It is roughly seven years and three months ago that I last made the 14.5 kilometre journey from my house to Braintree to watch Braintree Town play.  That mild, blowy November evening in 2017 Braintree Town, or ‘The Irons’ as they are known to their friends, played out a one-all draw against Truro City and as on all the previous seven times I had been to see Braintree Town, I travelled by car.  Today, having dismissed the idea of driving the 27.9 kilometres to Long Melford in my planet saving Citroen e-C4 to see ‘The Villagers’, as they are known to their friends, play Soham Town Rangers, I am going to return to Braintree.  As a responsible adult however, I am keen to do things Donald Trump wouldn’t do, and to reduce the double scourge of traffic congestion and on-street parking I have therefore decided to take the X20 bus to Braintree, where most appropriately Braintree Town are to play probably England’s greenest football club, Forest Green Rovers, in the Vanarama National League.  What is more, Forest Green Rovers are also supported by the Grateful Dead. As it used say on the sides of buses back in the 1960’s, “It’s better by bus”.

The X20 bus stop is only 200 metres from my front door and although the bus is about five minutes late, I am soon passing two one pound coins and two fifty pence pieces through the gap beneath the Perspex screen that separates me from the cheerful, bearded bus driver, who, although not old enough, looks a bit like he might once have been, or should have been in the Incredible String Band.  Fortunately, the bus is a double-decker so I can safely sit upstairs; the leather high-backed seats are comfortable, the bus is warm, and the windows aren’t steamed up, so I look out on the gloriously grey Essex countryside as it alternately sweeps and judders by as the bus passes along the pot-holed roads.  Behind me, younger, more self-centred people than myself either noisily watch ‘content’ or hold loud, vacuous conversations on their mobile phones.  When I was young, old people would often sit next to me on buses and want to talk.

The timetable that I looked at on-line when planning my journey indicated that it would take twenty-three minutes, and the big blue bus is soon arriving on the outskirts of Braintree, something that is announced with its cathedral, a Tesco supermarket.  From Tesco’s, Braintree unfolds as lines of dull looking houses of decreasing size. I am due to get off at the stop identified as “Braintree o/s King’s Head” and recognising the approach to the junction with Cressing Road where the King’s Head is situated and seeing a bus stop flag, I press the bell, but too soon and the bus draws up at a stop called “Dallwood Way”.  Whilst stupidly unable not to think of Virginia Woolf, I nevertheless manage to say to the bus driver “Oh, I wanted the next stop . “He offers to drive on, because obviously he’s going to anyway, but I tell him it (Cressing Road) is only round the corner, and as things work out the bus is held by a red light at the junction and I get round the corner in to Cressing Road before I would have done if I’d got off at my intended stop.  Across Cressing Road I can see that what was once the King’s Head pub is now a Tesco ‘local’.

It has started to rain, and weighed down with the responsibility of not wasting the valuable seconds I have gained by getting off the bus early, I step out on the ten-minute walk up Cressing Road and along Clockhouse Way to what was called the Ironmongery Direct stadium the last time I was here, but now rejoices under the name of The Rare Breed Meat Co Stadium.  Being the world’s first vegan football club, I’m surprised Forest Green Rovers haven’t refused to play here, and there are so few people walking up Clockhouse Way with me I do begin to wonder if the game hasn’t been postponed.  But the sight of a man in a day-glo coat, a full club car park, a man in an orange football club hat and three other people obviously dressed for an afternoon of spectating allays my fears and I head for the turnstile labelled “card only” where the wonder of modern technology takes £20 from my bank account with the mere tap of a piece of plastic.  Satisfyingly, I am given a small, printed ticket in exchange, it’s number 86.

To buy a programme (£3.00) I make for the club shop, a cornucopia of old programmes, club badges and general football fan bric-a-brac in a portacabin; every club should have one, but fewer and fewer do. A radio in the club shop is tuned to Radio Essex and a time check tells me that it is six minutes to three, so I head out and onto the open terrace behind the goal to select a spot against the back wall, level with the eaves of the club house just behind.

The teams process onto the pitch to the strains of “Firestarter” by ‘electronic punk’ or ‘rave’ band The Prodigy,  who are or were Braintree’s modern claim to fame. There is a minute’s silence before the kick-off for a recently deceased former player.  It’s a silence that is at first disturbed by shouts of ‘Rovers’ from somewhere off to my right.  Once achieved, the silence seems a long one as if the referee in schoolteacher mode had decided that we were just going to have to wait to begin until everyone was quiet.

When the match eventually begins, it is Braintree who get first go with the ball, sending it mostly away from where I am standing, and in a south easterly direction towards the village of Tye Green and far off Witham, where this afternoon Witham Town are going to lose heavily to Bury Town in the Isthmian League.  Braintree wear a gloriously colourful kit of orange shirts and blue shorts, a brighter version of Montpellier HSC of French Ligue 1.  Forest Green Rovers by contrast are in a disappointingly dull, faded looking shade of all-over green, but with black slashes on the front of their shirts as if they had originally been intended for use by a safari park eleven.

Braintree dominate the start of the game and all the action is at the far end where it looks compressed into a few yards.  A few feet along from me a middle-aged man twitches and flexes as he wills Braintree to score with a quiet commentary of encouragement to himself. “Oooooh” he suddenly exclaims as an early cross eludes the straining head of an orange shirted player at the far post.  The rain has started to feel like sleet.  Along the walkway at the foot of the terrace, a procession of hungry-looking ten and eleven-year-olds ferry polystyrene trays stacked with chips and burgers, which may or may not be from the meat of slaughtered rare breeds.  “Your support is fucking shit” comes the chant from beneath the low roof of the terrace on the east side of the ground.  “Come on” continues the bloke a few feet away from me, quietly to himself as Braintree win another early corner.

It is eleven minutes past three and Braintree score. A low shot from wide on the left into the far side of the Forest Green goal. “Goal scorer for…” says the stadium announcer from his garden shed inside the low-roofed terrace.  He stops mid announcement but then continues to tell us that the goal scorer is what sounds to me like “Cairo Lisbie”.  “Goal scorer today” he repeats as if he thinks it’s unlikely anyone else will score, “Cairo Lisbie”.  In fact, of course, he is saying Kyrell Lisbie.

“No noise from the Vegan boys” is the chant from beneath the low roof of the side terrace, as if to rub it in that we’re in the “Rare Breeds Meat Co stadium”, and I decide that the drizzle is now too cold and heavy and so I make for the covered terrace beneath the low roof.  “When’s the Southend game?” I hear a bloke say as I walk by.  “I’ve got a feeling it’s next month” says his interlocutor evidently preferring to rely on sensations rather than the actual fixture list, which confirms that the fixture is on April 18^th.  In my new location on the covered terrace with the low roof I have a new set of neighbours. “Yellow there ref, yellow, that is a yellow, thank you” says a bloke nearby as Forest Green’s Adam May becomes the first player to be booked by referee Gareth Rhodes, whose name is similar to that of a once popular, but now deceased tv chef.

A high cross field ball from a Forest Green player is greeted with a derisory jeer from the home crowd and then a collective, disappointed ‘Oh’ as it drops perfectly onto the bounce-free turf at the feet of Rovers’ wide player.  Around me the locals continue to take umbrage at Mr Rhodes’ failure to book any more Rovers players.  “Should of (sic) got booked earlier” shouts someone, “How many more times?” enquires someone else, before shouting it again, and then again, making me wonder how many more times he would shout it. “Cynical!” calls a short bespectacled youth next to me, and then “I’m watching you ten”, as if this matters.

At twenty-seven minutes to three Braintree score a second goal; one very much like the first, but this time with a shot from wide on the right into the far corner of the goal by number seven, Tom Blackwell.  After three minutes of added on time, half-time arrives and the public address system returns us to 1979 with the sound of ‘A message to you Rudy’ by the Specials. I eat a Polish Grzeski chocolate-coated wafer bar from the Sainsbury’s World Foods aisle and reflect on all the other delicious European foodstuffs that could have been so much more freely available had Britain not left the European Union.

Today’s attendance is announced as being 860 and the football resumes at five past four.  I walk to the far end of the low-roofed terrace where I find myself amongst mostly Forest Green Rovers supporters, and I feel happier amongst the sounds of their west country burr than amongst the aggressive rants and growls of the voices of the displaced Londoners who now live in Essex.

Rovers begin the half with purpose, and in the first few minutes spend as much time in the Braintree penalty area as they did in the whole of the first half.   But then Braintree breakaway and hit the post or the bar with a shot. “Come on Rovers” call the people around me from beneath their green and black knitted headwear.   “We’re winning” says a young bloke nearby and it seems from subsequent mention of Liam Delap that he and his friends are either Ipswich Town supporters watching Forest Green, or Forest Green supporters who follow Ipswich.

I’m seeing Forest Green at closer quarters this half and soon establish that their team is ‘set up’ in the traditional formation of a couple of big blokes at the back, a big bloke up front with smaller blokes all around, especially on the wings.  Braintree would seem to be similar and with a blend of youth and experience which includes the venerable thirty-five year olds John Akinde, a man in the mould of the legendary Adie Akinbiyi, but obviously not as big,  and defender Jamal Fyfield.  Despite more possession this half, Forest Green are not making any decent chances.  “Shoot” plead the people around me. “Bring on a fuckin’ strikerr” says another, more directly and rolling his ‘r’s like a comedy pirate in the process.  It’s nearly twenty to five when Forest Green have a shot good enough to force the Braintree goalkeeper into making a save and by then they have replaced half their outfield with substitutes, including one Harvey Bunker, who I like to think has a brother called Cole.

The second half is one of frustration for away supporters and tension for home fans, only occasionally relieved by a wet, slippery, muddy pitch which induces a sprinkling of pratfalls and mis-kicks for added comedic effect.  Eventually, after the initial ninety minutes are played out, Mr Rhodes adds another six for good measure and halfway through these the Braintree fans feel sufficiently confident of victory to begin chanting “We are staying up”.  Their optimism is well placed as not surprisingly, given what has happened since three o’clock, Forest Green fail to produce a miraculous come-back .

With the final whistle, a mostly happy crowd slips away into the receding dusky light whilst a few Forest Green fans hang about to berate their players by way of encouraging better in the future.  I too drift away, past the interesting 1930’s modernist workers houses beyond the club car park and back down Clockhouse Way and Cressing Road to the bus stop.  The bus will be late again, the stop has no shelter and it starts to rain again, but as the win to the local team proves, it’s better by bus.