Read all about our visit to Bath City, of the English sixth tier, and a fascinating meeting with the coolest club chair there is…
General Info:
Date of Visit: Monday, 12.3.13, 10:00
Club Name: Bath City FC
Nickname: The Romans
Founded: 1889 (as Bath AFC)
Stadium: Twerton Park, Twerton (a suburb of Bath), Capacity: 8,840 (1,006 seated)
League and Rank: Conference South (6th Tier, Rank 12/24)
Official Site | Wikipedia
The Visit
Bath City's stadium is located somewhere in a suburb called Twerton, a quarter of an hour from Bath city centre. It turns out the city's sporting thing isn't football at all but rugby – which explains why the ground of Bath Rugby, who play in the Premiership, is right in the bustling tourist centre of the city. On Monday morning we checked out of our hotel and set off on the long road that lay ahead of us that day. Ahead of us was a long route starting at Bath's football club, via Exeter and then Plymouth, and only at the end of the day would we reach our next hotel destination – Torquay, somewhere on the Channel coast, 121 miles south-west of us. We parked the car in the big car park – we wondered whether it had ever been full – and headed towards the offices. The office doors were shut tight because of the freezing cold outside – about 1 degree above zero…
We were looking for Mrs Manda Rigby, with whom we'd arranged our visit – no less than the club chair. Peeking in through the small glass windows set in the wooden doors, painted in the black associated with the club crest's colours, we saw figures surprised that any living soul had turned up at that hour on a Monday morning. An older man called Paul, the white-haired general handyman, opened the door and greeted us. We told him the purpose of our visit, and he simply and casually invited us to see the pitch and the stands. We followed him up the winding building, which unfolded before us as stairs covered in thick purple carpet, with photos – some black and white, some in faded colour – adorning the walls. When we reached the top floor, Paul opened the door, and all at once a wave of bone-chilling cold hit us, and the pitch of Twerton Park was revealed. From the top of the stand, fighting spirit simply screamed from every inch of this muddy, imperfect and oh-so-wonderful pitch. The view beyond the stands was paved with green Somerset hills and typical English stone houses, as befits such a modest, grassroots stadium.
Did you know?
The history of Bath's football club is a little less successful than that of the city itself. The club has never played in the top four divisions and has spent all its years since its founding in 1889 in the semi-professional leagues at levels 6, 7 and 8. Its highest-ever finish came in the 1984-1985 season, which it ended fourth in the fifth tier, the Conference National. It's rather puzzling that such a big, impressive city has a floundering club, but in our opinion it actually fits, given the calm and cosmic serenity the city bestows on its visitors. Because who needs, in the city where the bath and the spa were invented, a club that causes headaches with promotions, relegations, goals, misses and so on…
We went back into the warm, built part of the club. At the bottom of the stairs a young chap called Andy Weeks was waiting for us. He was the one who'd been in contact with us before our arrival, and the one who'd arranged our meeting with Manda. After a brief explanation of why we'd come, we asked whether we could pass the time in the meantime by wasting money in the club shop. Andy said there was no official club shop, and that only on match days are all the boxes of merchandise brought out to stalls… We were rather disappointed to hear that, but straight away Andy suggested we follow him to the storeroom, where he could show us the products. Andy opened another door in one of the nooks of the stone building, and we followed him into a dark storeroom, and in a moment straight out of an episode of a detective series – behind another secret door lay the treasure chests: the club's merchandise boxes. With endless devotion, Andy dug among the corpses of rats and black widows' cobwebs and shifted heavy boxes from place to place just to please us. We chose a pin badge, a keyring and a sewn badge, in the absence of the scarf, hat and flag we so wanted. Andy even searched for some among his personal belongings in the office – but found none. After we'd bought what we wanted, Andy suggested we visit the club's (empty) lounge, where we could wait for our meeting with Manda.
We were invited for a hot coffee on the house and waited in the hall – which included a big pub, a large function room and a partition that can be removed on match days, able to hold all the hundreds of fans who regularly come to watch the team at once. It was lovely to see how all this decor was painted black and white – the club colours. At exactly 10:30 the club chair, Mrs Manda Rigby, arrived. Equipped with a smile and an easy feminine manner, she walked towards us with a relaxed grace uncharacteristic of her line of business, sat down opposite us and was curious to hear about our project and what had brought us to her club in particular. We told her how it all began with that computer game back in the nineties; we told her about our friendship, about football in Israel and about our private lives. For the next hour we talked about football, love and tradition, and the conversation flowed as if we'd known each other for ages. We really admired her openness, her patience and the generous time she gave us. Afterwards, she gave us as a gift the club's official calendar – whose cover (pay attention) features photos of all the players as children. What a lovely thing. So community-minded, so warm and so free of posing. The three of us got up to say goodbye – not before Andy photographed us presenting Manda with our plaque of appreciation against the backdrop of the empty black-and-white pub. Manda offered to send us the next matchday programme, which would include a piece about our visit to the club along with the photo just taken. We were delighted with the offer and thanked her wholeheartedly for perfect hospitality. Here you can see the promise fulfilled. Moved and very happy, we left the small club with the big heart, promising to follow them and keep our fingers crossed.
