Anno Gersjes has put on his Sunday clothes especially for the occasion. Ironed trousers, suit jacket with a checkered pattern and a matching light blue tie. On his lapel, half hidden under the thick coat that protects him from the rain that beats down the roof of the stands, a gold-coloured pin glitters with the logo of the football club whose football club he is finally going to visit again today, his beloved SC Cambuur.
The former chairman has been a member of the first hour (1964) and can also call himself an honorary member of the Eredivisie club from Leeuwarden for thirty years. However, he has not been with the club for a year and a half. The well-known story: Covid-19.
While he devoted himself to other hobbies and spent his free time, among other things, building a kit for a Frisian boat, the time crept by without the former aircraft technician being able to go to play football. In the meantime there was a public welcome, but much less and with too many restrictions for an over-90s like him. He could use his energy better than in testing for entry, no matter how much he longed for his seat in the stands. The excitement before a match. Chats with acquaintances. The club song that reverberates through the speakers and makes all Leeuwarden residents sing along. „…and we have a woanskip and ut leid an de Singel, and we have an Arkje, it’s our ideal.” Gersjes missed it all greatly.
But now he can again. His son picked him up and after they put the walker in the trunk, they set off. Towards the four burning light poles in Oud-Oost, four steel colossuses that rise above the surrounding working-class neighbourhood. They are still there, as is the stadium. There have been plans and drawings for the new stadium for years, but discussions have been going on for so long that the chance that former chairman Gersjes will ever set foot in the dream home of the current generation of successors on the board is decreasing.
At the entrance, employees of the club immediately take care of him. A hostess takes over from his son and leads him to a seat at the boardroom table on the second floor, among the sponsors, invited guests and local dignitaries. Fifteen minutes before kick-off, he is then led back to his walker to find his permanent place in the stands. He always sat on the terrace of honour, in a chair high in the stands with the best view, but those places are only accessible by stairs. “I can’t do that anymore. I then told the club that they could sell my spot. Cambuur earns something from it again.”
Outdoor platform
He is led via the elevator to the middle entrance on the main stand. There they have set up a chair for him on the outdoor platform, his permanent place during home games. Not much later there is a crowd of acquaintances who want to shake his hand. “We are like a family here,” says the hostess who accompanied him.
A family. That is also how trainer Henk de Jong looks at his club. Because, he believes, a football match should be an experience for everyone in the stadium. For him, for his players, but certainly for the more than ten thousand people who buy a ticket to watch his team attack. From the rough boys in the North Stand to the sponsors in the Main Stand, who have in common that they curse the referee just as hard when Cambuur is apparently wronged. De Jong thinks it is wonderful, that Leeuwarden temperament.
“Henk is a people person,” says Gersjes. He raises his thumb to make it clear how much respect he has for the man who brought Cambuur back into the Eredivisie in 2021. His offensive playing style, full of spirit, is appreciated. That Cambuur ran into a monster defeat at Ajax with that playing style? “Ah,” says a graying season ticket holder. “Better to lose 9-0 once than 1-0 nine times.”
Photo Ed van de Pol/ANP
This afternoon, against AZ, the death of one of Cambuur’s founders, Jan Prange, will be honored with a minute of applause. “Jan didn’t miss a game”, Gersjes recalls. It is also confrontational. Another ninety-year-old like himself who will leave the club. Would they clap that hard at him too?
Cambuur is now 2-0 behind when Gersjes leaves his place just before the break. Exactly in the fortieth minute, as he last did a year and a half ago. He uses those five minutes to avoid the crowds as he shuffles to the boardroom table. He is a man of routines, for whom a glass of port is immediately put down when he has parked his walker in the corner next to the bar.
Valuation
“Look there I am,” he says, pointing his wrinkled fingers at the wall behind him, which is covered with black-and-white-era action shots and portraits of famous club members. In the photo he is flanked by a dozen other former board members of the club. “If you do it for appreciation, you should never start it,” he says about the years he was on the board. It was a time when Cambuur was financially tight and they had to scrape to keep the club going. The appreciation, in the form of his honorary membership, came later, after all the sleepless nights.
“Damn it,” says a man who takes him by the shoulders for a moment. “You’re back.”
Five minutes after the break, Gersjes moves back to his place in the stands. The mood there quickly becomes gloomier when Jordi Clasie scores 0-3 for AZ after an hour of football. The game is over, although Cambuur will score one more goal.
Defeat or not, for honorary member Gersjes it was a football afternoon as usual. The lust for a good football match is not tied to age, he has learned that in his old age. And the good thing was that people had missed him too.
source https://pledgetimes.com/the-honorary-member-can-also-enjoy-sc-cambuur-again/
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