“It’s the sort of thing you couldn’t script,” says Howard Falshaw, looking back with a faint air of disbelief even now. Carlisle United’s revival under Paul Simpson has been captured for all time in a book by Howard, a former teacher and lifelong Blues supporter.
Yet the “narrative” of United’s decline and rise, from 2021 to 2023, was not what prompted Howard to write the story in the first place. He was already doing it, through regular blog posts, channeling his passion in retirement now he had the freedom to watch Carlisle almost as often as he liked.
Howard’s written musings gave rise to the idea for a book, but he, like the rest of us, did not know the ending. When it came, on that phenomenal day at Wembley, the title of his two-season, game-by-game diary presented itself.
‘From Despair to Delirium’ sums it up pretty nicely – and Howard’s book does justice to the ride. Another d – disbelief – still takes hold as you read his personal, passionate entries on United’s road into the gutter and their flight towards the stars.
Howard, 65, who lives in Wakefield, has been watching United since 1967, and has a connection with one of their most legendary players, more of which soon. His written connection to the Blues is more recent and the book is the direct result.
“The instinct for it probably came from [the Covid-19] lockdown,” he says. “On Facebook someone nominated me to name my favourite albums, and you were just meant to post the covers, but I did a little spiel explaining why I chose them.
“I then did other top tens – music, arts, sport. I thought my other great passion is Carlisle United, so why not start writing about that? I was an English teacher, I’ve taught children to write for over 40 years, but I’ve never done that much writing myself. But by doing these top tens I think I’d started to find some sort of voice, and thought I could apply that to football.”
The last two years meant a lot to Howard because of how often he was now able to travel to watch United with his son, Adam. Midway through the journey he felt his writing could translate to book form and, after some help from another supporter-turned-author, Tim Pocock, the finished product took shape.
It starts with some reflections on the ingrained loyalty in supporting a team like Carlisle, and then goes on a ride from the beginning of the 2021/22 season. Some ride...
Howard’s entries on each game are reproduced as he wrote them at the time, not varnished with hindsight. “I wanted it to be a very much in-the-moment account.” As such, his raw commentary on the Blues, and how he arranged life around them, will be familiar to anyone who invests a great deal of their thoughts and existence into this maddening football club.
The fall, first, from Chris Beech to Keith Millen and that nadir against Swindon Town in February 2022, often sees Howard withering. Carlisle looked set to exit the Football League in ignominy. Yet their despair kept his pen flowing.
“In some ways that actually gave me more material, more to write about,” he says. “The entry on the Swindon game, when Harry McKirdy scored one and assisted the other two…that was a low point. But the devil gets all the best tunes, as they say – sometimes writing about the misery can be…I won’t say more enjoyable, but more stimulating than writing about the good times.”
Howard, along the way, comments sharply on what he sees. The involvement of David Holdsworth as director of football is not, for instance, regarded in complimentary fashion.
Later, he finds that the club's invitation for Michael Knighton to sit in the directors’ box for an FA Cup game against Tranmere Rovers tests his very loyalty to United. Yet some other criticisms are of the moment and encapsulate how football can change, and how swiftly United did alter after Millen and Holdsworth left and Paul Simpson arrived.
One passage, for instance, sees Howard say of the new striker signing Tobi Sho-Silva: “To describe him as statuesque would be an insult to sculptors.” Yet a few pages on and Sho-Silva is the hero for goals against Rochdale, Northampton Town and Tranmere Rovers.
He and others were emblems for the transformation. “In that run of 15 games towards the end of that season, it was a case of going to game after game and not quite believing what we were seeing – the last-minute winner at Oldham, the last-minute winner at home to Northampton, the last-minute equaliser at Tranmere…
“If you look back on it, credit to Keith Millen for the recruitment he did in the January window. He didn’t seem to get much out of the players he brought in, but Simpson certainly did.
“After that Swindon game, I think for Andrew Jenkins to have the courage to make a bold stroke like that [appointing Simpson] was crucial. It could have blown up in his and Simmo’s face, but thank God it didn’t.”
After survival was achieved, United’s turnaround hit unforgettable momentum in 2022/23, when Simpson led Carlisle on a promotion challenge in front of a reignited fanbase. All this is so recent to remain highly familiar but it is still appropriate to see it captured for the record, with the emotion all laid out on the page.
“While it’s almost easier to write about the bad times, it’s so enjoyable to write about the good times – and there were so many last season, like Hartlepool away, Salford away, Barrow at home, plenty of others,” Howard says.
“The great thing, and this helped with the book, is there was a real narrative to last season: the gradual upward curve, plateauing in the latter part but doing well enough to make the play-offs, and the rest is history as they say.
“When I knew I was getting it published, as the season went on, I thought it would be amazing if we get the perfect ending – then that last penalty went in at Wembley, and it happened.”
Howard says he was more invested in the last two seasons, and the team, than most others he has watched, “because we were able to get to most of the matches. It [2021 to 2023] might not have the prestige of the First Division season [in 1974/75] or the uniqueness of the Jimmy Glass game [in 1999], but we’d been watching those players week-in, week-out.”
Howard is able to compare eras having absorbed many of them. He was at Brunton Park on the day in 1974 when Chris Balderstone’s penalty against Tottenham Hotspur took Carlisle, improbably, to the top of the old First Division after three games.
“That was an amazing day,” he says. “We had the promotion itself, which Bill Shankly described as the greatest achievement in the history of football, and then three games in, to open the Sunday papers and see Carlisle United top of the table, was the stuff of which dreams are made.
“I don’t so much remember the ebb and flow of the Spurs game, but I do remember the penalty incident and the fact it had to be taken twice because Pat Jennings moved. There was a certain degree of disbelief afterwards – it wasn’t just, ‘Bloody hell, we’ve made it to the First Division’, it was, ‘Bloody hell, we’re top of the First Division!’ Albeit for a few days, we were the best team in the country.
“Obviously the team struggled as the season went on but they never lost the crowd. I suppose people were just enjoying their season in the sun, seeing all the top teams come to Brunton Park. Then there was that burst near the end of the season where we beat Everton and Burnley at Brunton Park; cracking wins both of them. By that stage it was a case of ‘what-if’ – they more or less knew they were down, the shackles were off and they played some cracking football.”
It was especially appropriate for Howard that Balderstone took United to the summit. One of the author’s prized possessions is a genuine, match-worn Blues shirt from the great and multi-talented sportsman who graced Brunton Park for a decade.
It was presented, Howard says, to his father by Balderstone in the 1970s. “My late dad knew Chris reasonably well, dating back to his testimonial benefit year – my dad sold a lot of the souvenir brochures he produced, and he gave him the shirt as a thank-you,” he says.
“They kept in touch intermittently since, to the point when Balderstone was a [cricket] umpire and he let my dad know which fixtures he was doing each season, and if my dad could get to Headingley or Chester-Le-Street he’d leave a couple of tickets and they’d have a drink after the game.
“I met him on a handful of occasions myself as well. When I was a student I used to work at Tebay Services on the M6, and he came through one Sunday night. I asked my supervisor if I could take my break, and went and sat with him.
“He’d been playing for Leicestershire in a Sunday League match. I asked how it had gone, and he said, ‘Oh, alright – we won’. Only when I opened the paper the next day did I learn he’d hit a six off the last ball of the game to beat Yorkshire. He never mentioned it.”
Howard says his next book will incorporate a list of top tens on Carlisle United. “In terms of club legends and icons, there’d be nowhere to start other than with Chris Balderstone as far as I’m concerned," he adds. "He was an absolute gentleman and incredibly modest as well. When I think of Bobby Charlton’s funeral recently…him and Balderstone stuck me as two of a kind. They went through their entire careers with scarcely a booking. The spirit in which they played the game was a long way from the modern game.”
The modern game, at least, provided United and Howard with a tale well worth telling. ‘From Despair to Delirium’ ends with Wembley, the play-off final, Omari Patrick’s goal, Taylor Charters’ penalty and the conclusion that a “flight of fancy” had become a “glorious reality”.
It was not, of course, an ending after all, since the challenges of League One life now absorb Carlisle and their followers – likewise the Piatak takeover. Howard, after writing up their rollercoaster ride, is hopeful about the next revolutions.
“With Simmo having corrected things on the pitch, it looks increasingly likely things will be corrected off the pitch now,” he says.
“It’s almost more disbelief…we get an unexpected promotion, probably ahead of schedule, and not only that, the problems that have gone on for years if not decades off the pitch look like getting resolved in a way fans probably wouldn’t have imagined.
“That keeps my spirits up even when results are not too good.”
‘From Despair to Delirium’ is published by Grosvenor House Publishing Limited. Priced £12.99, it is available in the Blues Store at Brunton Park, at Bookcase in Carlisle and on Amazon, where a Kindle version is also available at £5.99.
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