World of Sport

A DARK-SKINNED man in a blue anorak leans against a wall in front of the terraced houses outside Edgeley Park, smoking a cigarette. Around him, fans clad in blue Stockport County replica shirts wander up and down Hardcastle Road, absorbing as much information as they can from the match programme.
Further up the road, towards the Labour Club, seven police officers in fluorescent jackets swap jokes and banter in the back of a van, as if they were on a day trip. It is 1.50pm, and everyone is waiting for the turnstiles to open. Less than four weeks after the World Cup final, the new football season is ready to start.
It’s a new beginning for Stockport and for Hereford as they face each other on the opening day of the League Two season. Stockport have had a horrible five years, dropping two divisions and almost losing their Football League status last term. They looked doomed for the Conference at Christmas, then rallied when former player Jim Gannon returned to the club as manager.
The club suffered under the ownership of Cheshire Sport – who bought County and rugby union side Sale Sharks in 2002 and who still own the ground – but are slowly getting back on their feet after being taken over by their Supporters’ Trust. Money is still tight, but there is a feeling that their fortunes might finally have bottomed out.
For Hereford, it’s a first game back in the Football League, nine years after they were relegated on the last day of the 1996/97 season. They’ve come very close to returning twice since then, finishing second in 2004 and 2005, only to lose in the play-offs. They finished second last season too, but overcame Morecambe and Halifax, and finally sealed their return.
“You look through Stockport’s side, the ground, everything is a notch or two higher than we’ve been used to for nine years,” said Hereford manager Graham Turner, who has been in charge since 1995. “It is a case of coming into the unknown. I’ve likened it to the problems English teams had readjusting to European football again after the five-year ban in the late 1980s.
“It took them a long time to get the pace of it again. We’ve got to pick it up very quickly, otherwise we’ll pay a heavy penalty.”
With all this talk of starting anew, it slips by almost unnoticed that Stockport have changed their mascot over the summer. Vernon Bear, a giant creature who wore a County shirt and used to throw sweets into the crowd at half-time, has gone. In his place comes Harry the Hatter, a man in a blue suit with a giant Frank Sidebottom-style plastic head and a grey trilby. There seems to be some sort of design flaw with the head, as the person inside the costume has to be guided up the tunnel by two members of the Stockport staff.
Stockport play well in the first half but can’t score, and it’s Hereford who lead at half-time thanks to a well-taken goal by Stuart Fleetwood, who dashes between two defenders before driving a shot low into the corner. The Hereford fans, seated in the open at the Railway End, are enjoying life back in the league.
It gets better for them when defender Tamika Mkandawire heads in a second from Rob Purdie’s corner after an hour. Stockport continue to create chances – they have 27 shots on goal to Hereford’s five – but goalkeeper Wayne Brown is inspired. Even when he has to go off with a groin injury, Stockport cannot find a way past his replacement, Paul Harrison.
“Turner, what’s the score?” chant the Hereford fans. Their manager tells them by holding up two fingers. The rain just about holds off too. It’s a good day to be a Hereford fan.
It’s a strange day to be a Stockport supporter, though. Despite losing 2-0 at home on the opening day, their team haven’t played that badly.
“In general, I was quite pleased, because a lot of the stuff we worked on in training, we took on board,” said Gannon afterwards. “I was disappointed with the result, but the performance was encouraging.”
Walking away afterwards, I spot three fisherman passing the afternoon by the reservoir behind the ground: they were there when I arrived. A family of ducks are making plenty of noise nearby, while an aeroplane flies overhead. Those sights and sounds have always been a part of the Edgeley Park experience – the ground is underneath one of Manchester Airport’s main flight paths. New beginning or not, some things never change.

A teapot writes: I have decided, against my better judgement it must be said, to enlist some of my current and former colleagues to assist me as I look back on my years on the sports desk at Deansgate.
Among those you will be hearing from over the next seven weeks will be the MEN’s former deputy sports editor Steve McHugh, a man who has given even more service to the newspaper than I have. (He hasn’t made as many cups of tea as I have, though. No one has. And don’t you forget it.)
Steve joined the MEN from the Bolton Evening News in July 1972, and worked here for 32 years before retiring in December 2004. He still works for us as a freelance, contributing bowls and local league cricket reports for the paper. I think it’s the fine cups of tea I make that keep drawing him back, but he doesn’t seem to agree with me.
But I digress. Steve has a wealth of stories to tell from his three-and-a-bit decades as a pillar of the sports desk, so I asked him to begin with a short tale about the days when newspaper offices were very different.
“Years ago, in the days before computers, we used to have messengers in the office,” Steve said. “They would run errands, take messages between departments, that sort of thing. They were usually kids between 15 and 18 who had left school at a young age and who maybe had struggled to get a job straight away.
“Now we had some very good messengers, but some of them – how can I put this? – weren’t so bright. This was in the days when a lot of people smoked in the office – you were allowed to then – and I remember when one of the sports reporters wanted some cigars. So he sent a messenger down for five Hamlets. And the messenger came back with five omelettes.
“Now there’s nothing wrong with a good omelette. But you can’t really smoke it, can you?”

The sports desk teapot is writing a 50-part blog to countdown to the MEN’s move from Deansgate to Hardman Street on September 23.