‘HOPELESS DEVOTION, UNCONDITIONAL LOVE’ – PART TWO - THE SUPPORTER
Last time, I covered the heroics of the seventy-something referee, John, Kyte. This time, it’s an unusual football supporter.
Up on the Wirral, hopeless devotion takes a different to work-for-nothing volunteers and long-serving referees. Lasse Larsen shows his love in the distances he’s prepared to travel, the air miles he’s willing to collect. The object of his affections is a curious one for a young Norwegian. He’s usually spotted in these parts draped in his national flag with a capital letter occupying each red quarter. The letters signify his unlikely footballing allegiance. TRFC.
If he’s not Tranmere Rovers’ most faraway fan – there are presumably exiled Wirralites who’ve retreated to sunsplashed outposts in California or on Australia’s Gold Coast where they wear their vintage shirts with pride and to the bemusement of the locals – Larsen is surely the most frequently flying fan. A social worker from Bergen in his mid-thirties, he’s become something of a cult figure at Prenton Park. He’s currently in the country for his latest match of the season, yesterday’s 1-1 away draw to Conference strugglers, Halifax, holding court in the lobby of the Birkenhead Premier Inn, explaining the source of his devotion.
His father and grandfather were big fans of English football when it was first televised in Norway in the 1960s. Larsen Jr followed suit, with one player grabbing his attention and imagination. ‘It was John Aldridge all day long,’ he gushes. ‘he scored and he scored and he scored.’
When Aldridge pitched up at Prenton Park in 1991, the eleven-year-old Larsen began looking out for the results of a club he had been largely unaware of until that point. When the striker became player-manager in 1996, Larsen firmly nailed his colours to the Tranmere mast. His first experience of Rovers in the flesh was a scoreless FA Cup tie at Southampton in 2001.
‘I knew I needed to go over and try a game. If his enthusiasm hadn’t been dented at the Dell, the dramatic replay at Prenton Park – where Tranmere emerged 4-3 winners, having been 3-0 down – couldn’t fail to cement long-lasting loyalty. ‘That might have had something to do with it, yes!’
His presence on Merseyside often leads to people assuming he’s a Liverpool or Everton fan. ‘They think it’s very strange and surprising that someone from Norway has heard of Tranmere and knows its history. It’s not like going to a Premier League match where there’ll be Scandinavians and people from the Far East. But there’s just one tem for me.’
Why does a fifth-tier club I England have more appeal than a top-flight Norwegian team? ‘The culture of Norwegian football is not the same,’ he explains, a tinge of disappointment in his voice. ‘You don’t get the same experience. You go to watch the game and then you go home. Here, you go to the pub with your mates before the game and then again afterwards. There’s something about the culture here, about pubs, good beer and friendly people. Plus, most of the football in Norway is played on Sunday and people have to go back to work the next day, so away games are tricky. It’s my second home here. I’m so welcome and I’ve got so may friends. Everyone knows me. My wife and I got engaged in Liverpool in 2013. We’ve been going to Prenton Park together for the last ten years. She doesn’t enjoy away games so much, but she can chat with lots of people she knows at Prenton Park. It’s the shopping and restaurants in Liverpool that she likes most.’
For this trip, he was supposed to travel over with her and their seven-month-old daughter, but they developed a flu sickness bug. His father took the plane seat instead, before falling ill with the virus himself. Rather than travel across to West Yorkshire to take in the Halifax game, Larsen Jr has spent the weekend marooned upstairs here in the Premier Inn, feverishly staring at the walls of room 116.
It’s not the only bug his father has caught. Thanks to his son’s evangelism, he too has become a disciple of lower-league English football. ‘He’s a big Man Utd fan, but he doesn’t watch them. He doesn’t like the Premier League. Rather than paying £60 or £70 at Old Trafford, he likes to go to Prenton Park and get an over-sixty-fives ticket.’
With his changed family circumstances, Larsen is supposed to be rationing his visits. He’s finding it tricky though, especially as Tranmere’s newly acquired non league status offers new grounds to visit. ‘I try to see six games every season, so my wife is not very happy that I’ve been over here four times before Christmas. I know that you can’t put your family aside to go to watch football, even if you really, really love it. I can’t tell her that every time we go on holiday, it’s to see another Tranmere match. That’s not fair.’
Not that his passion will lessen. ‘Even back in Norway on a Saturday, I’m following the score and live texts and the radio. It’s a big part of my life. It drags you through the working week.’ It’s an obsession that hasn’t diminished with Tranmere’s slide into non league. ‘If they’re struggling, you need to support them even more. [Asst Editor – I think my wife may have heard me say that once or twice in relation to Grays Athletic FC over our 47 years of marriage!] You have to hope for better times. When I started coming over here in 2001, we were in the Championship. We’ve been relegated three times since then. I’ve never seen us promoted. I’ve never seen a play-off match. These are things that will hopefully turn up one day to make the experience even better.’
Family commitments aside, There’s the financial aspect, too. ‘Of course, it costs money. I’m just a normal social worker in Bergen. The flights can be expensive, the hotels can be expensive. Then there are trains and beer and food and tickets for the games. With everything, this trip has cost me about £500 or £600.’ Add to this that Larsen has, across the years, made more than seventy trips over to watch his heroes and it becomes a significant investment in following the fortunes of a fitful, often failing team.
Yesterday’s 1-1 draw against one of the division’s bottom feeders, a side reduced to ten man at that, seems scant reward for the commitment, measured in time and money that Larsen is happy to give over. ‘We’re struggling against teams that are happy to get a point. They counter-attack and we can’t kill games off. We prefer to play better teams like Forest Green and Cheltenham – teams that want to win themselves. I haven’t been to any of those games like Braintree or Boreham Wood, but my friends tell me we look so clueless. A play-off place – fourth or fifth – is in our own hands if we can get a good run going. I think the team is more than capable of going up.’
Larsen is both dreamer and realist and has already started to plan which games he’ll be flying over for if the club remain in the Conference next season. ‘I’d really like to go to Grimsby. That’s a ground I’d really like to go to.’ He’s also earmarked a few potential games in the South East. Flights from Bergen are cheaper, plus the area boasts more family-friendly places to visit and things to do. The growing brood have to be factored in now, after all.
Not that he’ll be abandoning his beloved Prenton Park. ‘I’ve got a plan,’ he concludes conspiratorially before heading upstairs to check on his poorly dad. ‘If, when my daughter’s older, she says she doesn’t want to go to the football, I’ll tell her I’ll take her I’ll take her to the Disney store in Liverpool first. She’ll be happy then. Maybe…’
Larsen might have a plan, but the Tranmere faithful are wondering whether manager, Gary Brabin does. The draw against Halifax continues a run of just two wins in eleven league games, leaving them twelfth in the table. It’s hard to see how this form will haul them up into the play-off places. [Asst Editor – we know just how that feels here at Grays Ath!].
It’s rare that a football club stays in one gear, the highest gear throughout the season. The imperious Liverpool side during the closing years of the 1980s managed it, so too Arsenal’s defeat-free Invincibles during 2003-04. For mere mortals, there’s a natural ebb and flow to a nine-month campaign. After a bright start, there might be a lull around the time the clocks go back, before a New Year revival restores the faith and reboots the dreams. There will be the odd peak and trough, but seasons tend to trace a gently undulating parabola. Tranmere’s season, though, is less of an arc and much more of a jagged, stuttering line. The smooth tarmac of a comfortable win one weekend, swiftly followed by a sharp detour onto a bumpy verge the next. Then smooth tarmac again. Repeat to fade.
Brabin shrugs his way through the post-match press conference, reaching for the comfort blanket offered by concentrating on the positives. Tranmere certainly played a tighter game than they have done of late; they also hit the woodwork more than once, while Halifax scored with their solitary strike on target. These positives are fine, but dropped points are still dropped points. The manner of the performance is what’s clung onto by Brabin, the shield between him and the press pack, the sharks who might just be able to detect the scent of blood in the water.
Shrugs alone can’t fix the widening gap between Tranmere and those above them, the teams that can’t stop winning. For those unable to develop that habit, the short days and long nights of December test the resolve and devotion of fans, players and managers alike. And, most markedly, of chairmen with itchy trigger fingers.
EPILOGUE
The Birkenhead Premier Inn didn’t have the pleasure of Lasse Larsen’s business again in that 2015-16 season. After the Halifax trip, he didn’t make it to another Tranmere match. However, his optimism levels are high for the next campaign, fuelled by a couple of sharp signings by Gary Brabin shortly after the season finished. While his desire to visit Grimsby’s Blundell Park has had to be put on hold, with the Mariners returning to the Football League, Larsen has new destinations in his sights, including trips to just-relegated York City and Dagenham & Redbridge.
UPDATE BY THE WANDERER
Tranmere did improve from their disappointing twelfth position at Christmas 2015, but finished an agonising two points short of the play-offs, with Grimsby claiming that coveted second spot in the Football League, with their 3-1 play-off victory against Forest Green Rovers.
For 2016-17, they finished second in the table, but not before Gary Brabin was sacked in September, when they were in fifth position, to be replaced for nineteen days by interim boss, Paul Carden. Micky Mellon then became manager on 7 October, after he left League One, Shrewsbury Town, by “mutual consent”. The Scotsman made 173 appearances for Tranmere in two spells, between 1997 and 2004. He led Tranmere to the play-offs, where they beat Aldershot over two legs, but they lost to the 2016 beaten finalists, Forest Green Rovers.
In the current campaign, they are well-placed for another play-off spot in a very tight division. At the end of February, they were in third place, with only eight points covering the top six.

The Wanderer