THEY’RE ONLY HAPPY WHEN IT RAINS: INTRODUCING THE ‘S’ SERIES WHEELBARRAH

Then, one day – in 2004, after eighty-six fruitless years – the Red Sox won the World Series. No one saw it coming, and just to compound their glory, they did it by beating the Yankees. After the celebrations, though, a withering sense of loss quickly took root amongst the people of Boston. Victory, they realised, had come at a price: actually getting a return on their support had compromised the very point of it. That point was a simple principle of commitment, something woven deep into their identities as Bostonians, a sense of endurance that’d always made them, somehow, better. If you walked into a bar in South Boston wearing a Yankees cap, and were planning on giving it the biggun’, you knew you’d be dealing with a more righteous, sturdier kind of person. Someone with more knowledge. More fight. More love.

Now, though, Boston were top of the tree. Number one. Life as a Sox fan had always been bittersweet, but empowering with it. Now they’d lost touch with the one consoling myth that had insulated them for all those years – them, their kids, their kids’ kids – against the teasing geographical possibilities of supporting the bigger, better, richer Yankees. New York had trophies and titles and power, but generally speaking, they were a casual armchair pursuit for people who didn’t have the guts, the constitution or the character to truly love something. Their successes had infected the fans with a fat, churlish sense of entitlement, left them intolerant and greedy, delusional and demanding. Because their support had never been galvanized outside of the spotlight, it was weaker, almost phoney. Because the Sox fans had so much less to show for the time, money, and pure, stupid commitment they’d given their boys, it naturally made them better fans. Better people.

This is revelatory. To many fans, a sense of moral triumph is just as enticing as actual, tangible glory and success: in their absence, it absolutely centralizes itself. Football, like most sports, is something transient and temporary, where dynasties are rare: most teams are only ever a bad manager, a thrifty owner or a few injuries away from disaster. No true fan supports one team because they were, are, or are likely to be better than another one(s). Perversely, support seems to best breed in a Petri dish of low expectations and disappointment – hence, fans across the land spend lots of time consolidating their love by letting everyone else know just how hard they’ve got it. Christ, even Arsenal and Liverpool fans spent most of last season complaining, and this is the entire point of forums and phone-ins: “yeah, alright Spoony, it’s Alan from Carlisle. Listen, about that Villa fan that was moaning, I’ve just driven three hundred miles…”

Notts County have had it hard for a while now. I’ll admit that, as a Forest fan, and I’ll also admit that it’s pleased me, because I’ve never really liked them. There’s no hair ruffling from me, and no little-brother condescension; I find them snide, cynical, bitter, jealous and hypocritical. They’ve also got the heftiest and most infuriating appetite for revionism this side of the Iron Curtain. Generally, though, the relationship between Nottingham’s two clubs is a one-sided, gnashing antipathy that has blossomed across three decades of Forest’s (relative) predominance – after a big money take over at Meadow Lane, and blustery statements of intent (many of them, typically, involving Forest), could it all be about to change?

In a word, no. And here’s why. Last week, Manchester City commissioned a billboard; a giant, sky blue landscape of Carlos Tevez, arms spread wide like Christ the Redeemer, underlined by the words ‘Welcome to Manchester’. A bit of triumphism and celebration that, embarrassingly, signposted City’s inferiority complex – one of biggest signings in their history, and they still couldn’t pass up on the opportunity to have a dig at United. City, Manchester’s team by popul(ist) consent, geographically in and of the town, welcoming Tevez to a place and a people superior to the suburbs of Trafford. A revolution is underway at Eastlands, yet City – hamstrung by rhetoric, and an arbitrary sense of what makes them ‘special’ – still insist on fighting the battle with the slings and arrows of yesterday’s tired, silly arguments. That billboard will (unwittingly, I suspect) become the motif of City’s ascendancy – overthrowing United, toppling them, the bigger picture of domain and empire somehow enveloped within a very private, very local battle. “It’s City, isn’t it?” observed Alex Ferguson in response, inviting the world to finish his sentence. They’re obsessed.

The parallels between City and Notts are striking. Like City, like the Red Sox, like Millwall and Orient and Grimsby and Scotland, they’ve been traipsing the path of the underdog for years, justifying themselves with a slew of pig-headed ‘facts’ that almost deny argument. Notts fans have achieved a huge part of their current identity through their antipathy: contempt towards a larger, oppressive power that smothers their city. Some rivalries are gentler, less partisan; but supporting Notts also abbreviates a hatred of Forest. It’s bespoke. It doesn’t warrant theories or explanation. Forest are a black, gluttonous tumour of a club, hoovering up fans and attention. Their supporters are stuck in the past. They’re fair-weather. They’re trouble makers. They don’t understand the game. They’d never admit it, mind, the significance of Forest in their thinking – that would just capitalize The State of Things, reinforcing the holding pattern of football in Nottingham. But it’d be the first or second wish of almost any Notts fan who stumbled upon a genie; doing those smarmy Red Dogs from West Bridgford.

Now, they actually have a chance. A good chance. Outside of the Premiership, the leagues have concertinaed together: in these days of salaried fairy-tales, with the ascendancies of Wigan and Fulham and Hull, resources – allied to able management and a bit of good fortune – could have any team shouldering quickly towards the limelight. It’s neither outlandish nor unreasonable to say that, in four years’ time, Notts County could be the best team in the East Midlands. But for Notts to be successful – truly successful, and to aim for anything less would be pointless – they’ll have to let go of a huge part of what makes them what they are. Because nothing pegs you as small-time more than assessing yourself, constantly, against another team. The difference between City and Notts is that, were City ever to topple United, then in a very ‘two birds with one stone’ kind of way they’d be on the doorstep of genuine contention. Notts’ perennial goal is to usurp a team slightly less crap than themselves.

In this sense, the chest thumping prattle wafting out of Meadow Lane these days promises less a revolution, and more an insurgency. It’s nothing new – it has been preached, promised, bawled and boasted by a pourri of owners, part of the oath for any new arrival at the Lane. The ghost of Fred West could win them over if he promised the same. And here, there needs to be an absolute shift in the whole mentality of the club, because it shouldn’t be Forest in their crosshairs; we’re a pretty insubstantial target, in the grand scheme of things. I’d imagine Adam Pearson’s goals for Hull City when he arrived were greater than breaking Grimsby’s stranglehold on the Humber region.

Ultimately, being truly ‘better’ requires two things; dominance on the pitch, but also the supremacy off it to affect a kind of casual – but sincere – disregard. Real Madrid no more care about Rayo Vallecano than Northampton fans do Rushden. It’s why Alex Ferguson isn’t batting an eyelid about the nouveau-riche freak show over at Eastlands, as City steadily undermine their soul and humility – the only things they had over United in the first place. Form, as they say, is temporary.

Weighing up that billboard, Alex Ferguson was bang on the money: “City are a small club with a small mentality,” he said. “All they can talk about it Manchester United – they can’t get away from it.” Notts fans will know they’ve truly made it not through the trips to Wembley, not when they’re packed into the stands at Old Trafford; their journey will only reach its end when they stop worrying about Forest. When they can stop considering themselves an underdog. And I wonder, really, if that’s what they want, because the Forest-as-glorying-idiots shtick is now so utterly hewn into their thoughts that they’d probably be lost without it. They’re only happy when it rains, Notts fan, letting the world know just what they have to put up with. One day, though, they’ll be better. Pure probability demands it. Outside of cartoon characters and international terrorists, though, underdogs just don’t make good villains, and they’ll be as lost then as the good people of Boston. “Screw the Premiership and sod the Champions League,” wrote one Pie fan recently. “All we want as Notts fans is not to be patronised anymore by the team we see as our biggest rivals. I look forward to a day when Forest fans once again stand united in singing hateful songs about us.”