Carlisle - the promised land

Saturday afternoon was a time to surrender yourself to the fates of grim-sounding English backwater towns, to inhale those parochial passions for an hour and walk away with a slightly better understanding of why it is so many unsung followers of soccer care so desperately about teams that play the game so badly.

Thus, when Gary Lineker wrapped up Football Focus, observing that "the only other issue is whether Swansea can get a point from Hull," you knew what the story was. At any other time of the year, the good people of Swansea would need to find themselves overrun by particularly nasty martians in order to justify even a fleeting consideration of their fate. But this was end-of-season stuff and Swansea was just one of many provincial communities gnawing on nails and begging their hapless teams not to duff it.

Carlisle, under the ownership of Michael Knighton (the man who once flirted with possession of Manchester United), was another town contemplating doom: anything other than a win against mighty Plymouth would see them drop back to conference status. Knighton was unequivocal about the consequences for him.

"If we lose on Saturday, I'll be the sacrificial lamb and my head will be on the stake outside Brunton Park," he told an understandably startled Gabby Yorath on ITV. There is obviously zero tolerance for demotion around Carlisle, but Knighton seemed to have reconciled himself to the notion of execution before dusk.

"Football will come around the corner like an express train and bring you right down to reality," he explained to Gabby, who was by now wondering if Knighton and his Carlisle friends were following the William Burroughs version of reality.

Sky's soccer team provided us with their usual dose of surreality, spiked with the traditional injection of hyper-enthusiasm. Geoff, our host, was particularly excited as the schedule was loaded with mathematical equations, with results deciding next season's rosters for a whole plethora of teams.

"You can't help but look at those stats, can you?" oozed Geoff. And you couldn't, sad and all as you felt for doing it.

Sky's Soccer Special is a ludicrous concept - the viewer watching jaded old pundits like Georgie Best and Rodney Marsh watching live matches on small screens and waiting for them to give often terrible accounts of on-going events. But on Saturday, the team -sometimes a sullen little bunch -were bristling with the kind of gravitas usually only found on Newsnight during elections. They made us feel that Scarborough's anguish, Carlisle's disappearance could have a very real effect on our lives. And so we were sucked in and charmed, hanging on to the every word of the likes of Steve Gooding and Bill Mantle, the John Pilgers of the soccer world, impassionately imparting the unfolding fates of these horrid sounding places. Hell, when Steve noted that "the drainage here in Scarborough is absolutely shocking," we found ourselves reaching for the Yellow Pages. And when Geoff interrupted to announce tersely that he "had word of a third Wigan goal," we uttered silent oaths at having missed the news of the first two. To hell with the glamour boys, this is what it was about.

Today, the hope is that Pat Kenny has a discussion on his radio show on whether or not football legends like Jimmy Glass are appreciated in their home town. Jimmy is the most prolific goal-scoring goalkeeper in the northern hemisphere and he plays, of course, for Carlisle.

At 4.40 on Saturday afternoon, Carlisle were heading for a 1-1 draw and extinction and they invested their very souls in a corner kick. Jimmy sallied hesitantly up the field and shuffled into the penalty area, pensive and disbelieving as a puppy who finds himself beside a pair of untended slippers. Carlisle needed a goal and Jimmy did the only thing possible, bogging the ball with a minimum of finesse into the Plymouth net, thereby giving Carlisle its finest sporting moment since, well, God knows when. Even as the 7,000 fans jumped around in a state of giddy lunacy, the people of Scarborough sat back and woefully considered what Jimmy's strike had done to their team - rendered it the 91st best in English football. Back to the Conference.

Back in studio, Rodney Marsh was busy waxing lyrical about the comic-strip match at Villa Park. It was difficult to decipher him, so full of gusto was he but it was apparent that he was trying to communicate a narrative full of drama (the BBC commentator would later describes Charlton's late goal as the "most dramatic of dramatic lifelines" which is, you'll agree, a lifeline of considerable note).

"No, no," cried Rodney watching the same goal. "It's taken a deflection off a toilet," he seemed to be telling us.

Even without seeing it, you felt it had to be the goal of the century. (As it transpired, the ball took a deflection of the Aston Villa defender Ian Taylor).

Meanwhile back in Carlisle, Michael Knighton was merrily assuring Bill Mantle that having kept his head, he was now going to spend the night getting off it. Geoff was almost weeping at the televisual beauty of it all and shrieked when Jimmy Glass's strike was at last beatified in a gorgeous little Sky Sport stat.

BBC 2's Correspondent examined the popularity of female sports commentators in Italy and wondered if such a peculiarity would wash with `Distraught of Scarborough' and `Ecstatic in Carisle'.

"A woman should only do it 'cos she's a John Motson with looks," opined David Mellor, conjuring up an image too bizarre for even Michael Knighton. A quick survey of provincial English males found that on the whole, they preferred the dulcet tones of Motty etc.

The Italians also go for female pundits, the most popular being a nun called Sister Paulo, a stern-looking relic swaddled in Lazio colours. To have her wedged between Martin O'Neill and Big Ron would be to create a team made in heaven. Or Carlisle - same place, really.