Anton Rippon Recalls The 'Football Smell' That Brings Anticipation Flooding Back

Anton Rippon looks back on the fond memories that come with pre-season as Derby County's players return to the Training Centre under a new regime ahead of the 2015/16 season...

Anton Rippon looks back on the fond memories that come with pre-season as Derby County's players return to the Training Centre under a new regime ahead of the 2015/16 season...

THE fixtures are out, the players report back for training, there is a new head coach and new faces in the team – the dawn of a new football season is sprinkled with the frisson of anticipation when hope springs eternal for every supporter in the land.

It doesn’t matter where your team finished last time. This time will be different.

For me it’s also a time that brings back memories of foundry smoke. I’ll explain. When I was at school in the 1950s, as the season approached me and my pals would go down to the Baseball Ground – and inhale.

We wanted to smell that acrid mixture produced by whatever they did at Ley’s works.

To us it was a football smell. It pervaded every Saturday afternoon, and at night matches under those rudimentary floodlights that peered through the gloom, it was accompanied by the occasional flash of fire and the smoke that belched and roared into the sky above Pear Tree.

In the late summers of that different age it was the nearest we could get to magic of football.

The players weren’t yet back at the Baseball Ground, so we caught a number 88 Corporation bus down Sinfin Lane to what was once Derby Borough Police’s athletic ground but which now served as Derby County’s training ground.

It was there that we renewed acquaintance with the previous season’s Rams stars, and caught our first glimpses of new signings.

Mostly they ran around the pitch under the eyes of trainer Ralph Hann and his assistant, Jack Bowers.

Sometimes they were allowed a football. Very occasionally they might even play a match. But mostly it was running. They had to get fit.

The real action began on the final Saturday of the close season when the Whites v Reds public practice match took place at the Baseball Ground – 7pm kick-off, all proceeds to charity.

It was usually the first team against the second string – the “Stiffs” we used to call them – but sometimes it was mixed up: first team attack and reserve team defence against – well, you get the picture.

Those games were surprisingly competitive but under Brian Clough’s early management they were abandoned in favour of a pre-season tour and a final home friendly against Football League opposition, and, occasionally, visitors from abroad.

When Pride Park first opened, the opposition became more exotic with visits from the likes of Sampdoria and Barcelona.

More recently the opposition has set fewer pulses racing. With the greatest of respect to them it’s not easy to get over-excited at the prospect of Stoke City or West Bromwich Albion for a pre-season friendly, although last year Glasgow Rangers proved attractive opponents.

Like everyone else, this year I was looking forward to Benfica until they had what they considered a better offer.

A tournament in the USA, when you could be playing the Rams – what were they thinking?

Probably still smarting from that misty night in October 1972 when they stepped out of their team coach in Shaftesbury Crescent, found the Baseball Ground pitch mysteriously waterlogged – the fire brigade had just left – and were 3-0 down after only half an hour.

No wonder they didn’t want to come back, even 43 years later. Different ground and with no smell from Ley’s – still Derby County, though.