The Brakehouse End

The damp had already found the seams of Johmny’s coat by the time Brenda Kavanagh stepped forward to meet the new manager at the gates of Tannery Lane.

Behind her, the main stand showed faded paint and concrete worn smooth by generations of boots. A groundsman’s hammer rang somewhere beyond the empty Brakehouse End Terrace. Across the pitch, barriers sealed off the Popular Side, where weeds grew through the cracks and rust had worked into the condemned structure. Its connection to the Black Tuesday Incident needed no announcement. The stand remained there in plain view, holding a silence that the rest of the ground had learned to accommodate.

“So you’re the new gaffer,” Brenda said. “Johmny, isn’t it? Welcome to Ashfield, or what’s left of it.”

Father Michael O’Connell stood beside her with a gentle, worried expression. Three players had also come to look over the club’s latest appointment: David Okafor, Curtis Doyle and Stevie Carr. David and Curtis watched with the reserve of men waiting to see what would follow the talk. Stevie, the veteran among them, gave even less away.

Johmny looked past Brenda at the old ground. “I’m here to build a winning team.”

Her breath came out just short of a laugh. “This isn’t Old Trafford. We’re fighting for every point and every penny. If there’s a plan beyond wishing, we’ll hear it.”

Johmny asked where the work had to begin. Brenda indicated the offices and weathered stands with one economical movement. Last season had left the players low, the chairman was pressing for sales, and Redbourne Athletic were due at Tannery Lane for a match Ashfield could not afford to lose. The squad needed assessing and motivating. The training ground needed attention. Over all of it stood the Popular Side, a permanent reminder of what the club had lost.

There would be no changing the stand that morning. Johmny turned away from it.

“I’ll start at Millbank. I want to see the lads.”

A little of the challenge went out of Brenda’s face. “Good. Straight to it.”

The club minibus carried Johmny through rows of rain-dark terraces and past the stripped remains of old mills, diesel fumes mingling with the smell of damp kit. Millbank Training Ground had two worn pitches, a prefabricated gym and a low block containing the changing and treatment rooms. It was enough to work with, provided the work was good.

Terry Hoyle waited beside the main pitch, rubbing cold hands against his tracksuit bottoms. The assistant manager looked tired before the session had properly started, but the players were already warming up under his eye. Through the medical-block window, Dr. Eleanor Finch moved between the physio table and the equipment humming beside it.

“Welcome to the coal face, gaffer,” Terry said. “Most of them are out. What do you want?”

“Cone drills first. Let’s see how they move.”

Terry laid out the course and sent the squad through it. Johmny watched from close enough to hear studs cutting the wet turf. Kian Whitfield kept the ball close and changed direction without losing speed. Joel Mercer had the same natural ease, gliding between the cones as though the work demanded little of him, although his attention appeared to drift beyond the pitch. Tyler Brogan was less settled. A heavy touch forced Tyler to reach for the ball, then another drew an angry shake of the head.

“Good work, lads,” Johmny called. “Keep at it.”

Tyler’s shoulders straightened at once. Kian glanced over, then attacked the next run with greater purpose. It was only encouragement, but Johmny noted who needed it and who responded.

Once the squad had shown enough with the ball at their feet, Johmny had Terry clear the cones and set up crossing and finishing. The tempo rose as Kian delivered from wide positions and the forwards fought for space in the box. Stevie found it without fuss, slipping away from markers and putting two chances beyond Ryan Fenwick with the economy of long practice. Mercer steered one finish into the net with a flick, then drove the next wide.

Tyler scored from a clean connection, the ball finding the corner and releasing a quick, genuine smile. The next opportunity was simpler. Tension returned to Tyler’s shoulders before the strike, and the shot dragged wide. For a moment Tyler’s head dropped. Then the young striker forced back into position and waited for another cross.

Ryan kept coming for everything, throwing across boots and bodies to make brave saves even as other shots beat him. David watched from the touchline with quiet concentration.

By the end of the session, Johmny had seen ability enough. The more immediate question was how much of it would survive a mistake.

The answer began to emerge when Redbourne Athletic arrived for the opening match of the season.

Rain had softened the Tannery Lane pitch until passes slowed in the mud and every turn demanded extra effort. The Brakehouse End filled the ground with noise, but the sound did not settle Ashfield. The opening exchanges were cautious, each side testing the surface and the other’s nerve. Redbourne found a rhythm first.

In the twentieth minute, the visitors broke down the right. The cross came hard into the area, where Stuart Pickersgill reached it before Ashfield could recover and finished past Ryan. The away support burst into celebration. Around Johmny, red shirts slowed on the trudge back to halfway. A few players looked at the turf; others looked nowhere at all.

The same disappointment Johmny had seen at Millbank was trying to take hold of them.

At half-time, Terry moved among the benches while Dr. Finch completed her checks. David, among the substitutes, watched in silence. Kian sat staring down, Mercer’s expression had closed, and Sol Adeyemi drew breath in controlled pulls.

Johmny stepped into the middle of the room. “It’s one goal. You’ve given them room, so take it back. Get closer, move for each other and stay in the match. There’s still a result here.”

The players returned to the pitch with more intent, but not immediate reward. Ashfield forced openings without completing them. A ball skidded through the area untouched. Another promising move ended under a defender’s boot. With each failure, the Brakehouse End became sharper and more restless, urging the team forward while letting them know exactly what every hesitation cost.

The match had reached the seventy-second minute when Mercer collected possession in midfield and, for once, seemed entirely present. The first Redbourne midfielder came across to close the space. Joel shifted the ball beyond the challenge and accelerated into the gap, drawing a second opponent before slipping past that one as well. Adeyemi had already started the run.

Mercer threaded the pass between the centre-backs. It reached Sol in stride, leaving one touch to bring the ball under control and the next to drive it low beyond the goalkeeper.

The net snapped. For an instant Johmny saw Adeyemi alone, the release plain in Sol’s face, before teammates swallowed the goalscorer near the corner. Noise rolled down from the Brakehouse End and across the muddy pitch, relief carrying as much force as celebration.

Ashfield chased the winner after that. Tyler came on late, eager to provide it, while Redbourne continued to threaten at the other end. Neither side found the final touch. At full-time the board read Ashfield Rovers 1, Redbourne Athletic 1.

The dressing room held two contrary moods. They had recovered a point and still felt they had let two escape. Adeyemi sat exhausted and glowing from the equaliser. Kian stared at the floor. Tyler looked stricken not to have scored the winner.

Terry went around with quiet words and pats on shoulders. Johmny let the players sit with the result. One point from the opening match was a start, but the habit of disappointment had not been shifted by one equaliser.

For the next week, Millbank was given over to movement without the ball and finishing. At Netherton County, that work showed in Ashfield’s higher press. Kian opened the scoring in the twenty-seventh minute, slipping beyond a marker outside the area and curling the ball into the top corner. The lead lasted ten minutes. A defensive lapse gave Shaun Sedgwick space inside the box, and Netherton’s equaliser sent the teams in level.

Johmny kept Ashfield to the same work after the interval. In the fifty-seventh minute, a move down the left produced a precise cross, and Stevie arrived to guide a header into the net. The veteran’s timing restored the lead and Ashfield protected it to the whistle, leaving Netherton with a 2-1 victory and four points from the first two matches.

The result had taken something out of the players as well as giving them something. Back at Millbank, Johmny found Dr. Finch cleaning the treatment table.

“Stevie’s knees are sore,” she said. “Nothing new there and no worse than usual. Tyler took a knock to the ankle. Rest and ice for a day or two. Joel’s reporting a tight hamstring.”

“Long-term?”

“No major concerns. They need managing, that’s all. Garsdale Wanderers are next.”

Garsdale came to Tannery Lane and made every yard difficult. For most of the first half, neither side found room to play cleanly. Then Mercer received the ball twenty yards out in the twenty-third minute, shifted it onto the favoured foot and struck low through the mass of players ahead. The shot travelled between legs and beyond the goalkeeper’s sight before finding the bottom corner.

Mercer marked the goal with a single fist pump. Johmny was less interested in the celebration than the way Ashfield responded. The players kept their shape and carried the lead to half-time without retreating into the uncertainty that had followed Redbourne’s goal.

“Stay organised,” Johmny told them during the interval. “Don’t give Garsdale anything.”

Five minutes after the restart, an Ashfield player gave them far too much.

The challenge came late and rash, born of a moment’s frustration. The referee reached for the red card at once. Anger broke from the stands, but there was no changing the decision. The dismissed player walked off, leaving Ashfield with ten men and forty minutes still to play.

Johmny pulled the remaining players into a tighter shape while Garsdale pushed forward. The effect was immediate. Ashfield’s room vanished. Every clearance came back through another red shirt, every lost second ball exposed a fresh angle towards goal. Mercer’s strike now looked less like a lead than a line the whole side had to defend.

Garsdale sent crosses into the box and packed players around the penalty spot. Ashfield met the first deliveries with headers, then chased the loose balls towards the touchlines. The work became repetitive and punishing. A defender would step out, block, recover, then turn to find another runner arriving. When Ashfield managed to clear beyond halfway, there was scarcely anyone left to hold the ball up.

The pressure reached Ryan Fenwick in waves. One shot came through a cluster of legs, forcing the goalkeeper down late to turn it aside. From the resulting attack, Garsdale worked the ball back across the area and struck towards the opposite corner. Ryan shifted weight, threw across the goal and got enough behind the effort to keep it out.

Johmny watched the players’ legs begin to stiffen. The pitch had grown heavier beneath them, mud taking at their boots each time they tried to break from the box. Instructions had to be short enough to carry through the noise.

“Hold the line. Stay with the runner.”

Ashfield held it, then dropped when Garsdale found space wide. Another cross came over. The first header only sent it upward, allowing the ball to hang above the six-yard box while players gathered beneath it. Ryan came through the bodies and claimed it, taking contact before landing with the ball against the chest.

The goalkeeper stayed down long enough to make the Brakehouse End anxious, then rose and drove the team outward with one arm. Johmny could see exhaustion in every slow step, but also the absence of the old collapse. Nobody looked away from the next job. When one player was beaten, another closed the opening. When a clearance fell short, someone reached the second ball.

The match narrowed to the penalty area, the referee and the clock. Garsdale forced another sight of goal and Ryan saved again. Ashfield blocked the follow-up and hacked it clear. Johmny checked the time, then looked back to the pitch before the numbers could offer false comfort.

At last the whistle cut through the crowd.

For a moment, the ten Ashfield players seemed too spent to react. Then bodies folded forward, hands went to knees, and the Brakehouse End poured its relief onto the pitch. Mercer’s goal had survived. Ashfield had won 1-0 and moved to seven points from three matches, though the red card would affect the following week.

Inside, the dressing room smelt of wet kit, sweat and liniment. Players sat wherever they found room, some still drawing breath hard, others staring down at mud drying on their socks. Terry leaned beside the door with fatigue cut into the face.

Johmny waited until the room quietened.

“Ten men for forty minutes. Every block, every tackle, every header. You did it together.”

Kian looked up with the beginning of a smile. Mercer answered with a small nod.

“Enjoy it,” Johmny said. “You earned this one.”

Johmny left Terry with the players and walked into town. The high street still had Saturday traffic on it, with chip fat drifting from a takeaway and talk spilling through the door of the Boilermakers Arms. An off-licence window was crowded with printed offers. Johmny bought crates of lager there and carried them back to Tannery Lane.

The cheer on entering the dressing room was the loudest response Johmny had received from the squad. Terry helped with the bottles, and the strain of the final forty minutes eased into tired laughter.

That confidence travelled with them to Wadebridge, where the next match opened at a pace neither side could sustain. Mercer put Ashfield ahead in the second minute after beating a defender at the edge of the box and placing a shot into the corner. In the seventh, a defensive mistake released Lee Holloway to equalise for Wadebridge. Before the home support had finished celebrating, Curtis Doyle charged down the left, cut inside and smashed Ashfield back in front in the eighth minute.

The game settled only after the damage had been done. In the thirty-third minute, Adeyemi collected a loose ball twenty yards out and drove a shot past the goalkeeper at the near post. Ashfield went into half-time leading 3-1.

Johmny warned the players to control the match, but Wadebridge returned with purpose. Lee Tanner met a corner in the sixty-second minute and headed the score back to 3-2. The home ground came alive around the narrowing margin.

Tyler Brogan came on with the ankle knock behind him and the pressure of earlier chances still visible in the set of the young striker’s shoulders. In the seventy-fifth minute, Ashfield found the pass through Wadebridge’s line. Tyler ran beyond the marker and reached the ball with the goalkeeper advancing.

There was no snatched swing this time. Tyler guided the finish beneath the goalkeeper and watched it cross the line.

The goal restored Ashfield’s two-goal cushion. More than that, Johmny saw what it did to Tyler. The young striker turned back towards the team with the uncertainty gone from the face.

Ashfield closed out a 4-2 victory. Mercer and Adeyemi shared a rare wide grin in the dressing room, while Tyler seemed to stand taller among the celebrations. Terry clapped Johmny on the shoulder, weariness giving way to an open smile.

Four matches had brought ten points. Johmny had not repaired the Popular Side, resolved the pressure to sell players or lifted the history from Tannery Lane. The red card still carried a cost into the coming week. For now, though, Ashfield were learning how to survive the moment after something went wrong.