Pursuing the beautiful game

Following the love of one’s life can be difficult on holiday; partners don’t necessarily want to trail around looking for a suitable pub on Saturday afternoon, or indeed want to spend a sunny day “cooped up” when there could be retail therapy or time spent on a beach instead.

As I seem to live a life of role reversals, I seem to have become one of those women that entirely understands the male point of view, at least on this particular point.  As a hardened football fan it was a project to find a pub in Polperro that not only had Sky Sports, but would also be showing the matchday programme with those all-important score updates.

For those visiting in the near future, the Noughts and Crosses fits the bill in this respect and can provide a jolly nice lunch to boot.  It’s tucked down the narrow street on the right hand side of the harbour, with the river running directly at the back of the pub.  That’s “very directly” - step out of the back door and into the water!

As people come from all over the UK to holiday in Cornwall there were a range of fans in the bar watching out for their teams’ progress.  It made for a good atmosphere; there was plenty of banter while we separately and severally bit our nails as the afternoon wore on.  The beer and cider flowed; the sun shone outside and our eyes were glued to the TV screen.

The Aston Villa fan spent a nervous few minutes outside with a fag before returning to find out they had equalised against Fulham.   Villa went on to win, although they left it rather late. 

The Southampton fans were chewing their nails; their poor start to the season was already getting to them and they were very grateful for their eventual win over Stoke and some points on the board.

Other Midlanders following Wolves also had to wait some time to be let off their own particular hook, but today everyone was happy with the results coming in on the news ticker.

And my team? They won as well; we’re off the mark.