THE LEGACY OF W.G. HOLMES 30-9-05

G'Day Marras! I've just heard that little old me has apparently been given the dubious honour of being the resident Australian correspondent for this leading cyber peddler of all things Boro. I think I won it in a $2 raffle.

So..

ErimusRed here, hanging upside down off the arse of the planet, reporting in from Oz for hopefully the first instalment of many. Over the coming weeks, every Wednesday, you'll be inclined to log in to get my particular spin on our Beloved.

And along the way, maybe I can help to entertain you and maybe even brighten your day with my humour - I took myself seriously once, fucking scary and very beige! - and maybe even enlighten your world as I'm full of shit and can certainly teach you some Aussie strine and new swearwords.

Fucken Oath Mate!

First things first.

Let's get the most important thing out of the way. The question you bloody Pomgolians ask of every Antipodean castaway after all the other niceties are out of the way like; "So Son, your lass ran off with the bloke with the ten inch donger and....Errr! What's happening on Home & Away like!"

Well that rugged haemorrhoidial old fart Alf well and truly spat the dummy and smacked shit out of Kim who'd pilferred some of Alf's dosh. The lad in turn threw a right spacker, rolled a few spliffs and had a puff session, stole Alf's precious supply of roid cream, then ran off with his grommet mates to chill and surf some hot narlies on his boogie board North of Bummer Bay.

Sally's stupendous penduloso norks got even bigger and the producer of new series of 'Baywatch Seaton Carew', David Hasselsjailbait, snapped her up to fill out one of their toxic green one piece costumes, with the floaty on a string shaped like a South Bank salmon and brown to boot!

Her wimpy SNAG hubbie Flynn got a melanoma on his tockley windsock (foreskin) and had to have radiation therapy which made his bell-end look so red it resembled Rudolph's conk impersonating a demented stop light.

All the many hot young totty strumpets of the Bay got infected by a strange virus and ganged together and moved to the next village, Salem's Lot which they raped and pillaged, sucking the blood of all who lay in their path.

Then "You know we belong together, you and I forever & ever..."

Now, where were we...? Oh Yeah!

I have an incurable, undiagnosed, unknown and at times debilitating illness. Or is it a disease, or a virus?

I haven't had a definitive diagnosis from a suitably qualified medical professional BUT I know in my own tiny little mind that I am afflicted uncontrollably by a malaise.

One which has more effect on my health and well-being than any other factor in my life. Apart from still yearning after Newboulds pork pies after 22 years of exile, Ooo and pease pud and...

For 40 plus years of my existence, every waking minute includes a random thought about one thing and one thing only and recently it's gotten much worse.

No! Ya dirty buggers, that thought isn't Kirsten Dunst's extremely firm and nipplacious jubblies in Spiderman - although they come a very close second - OR whether I'm on for a root tonight but it ain't Christmas or my birfdee, so.

I can't stop thinking, living, breathing, ingesting all things Middlesbrough Football Club 1986. With all the good, bad and indifferent connotations that unfolds and all the mood changes the affliction constantly induces.

Even writing or saying that red & white neon name, in all its glory, gives me a feeling of pride and individuality and strength. A tingle in the dingle.

My bonny Boro, Middlesbrough Association Football Club. Why not I ask?

Just like you true believers I've followed the red n'white Yo-Yo through it's every rise and fall, through every moment of the battle, the elation, the anguish, even through the obvious prejudice against our Beloved in the Fleet Street press. Bunch of whisky addled incontinent blow farts!.

I believe it really is something that should be studied scientifically by a team of white-coated, buck-teethed, geggy boffins in some research lab in the bowels of Middlesbrough Polytechnic, oops! I mean Teesside University.

Then finally this affliction can be identified and given some recognition by the dismissive unbelievers of the medical fraternity with a title befitting its status in our collective lives.

Boro-itis, Smog Syndrome, Holgatescholiosis, Juninhiccups, Moggaroids, Ayresomethrombosis, Mannionosis, Cloughitis, Scarlet Fever!

There could even be some sub-species like Vidukaritis. Very like chronic fatigue syndrome but you still accumulate wealth at 350 quid an hour!

And, you may ask, whose fault is all this? Is there anybody to blame for my obsessive-compulsive disorder? Yes there bloody is!

That bugger named at the head of the article, William Gerald Holmes, my beloved father, who died in June 1997, the year of relegation and the three points debacle. The three cup finals and eventually a funeral.

Although very sick, he'd made the two League Cup finals but his health deteriorated rapidly afterwards. So much so, that he did not have the strength to get to the FA Cup Final because he was riddled with lung and bone cancer.

Thousands of miles away, in my heart, I knew the writing was on the wall when he didn't go to Wembley that May. A day he'd lived his life to see.

I'd ring him regularly from Perth, West Oz about how he was and his health and he'd gloss over the facts, then we'd spend the next forty minutes talking about our most shared passion, Middlesbrough Football Club.

The gossip, the news, rumours, every morsel of tittle-tattle and shite I could fill my head with, coloured with the Teesside language of diehard red n'white.

You see, my Old Man had inherited the Boro gene from his Dad, he'd refined it in his life and passed it on to me to now nurture and propagate. It's there in my DNA like the embedded coded signal that has caused me to be exactly like I am (devilishly handsome). Boro and immensely proud of the fact.

It's the same DNA you all possess, the same DNA that is in every BoroBoy or Girl's physiological make-up and you will pass it on in your life stock.

It's there now, either presently encoded in your tiddlers swimming around dementedly in your scrote or in an egg ready for scrambling in the warmth of the somnambulant womb.

Your progeny will posses the same loyal traits of worship as you, refined and strengthened even further to help the Boro race evolve and conquer all! Christ! I sound like a fucking Darlek who's eaten Hitler's head!

Yes! I know, I am getting all flowery and Darwinesque, but it's all part of evolution, pure and simple. A characteristic inbuilt Smoggy trait.

This evolutionary signal probably occurs in all true diehard fans, dare I say even the arch enemy up the road. Much as I hate to mention the incarnation of the anti-Christ's flock on the Wear, crucifix at the ready, Blunderland (cough, wankas). Even their fans will have all the Black Cat traits, including stupidity, embossed inside their two heads.

They will pass them on through the breeding process - carried out in the back of an Escort - defining the next generation of Chardonnays, Mercedes and Tarquins. Ironically, before eating their young with a side order of greasy chips and polystyrene cup full of kryptonite mushy peas (thurt!).

The other thing my Old Man did, which in hindsight probably helped accelerate my obsession, was to rent a flat off his Auntie at........ 113 Ayresome Street, within a pungent sparrow's fart of the glorious Ayresome Park gates and Sammies Club.

At the time pretending to my heavily pregnant Mother that her condition, carrying Boro's next Wilfie Mannion, necessitated this action due to the residence having a very close proximity to the local doctor and adjacent infirmary.

He followed the Boro throughout the land did my Dad, spending all his limited dough in the process, during a time when it was bloody difficult to get around as transport options were limited and nobody had a car.

But, he wasn't the only one, a whole band of diehard Boro boys met up at the various away grounds. It was a marvellous time, full of magic characters and I loved the colourful stories which my Dad recounted on beery occasions. They obviously invaded my conscious with ease when I was a wee nipper, sowing the seed or igniting the gene.

At one point he had visited over eighty different football league grounds, his love of our game was so great. He tried to make every Boro match even staying true during his National Service at Aldershot as a gunner with the artillery. Service, which incidentally made him a deaf old twat, but you'd only call him that on the left for fear of a well executed backhand clip.

I fondly remember Boro match days when we later moved to Pally Park to a house over-looking Middlebeck club (see a pattern emerging here?). How on Saturday match days or better still those atmospheric floodlit Tuesday evening games, you could hear the crowd lifting the roof off Ayresome Park.

They were cheering as Boro powered their way to promotion in that first ever season in Division three, while all the raggy arses of the neighbourhood had a robust, burst ball kickabout in the cul-de-sac off Kelfield Avenue with the garage doors as goals. I was always 'Bobby Charlton' as England had just gloriously won the World Cup 4-2 over the Boxheads at Wembley.

Dad eventually took me and our kid to our first game later that glorious season against Oxford United, in the old Third Division, plonked us at the front of that electric 40,000 strong crowd, holding on to the fence of the Chicken Run with one hand and a Mars bar with the other. The hook sunk a whole lot deeper that day.

Memories of nicking off school during power cuts and Manchester United in the FA Cup, Jackie Charlton, Boamy and Maddren, Mogga, Souness, Foggon, Hickton, freezing on the Chicken Run, bad Bovril, soggy pies, pints of sorrow drowner ...glowing neon days!

So, when that inevitable day came and we finally ended the 128 years of hurt, innocence and longing I wept a bucket, for Dad, for my beloved Boro and for my extended afflicted family. You guys.

The release was palpable and unbelievably satisfying even just tuned in to Soccernet on the internet. I dented the roof when the Zenden penalty went stumbling in and then strangely I was calm. I knew that whatever happened we'd finally do it because W.G. Holmes was at my shoulder in spirit.

Even all those jealous 'worthless cup' jibes that followed in the weeks afterwards from the nob spankers didn't puncture the bubble that surrounded me for months.

I could spot one of the fellow Boro Mafia members a bloody mile away over the next few weeks. It was easy as they were surrounded by a red n' white tinged aura with a smile that threatened to peel the top off their heads.

It was on my part a euphoric elation tinged with a sadness, a regret. If only.

To have been stood there with you all, celebrating, on the tiers of the magnificent Millennium that amazing day, watching the formation of history unfold, teary eyed, next to my Dad with the players parading silverware would've been, 'I'm ready to die' Nirvana.

But, we can all dream.

That's why we are what we are.

BORO.

Enough said!

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