The beautiful game

It’s back.

The football season, that is.  I meant to blog this last weekend but on reflection it was better to let a couple of games pass by before I started waxing lyrical about it.  In any case, there is the purist line of thought which decrees that footy is played during the winter.

Today was a proper football Saturday though.  It was lashing down with rain.  The walk to the ground from the pub was long and soggy and in the last half mile, the press of people grew thicker, umbrellas enmeshed with each other and the talk was of prospects and team selections.

Rain dripped off waterproofs and the wind whipped under the umbrellas, rendering them pretty useless.  Kids ran about amongst the adults, dodging their way through the streets.

Nearer the ground, the hot dog and burger wagons belch out smells of grease and fried onions, guaranteed to attract the attention of the liquid lunchers in need of a bit of ballast before three o’clock.  Intermingled with them are the fanzine sellers, programme sellers, scarf sellers, badge sellers and charity collectors shaking buckets for this week’s good cause.

This is the sort of day for football; although it’s quite a novelty to go to games in t-shirt and jeans, it never seems quite real.  Football is for rain and wind and not being able to feel your hands, even with the thickest gloves on.  It’s for short days, long nights, frost and floodlights, for being huddled up with your companions and wondering how on earth you’re going to make it to full time without freezing to death.

Of course, there is the view that football got destroyed with the removal of the terraces, where brotherly love and invading each others’ personal space was a good idea for ninety minutes, in the name of keeping warm.

Terrace football was pretty perilous; teetering on the steps, making sure there was a crash barrier to hold on to if your team scored, otherwise getting carried away with the throng.  It was hot Bovril, tea from the urns on the vendors’ backs, that brilliant green of the pitch and hoping that there weren’t any away supporters in the home end.

There are so many other memories of this I can’t possibly get them all together in a few minutes, but more words will come to me later I’m sure.

And the football itself? Oh, my team lost.  I hope it doesn’t become a habit for them.