

Club volunteer David potters around doing the small jobs that make a grassroots club tick, while the tall oak trees cast a pretty shadow over the pristine playing surface.

©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. David. Biggleswade United FC. October 2024.

By November, dusty overcoats are being pulled out of wardrobes and the floodlights send sharp crystals of sharp light overhead.

Non-League Kettering Town had Football League neighbours Northampton Town crashing out of the FA Cup, leaving the Cobblers’ fans smarting for months to come.

©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Northampton Town vs Kettering Town. November 2024.

There was one of England’s lesser known derby matches as Christmas selection boxes began to fill supermarket shelves : Kidderminster Harriers vs Halesowen Town.

Where would we be without our rivalries? The petty nonsense that fuels our football longevity. You come to ours, we’ll come to you.

©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Kidderminster Harriers vs Halesowen Town. November 2024.

Night comes fast in November. So do football matches.

Not every match is an occasion. The supporters of Djurgårdens IF decided to make the match vs The New Saints in Shrewsbury an occasion.

What makes an occasion? The surroundings, the people, being up for it.

The Stockholmers were in the quaint border town pubs, eating English breakfast early doors and didn’t finish drinking till last orders. They drank the town dry and squeezed every last drop out of the trip.

©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Djurgårdens IF. Shrewsbury. December 2024.

By December, the River Nene had burst its banks at Northampton in the East Midlands.

You’d need a strong brogue in the shoemaking centre to keep out the damp for the derby named after the waterway that links Northampton and Peterborough.

“I came with my mate who’s a Peterborough supporter” said one Cobblers lad at the Sixfields stadium. “I’ve told him, I hope he dies twice already tonight”

“Once when he picked me up, and again when he went round to the away end, but he has to drop me home first, then he can die.”

©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Northampton Town vs Peterborough United. December 2024.

The river ran truer by February at Fulham, with rowers out practising for the boat race that flows past Craven Cottage.

Steel dandelion floodlights popped proudly over the townhouses and the late winter warmth sat like jackets on the shoulders of drinkers at the Crabtree public house on the river.

An artist stood painting the Craven Cottage facade, with its imposing brick-work and fans milling around in that way you do when you’ve got to a football ground two hours before kick-off.

I met a couple of old Fulham fans who knew who Jim Stannard was and remembered when away fans huddled out in the elements in a ground that was to change so much.

©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Fulham FC. February 2025.

A thing of beauty is a joy forever, wrote Keats and although granted he was not talking about Hereford FC (more of a Millwall fan) there is a romantic delight in trundling to Edgar Street.

The Meadow End there hasn’t changed for generations, one of the last remaining examples of the league standard “curva”.

Even though Hereford are trying to find a way back to the Football League as their fans rustle in the small pocket of their jeans for the money to buy another pint of Stowfords cider.

©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Hereford FC. March 2025.

On the Costa Blanca in Spain, Moors and Christians festivals are held each year, with processions and fireworks to commemorate skirmishes between two old rivals.

They remember periods of war, coexistence and mutual mistrust, with a mood of threat and celebration in the air.

Take away the temperature and you could have swapped Javea for Sheffield In March as firecrackers burst down the Penistone Road from the city to Hillsborough stadium.

It was a classic Steel City derby in that the best team on the day didn’t necessarily win.

Wednesday were keen but United finished their chances, leaving a red smoke bomb lobbed into the corner stand to puff away.

No-one went to get it and the Wednesday fans seethed into next Tuesday.

©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Sheffield Wednesday vs Sheffield United. March 2025.

While the Sheffield “fiesta of foes” was intense as they come, an April trip to Cadbury Athletic was as sedate as a Sunday sit on the sofa with a bar of Fruit and Nut.

The chocolate factory works club put on a “Groundhopper Day” and football enthusiasts came from all over to watch from the notable Tudor-style grandstand.

Football isn’t just about fingernails into palms tension and surges of passion that lead to football fans thinking they are the Michael Bolton of the terraces. It’s fine to scratch one’s arse in the quiet.

Have a Wispa bar and a cup of tea love. Wash your hands.

©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Cadbury Athletic FC. April 2025.

By May, the windows on the London tube carriages were pulled down and the Djurgården fans were back over for the UEFA Conference League semi-final at Chelsea.

They were really here to show us how it’s done, strolling to the Stamford Bridge and then comfortably out-singing the former terrace kings into the night.

Although we have everything in English football we don’t do everything right.

There’s time for contemplation as May turns to June, cricketers in their whites take over provincial pub gardens for a month or two.

It will all begin again soon enough, maybe a Nike Cortez or a Stan Smith underfoot and the weariness of another season passed eased a little.

Perhaps the pain in the knee from tripping up at St Albans City will be gone.

Maybe we’ll win something? A tenner on a scratch card. The FA Cup.