A funny old game?

Football is a bizarre hobby.  The commitment it evokes from its followers is as such that many fans would be wiping rage induced foam from their mouth just at my suggestion that it is a “hobby” at all.  For a significant number of people it is not just a hobby, but a way of life.  Legendary Liverpool manager Bill Shankley once said “Some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude.  I can assure you, it is much, much more important than that.”

There is no form of entertainment like football.  Andrew Lloyd Webber fans don’t beat up Leonard Bernstein fans if they come across them in the West End, Coronation St has never started a riot, nobody has rearranged their wedding because it clashed with the release of the latest World of Warcraft game.  Popular music can be tribalist at times (think The Beatles v. The Stones, Mods v. Rockers, etc), but this often artificially created rivalry pales in significance to that of football.

Now, I like to consider myself a practical man.  Someone who is able to stand back and see the bigger picture, take a scientific approach.  Art though, has its own rules and yes, I am including sport as art.

Football is a mess of contradictions.  We pay high entrance fees and TV subscription rates to watch a bunch of millionaires, made wealthy from the money out of our pockets.  The footballers themselves are often not just wealthy, but vulgar with it.  Smashing up sports cars like they are toys, getting in to fights outside clubs, and sexually using and abusing women like disposable play things.

The lifestyle our financial contributions are helping to fund is often morally repugnant to even the most open minded of individuals.  Yet, it is amazing what football fans are willing to ignore.  Accusations of rape, racist abuse, and so much more are put to one side when cheering on your team.  Paolo Di Canio has just been announced as the new manager of Sunderland, and his history as a proud fascist has fuelled anger at this appointment.  And yet we all know that if he wins a few games whilst in charge, the vast majority of fans will forget all this.  In no way am I suggesting Sunderland fans are less morally or ethically sound than any other football fan, because this would be the outcome at any football club.

And yet, somehow, football has me.  Completely.

I have experienced football in two very different spheres.  On the one hand there is my first love in football, the most highly supported team in the world and, by the very nature of football, therefore the most hated as well: Manchester United.

This was bestowed by my family, as is often the case.  Unusually maybe, this inheritance was in no way forced, or even assumed.  As a child I hated all sport, as it seemed that it’s only reason for existing was for my Father to deny me the chance to watch cartoons on TV.  Sport just got in the way.  And yet, by the time I was 10, I felt like I might be missing out on something.  Perhaps these were the first stirrings of the adolescent need to conform.  I don’t remember.  I was 10!

So I adopted my Mothers team.  As it is from my Mothers side, there was never any pressure from within my family that this is something I had to do.  Nurturing and caring, my mother would never have pressured me in to doing anything I didn’t want to do.  My dad was neutral on the issue, as he has always insisted that he supports both City and United (to put this in to a historical context, imagine the effect of making a lovely cup of tea, and alternating between taking careful sips of it and then dipping your knackers in it).

So I decided I was going to like football, because it was just something you should do.  Like drinking beer, the taste at first may seem bitter, yet it gives way to intoxication.  That year United won the very first premiership trophy, their first league trophy in 26 years.  With such an excellent sense of timing, you can understand why I would eventually decide to become a comedian!

Of course it would be expected of many that I would support Manchester United due to where I was brought up in Manchester.  South Manchester.  Very south Manchester.  Ok... Dorset.

Eventually though the pull of my local team had its effect, and I eventually started to go and see AFC Bournemouth.  Many died-in-the-wool football fans will insist you should support your local team, but there genuinely was not a pull for me when I was growing up.  Existing in the third tier of league football, I didn’t know any friends at school who were Bournemouth fans.  I only went the first time because United legend Mark Hughes was playing for Southampton there in a friendly.  But that summer I started to go to every home match.  At the time I was just 16, and thanks to my first summer job I had the money and the independence for the first time to go to football by myself.

This was a very different kind of football to that seen at Old Trafford.  Up front was Steve Fletcher.  A striker who might score 10 goals a season if he played particularly well.  Used as a target man, if he didn’t win the ball in the air he would make sure he elbowed the defender instead.  A player with little finesse, skill, and certainly no pace.  Over time though I would come to accept that this man is a legend.  And I do mean that in the present tense because he still plays for Bournemouth now, at the age of 40 (Ryan Giggs eat your heart out!).

Such a legend, in fact, that one of the three stands at our ground, Dean Court, is named after him.  That’s right – three stands.  Any fans of rectangles out there will know that they invariably have four sides, and yet we only have three sides to our ground.  Three fully seated stands, and a car park.  This was not the world’s first “drive in” football ground as you may think.  No, we didn’t build a forth stand because we couldn’t afford to.

This is because Bournemouth has been paupers for years, a club constantly under threat of administration.  But now, as the universe has been engulfed by financial despair, the cosmos has been turned seemingly on its head because Bournemouth now has money.  In fact, we’re one of the highest invested in teams in the league which is, frankly, mad!

We have a strong squad and a great manager in Eddie Howe.  Maybe in the coming years 10,000s will flock to see the mighty Cherries, but for now at least we can still be assured of that “authentic” league football experience of flocking in our 100s to places like Bury.  Grounds so low in attendance that when you arrive you are not given a seat number, merely allowed entrance to an entire stand and told to “sit where you like”.  Compare that to trying to get tickets to Old Trafford, and you will understand what I mean when I say that I have experienced football at both ends of the spectrum.  Even then, whether it’s Old Trafford or Dean Court, and taking in to account all the myriad contradictions inherent in football, it is still a thrill to experience the beautiful game!