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“Some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.”
Welcome to one of the most emotionally charged seasons of all. The one that has finally given football a chastening influx of perspective and dispelled Bill Shankley’s famous, albeit tongue-in cheek adage.
Life and death. Two juxtaposing words which are yet so closely intertwined. At Shrewsbury Town football club, they have discovered the precious value of both.
The first seven seconds of their match against Swindon was a microcosm of everything Shrewsbury have become this season. Before the referee could even take the whistle out of his mouth to signal the game’s inception, he was already calling for two physio’s to make their way onto the pitch.
Ro-Shaun Williams and Ethan Ebanks-Landell, Shrewsbury’s centre-backs, had clashed heads after contesting for the first pass into their territory. Both fell to the floor, legs akimbo and laid there, disconcerted at what had just happened.
After six minutes of treatment, the two defenders were able to continue. Both suffered ostensible injuries, with blood trickling down their brow and required a black dressing which masked around the forehead. While the treatment was cautionary and rightly prolonged, the pair’s injuries were relatively easy to diagnose and thus, fix.
Williams and Ebanks-Landell played on and were unperturbed for rest of the game. But the same cannot be said for their manager. His setback didn’t come with a step-by-step guide on how to solve it, nor an instant prognosis that could be addressed with a standalone dressing. Steve Cotterill’s troubles are far more acute, laced with more fret and complexities to overcome.
“Everyone knows how bad the virus is and he definitely had a bad case of it,” said assistant coach, Aaron Wilbraham. “It’s just been a case of a couple of little setbacks.”
Cotterill remains in a Bristol hospital, battling unpredictable complications caused by the Coronavirus. He’s now been there for three weeks and was transferred to the intensive care unit for some of it. Recovery has been slow and erratic, with the virus’ volatility making it difficult to forecast a smooth recuperation.
On Saturday, Shrewsbury went away to Swindon and won 1-0 to claim their first points on the road in 2021. It was a crucial result in their season. And despite all of the significance that would usually encompass a match of such importance, what some figures at the club have gone through in recent months has made any result from a game of football rather inconsequential.
Football pales into insignificance when your manager has spent nearly a month fighting for his life and your captain was only able to hold his baby boy for the first and last time.
When it comes Shrewsbury Town, they are a club that present very little in the way of surprises. Given the bombastic nature of other clubs in transit around the football league, it shouldn’t be necessarily viewed as a bad thing. They usually appear to hover the lower echelons of League One, steadfast in their approach and maintaining a certain level.
They are resolute enough to stave the drop but not quite robust enough to withstand the incremental pressures of reaching a play-off place. At the time of writing, they are ensconced in the lower mid-rift of the table, the 17th best team out of the division’s 24. And in all honesty, that position sounds about right.
But in spite of league standings, this season has seemed anything but right and reasonable for this club. This has been a campaign like no other, fraught with pain and aberrational tragedy. If there was ever a departure from the norm, this would be it.
On Friday, Shrewsbury released the comforting news that Cotterill was on the mend, having had his life hanging by a precarious thread just weeks ago. The manager was deemed strong enough to lead his team 24 hours later, though remotely, from his bedside phone in hospital. The 56-year-old would communicate with his touchline assistant Aaron Wilbraham to influence any tactical changes or instructions to players. The first sight of a phone being in operation came in the 39th minute, when Wilbraham pulled his phone from out of his tracksuit pockets and proceeded to furiously tap.
It was six minutes before half time and Shrewsbury were 1-0 up having been good value for the lead. A fine half-volley from Harry Chapman would go on to prove the eventual decider. Swindon, meanwhile, appeared keener to delve through the thesaurus of colourful language as a means of communication with one another.
With Swindon resorting to battering ram tactics to somehow scramble a goal, Steve Cotterill’s number popped up back again on the iPhone, calling with the immediacy of a jilted lover. He ordered Wilbraham to shuffle the team’s cards in order, switching to a diamond structure in midfield. This would lead to a suffocation in the central areas of the pitch, making an eyesore of a game even more of a stodge.
Wilbraham had his hand to his ear again at full time, with Cotterill congratulating the moonlighting boss for his second victory in his fifth game as caretaker. The tones coming out of Bristol and through the end of the phone were more vibrant and hearty in their delivery, and not just because of the win.
Cotterill had given an emotional rallying call via phone to his players last Saturday after their peerless victory over Peterborough and did the same this time around.
“He’s desperate to get out of hospital,” admitted Wilbraham, when asked about the current condition of Cotterill. “I’m sure it won’t be too long before he returns now and he’ll be looking forward to that.
“I don’t think it’ll be this week, but hopefully some time in the near future. But his lungs are getting stronger and everything is picking up now, I can tell from speaking to him his voice is stronger.”
As we all know by now, hurdles caused by the Coronavirus is a sign symptomatic of the times. The sight of 67 people scattered around the 15,728 capacity County Ground bestowed a backdrop symbolic of the visitors turbulent and tumultuous troubles. The fact that there were more paramedics than supporters, tells you everything you need to know.
A fan-less stadium already paves it’s way for an eerie atmosphere at the best of times. But when you factor in the acrimonious strife Shrewsbury have endured, the silent backdrop of a ground, interspersed by the sounds of sprayed sanitiser, only accentuates the melancholy atmosphere.
This writer won’t attempt to deceive you and dress up the overall quality of the match between Shrewsbury and Swindon Town. As they say and excuse the rather coarse phrase, you cannot polish a turd.
In truth, it was a slog of a game in which Shrewsbury were forced to remain dogmatic in their approach throughout, with the surface at the County Ground having more divots than a field full of molehills. It’s not overly outlandish either to opine that there was mud more than blades of grass.
Shrewsbury’s captain embodied the overall resistance. Hurrying around the middle of the park, barking at others to follow suit, Oliver Norburn was the human sound system that refused to have their volume levels dimmed. The central midfielder was neat and tidy on the ball, but even more purposeful without it, displaying the dogged and unflagging determination a game like the one on Saturday necessitated.
Norburn would made slide tackle-come-blocks just to stop a deep cross and from time to time, beckon his poor-old teammate Sean Goss over for an earful. It ranged from “Gossy, press!” to summoning his midfield partner over just to tell him what he thought of his movement from a throw-in.
For Prost International’s money, Ollie Norburn was the County Ground’s consensus man of the match. While it may be of some consolation to him, it ultimately refuses to dissipate the tempestuous moments of grief that continue to surely encompass him.
Just last September, he and his fiancé Lucy welcomed their second child and first son into the world, Louie. On that same day in September, it was the first and last time they met Louie. It was the only day the four got together.
Norburn would get to cradle his son, welcome him into the world and then have to say goodbye, in the most treacherous, painful ways known to man. Louie had suffered severe brain and kidney problems and wasn’t able to make it.
Grief tends to come into immeasurable and uncontrollable ways, where bouts of intense sorrow can hit a person at any time and at any period. From that September day onwards, Norburn is likely to never be able to get over the devastation, but has understood he would have to learn to cope with it.
As ever, Norburn’s left arm donned the captain’s armband. But his right wrist, displayed something far more profound and of greater significance. Five months on, Norburn now has a tattoo inked with Louie’s name, and a cherub and angel wings fastened alongside.
“That’s my way of having him with me,” said Norburn, speaking to the Guardian in November.”That’s what I can kiss when I’ve scored because he’s always going to be there with me. I think about him all the time and the aim is just to do him proud.”
It was all smiles as Shrewsbury strolled back down the tunnel following their win in Swindon. It offered a fleeting moment of happiness, a game and a captain’s performance fitting of all three points. It’s unlikely Shrewsbury will go up or down this season, but forecasting where they end up come the end of May doesn’t really matter.
This season has been rife with tragedy and despair at the club, where one person lost their life and another came very close to. Shankley’s description of football is witty and unforgettable, but should always be taken in jest.
Shrewsbury’s off-field tribulations are indicative of that. Their situation should proffer an incessant reminder that football is all about perspective. And in truth, how ever good the 1-0 victory felt at the weekend, that didn’t really matter, either.
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