An ode to the Paddock - the grumpy heart of Carlisle United's Brunton Park

It’s the kind of place you just imagine will always exist: that long bank of concrete, that pitch-long paradise for the grumpy and the shrewd.

But no. Some time in the future, if and when Carlisle United are playing somewhere more modern - maybe not this year, decade or, given the pace of change at the Blues, century – the diggers will be in and it will be rubble. And so, as a new season begins and fans’ feet thankfully return to those grey steps, an instinct rises from somewhere and urges us to enjoy* the Paddock just a little more than usual (*if “enjoyment” is a bit too un-Paddocky, at least have a quiet moment with it before telling someone to get a grip).

I hope this doesn’t come across as too sentimental when thinking of something which often seems to stand for the opposite emotion. It’s not, after all, football’s most intimidating terrace or its most renowned.

Can you imagine, though, Brunton Park without it? Do you think the place would have quite so much soul?

Maybe the urge to treasure it is in the knowledge that there aren’t a great many Paddocks left. At Carlisle’s level, instead of terraces of this length and hard-worn history, many have gone the way of progress, to all-seating not standing, to polished facilities rather than the elemental, upright position demanded of a large proportion of United’s matchday crowd, the males of whom have also long been accustomed to the time-honoured privilege of urinating against a wall.

The Paddock offers few luxuries, and perhaps this is why its residents always seem to take longest to be impressed – why they are better known for the imparting of truth and opinion to managers than for giddy outpouring, for the quips that randomly emanate from all good terraces, for salt rather than sweetness, reality over fantasy.

Its grittiness is also the subject of long personal affection. I watched my first Carlisle game in the old Scratching Pen in 1989 but every other game for the next 16 years, with my dad, was in the Paddock. It always felt an earthier vantage point than, for instance, the behind-the-goal Warwick Road End, where things seemed livelier.

I don’t know if that was true in reality. Yet the sense was bred deeper into the bone by watching United’s fallow early 90s teams from that simple, unimpressed place.

This only served to make more special those rare occasions when the Paddock came totally free of its sensible moorings. When Joe Joyce crashed in that goal against Huddersfield in 1994, the place felt like it had been connected to mains electricity. When John Aldridge got sent off for Tranmere in 1997, the rancour and merriment were deafening. During those penalties against Aldershot in 2005, people in the rational, sceptical old Paddock very nearly lost their minds for all time.

Fans in the Paddock give the benefit of their thoughts to Accrington's John Coleman in 2016 (photo: Barbara Abbott)

The Paddock can be a sleeping beast, taking its time to stir and sometimes deciding not to bother. But a busy Paddock in full voice, whether targeting an opposition player, a poor referee or a questionable performance, is a surprisingly fearsome thing; a rumbling swell of antagonism. The Paddock turning on a home manager is inescapably cold. The Paddock critiquing and badgering people is what it exists for.

“Often they’re the older supporters, who’ve seen Carlisle a lot of years,” said Mick Wadsworth, 1995’s title-winning boss, when he thought of the fans who advised him from behind his shoulder. “Their approval or disapproval was quite marked. They would give you in no uncertain terms what they thought about certain situations. They were honest, and as a manager you have to deal with that.”

While football is ultimately decided at the two ends, there are still times that central Paddock berth comes into its own. After all, it is those supporters, surrounding the tunnel, that encircles Brunton Park’s winners and losers first and last.

It was in front of the Paddock, in 2001, that Richard Prokas went cringingly in on Patrick Vieira, a challenge for which Arsenal’s Nelson Vivas was quite rightly booked. It was the Paddock whose front wall we sat on as children, whose older denizens we feared, whose aromas of Oxo and cigarette smoke wafted around, tantalisingly.

The last game I watched, before starting this reporting job, was Carlisle against Barnet in 2005: a 3-1 defeat which induced the core Paddock emotions of fleeting hope being trounced by disappointment followed by a total, stubborn resolve to be back again the next time.

I don’t know if I could go back there now. If I’m ever not doing this gig, I might try the Warwick or the Pioneer. I’m probably happier with the Paddock locked in the memory; nostalgia for the airy late summer days when, standing there with my old man, it felt like bliss; for the wind and rain-lashed nights we suffered together; for moments when someone shouted it’s not good enough even when it was; for times when someone shouted it’s not good enough when it was worse...

What I do know, though, is that, as the gates open and humans stand on the Paddock once more, Brunton Park is healed. It is back, praise be, to its crabby, hopeful, loyal, cantankerous, head-shaking, traditional, impatient, generous, upright, wise, weird and wonderful old self.