Local football – the difference between quality and enjoyment

Posted: April 21, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: I've been about | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Before I begin – I’ve looked up the rules of WordPress (by which this blog is generated) and whilst I can’t play music over the top of these words – I can link you to websites that play music – meaning you can enjoy sounds from one tab whilst reading words on this tab .

So I’m linking to some suggestions I’ve had from YouTube: Deep Space Banjo Ambience, A playlist to feel like you’re inside a Monet painting, and Rest Here a Moment.. Tomorrow We Start Again. I don’t know if you’ll like them, or if I do – but the internet seems to feel these pieces summarise me.

My dad and I travelled to watch Gillingham FC play yesterday. The Gills are a Kent-local team with a respected regional history that is over-shadowed by an incredibly devoted fanbase that reminds you that people are dedicated to all sorts of things, including screaming.

I find going to the stadium quite intimidating due to the crowd all around – especially behind me. There’s something about a mob that hasn’t realised it is one yet – it really makes me stay home.

I’m not really frightened of having a fight because no ones tends to start fights with me. However, I’d be quite tentative about starting a fight because I don’t know how to do it.

At what point am I allowed to punch you in the nose?

What happens if we’re exchange insults and threats, and I punch first? And then, everyone gasps and suddenly my wouldn’t-be opponent sobs with hysterical confusion, questioning what drove me to do such a thing – and then I’m politely asked to leave?

Unthinkably embarrassing and really not what the beautiful game is all about.

There are other aspects to the game which is beautiful. Elements that one can’t perceive through the screen watching premier league fixtures.

For one, the litter

There’s litter on the pitch and trundling down the stadium steps.

I think this comes down to two issues.

One – the stadium is draughty, being a stadium, which facilitates litter blowing into the goalmouth and clattering against the fanbase.

Two – the local stadium doesn’t have a two-deep line of hi-viz staff constantly trawling through the square footage to clamp down on the litter that risks being a form of unlicensed advertising (“a Snickers wrapper?! I didn’t approve that flutter by!?”).

Plus, everyone keeps dropping litter, which is likely the most crucial cause of littering.

Pigeons are fucking on the stadium roof

It’s spring, and nature is springing, which is beautiful.

Pigeons, fucking on the stadium roof, is also beautiful, but is that kind of beauty nobody really wants to see. Or hear.

If they could smell it, this sport wouldn’t exist.

It does make one feel lucky to be alive though. Spring is here!

Football! Sunshine! Pigeon eggs (eventually)! And god knows these past few months of dark winter, we’ve all been looking forward to more pigeons. The thought of that got me through Christmas.

The elements are real, not like on TV

I remembered to bring my hat this time, as previously I’d spent the entire 90 minutes saluting the spring-time sun in a vain effort to protect my eyes and see a single moment of play. And I don’t like saluting.

I could probably take eye-damage more seriously though. We all could. But I’m still not going to.

The sun hit my forearm for a long time that afternoon. Feeling something, as opposed to that dulling sensation of generally sitting – in which one only feels anything when they’ve been sitting for too long – I don’t get that at home watching TV.

It’s good to feel something, from the sun on my forearm, to the breeze that helps the litter along.

THUDS

Sitting 3 rows back from the field – you can hear the real thud of the game – thuds of players colliding, landing after tackles and the ever-thwack of the ball.

The same ball that everyone cheers as it makes it way by means of foot-empowered-flight out of the stadium towards brown top-hat chimneys of houses just feet away; it thuds when kicked, it thuds when it hits the roof, and it thuds and beep-beeps when it lands on a car just outside the stadium.

That ball is what makes me feel even more on edge than the mob around me and the procreating pigeons above me. There is a constant feeling, sitting so close to the pitch, that the ball is going to be kicked (perhaps…passed) right into my nose with such power it would colonise my face in the name of football.

It’s brilliant.

Fear can be a good thing, especially when it only relates to cosmetic issues and minor brain damage.

‘THUD‘ personifies that.

Money where it can be found

Each goal was sponsored – something I’ve never encountered before.

I wasn’t sure after the first goal, thanks to the roar of the crowd, but after the second – I’m sure the stadium announcer declared: “In the 47th minute, goal scored by JOSHUA ANDREWS!!! This goal was sponsored by Mr and Mrs Potts, of Twydall.”

Not only did this hyper-localise the local football game, but it made clear that ways to make money are discovered through ways to spend money. In this case, hyper-local; to donate money.

Outstanding.

Unbalanced and loving it

With my Dad – I think we were too balanced to fit in properly. When the ref judged a handball, we’d quietly agree with each other, whilst all about us let there position known not so much by direct disagreement, but by calling the ref a cunt.

It’s a matter of passion over facts. Everyone’s got a football opinion, because that’s the point. If you’ve got a football fact – that’s nice, but one hardly screams it at the opposing fanbase.

All about me were the folk who came to slightly decrease their overall long-term blood-pressure by drastically increasing it for a highly vocal 90 minutes (with a quick 15 minute break for liquids – in and out).

The referee represents the villain in the pantomime – you just know you’re supposed to boo them, regardless of what they actually do on the field/stage. The Gillingham-devoted have no idea of this ref’s name, they just want to enjoy the hour and a half of absolute love and total hatred; football.

The greens are greener

You can see the blades of the grass.

Not just general greeness – like on TV, but actually blades, and flying tuffs as boots dig in deep to the pitch whilst missing the ball somewhat.

It’s the same with the players’ hair, the swish of limbs, and – again – the pigeons fucking.

It’s spring!

Glory. Real glory

There were children asking for autographs from players in case they’re not nobodies, and the players were dutifully signing them. It’s wholesome – live with it.

But whilst they’re potentially not nobodies in the future, right now their names are revised and celebrated by the kids who have this hyper-local passion that is, I expect, replicated up and down the country and probably the world.

And then there is that particular moment of glory, when it comes – as it did for Joshua Andrews (sponsored by Mr and Mrs Potts) in which the ball came to him, he paused for a moment and thought (visibly) – “why the fuck not? I’m supposed to aren’t I?!“. And he kicked it, almost a punt on a punt…and it went in.

And a collective of associates who either know one another by name of the fact that they’d also die for this football club, felt every theme of joy conceivable – and they showed it.

By god, or more importantly – Gillingham FC – they showed it.

That’s a glory that cannot be compared.

But it can be beaten, by this:

There are other nobodies, ones you’ve not heard of and I’ve since forgotten, who played with this club for years and may have enjoyed times such as Joshua – the current number 9. Decades later, they passed away, and yesterday, they and their name received a standing ovation over 60 seconds in honour, absolute honour, of their life and service to this club.

There’s glory on these Saturdays, and dreams come true on the field, but it is in the stands that the living of life can be found. It’s excitement – and it is contagious.

All in all – you might get a bit of it, but there’s no way you get all the above from watching the Premier league on the TV.

Some, not all.

3-0 to the Gills it was.

Me and my Dad went.

Sam

Sugar, Sugar, You’re My Daddy

Posted: September 25, 2016 | Author: | Filed under: Brief...therefore witty., writing | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Oh jeez I’ve craving for my issue.

My very own issue.

My dependency on sugar has escalated to the point where it being moulded into a typical food format; such as a chocolate bar or a cupcake; really is too indirect for me.

I’m close to putting it straight in the eye; I promise.

Honey is something I spend my time doing.

And, guys, I don’t even use cutlery.

And, guys, I avoid involving bread.

And, fellas, I can’t stop eating honey.

Aaaaaahhhhhhh fuck it.

There’s a woman in the staffroom having a womanly issue. She’s teary and hot; the sort of occasion where women gather around and I am despised because by being in the same workplace I’m too proximate. With my manly genitals in tow.

I’m feeling like I’ve done something.

Overtones of “Bloody men” are emanating from them all.

A crowd’s gathering; the government says to avoid these by women just keep it right up.

It’s not my fault you’re menstruating; if you didn’t want that you should’ve gotten yourself pregnant.

Chocolate is going to be applied here. Liberally. I can tell.

And that’s my fault; don’t’cha know?

It’s honestly as if women don’t know that men can tell when a woman’s chemical imbalance is so volatile that we feel urged to wear a helmet and keep our knees together.

Lay your egg at home.

I’d would genuinely take the economically devastating consequences of an egg-laying woman staying at home and returning only with an empty vagina.

Of course I’m being facetious; I’m not really that sexist.

I’m just being funny; like only men can be because women aren’t.

Joking, gals.

I’m not so sure about many of these arguments regarding gender equality.

Obviously men are bigger and women are better at giving birth; but every point after that I feel falls by the wayside.

Sexism could have a place in society; but we’ve all got too much to be getting on with, especially each other (hey – give peace a chance; siblings).

Sexism only has one place in two arenas and they are physical sports and humour.

The chances are that Mary didn’t match up to Joseph when it came to lifting the lumber, but she didn’t even need him when it came to bursting forth a Messiah.

Not that any of this is true, by the general idea carries over.

For, yeigh, there shall be-eth cases in which a Mary can lift more lumber than some spindly-Joe, and they’ll be a Joseph out there, someday, who is so supreme at multi-tasking; he can raise for you the most charming of Messiahs and even carve up a really rather fancy cross to nail him to in a thirty three years time.

Actually; that’s…Yeigh, some dayeth, the word shall come forth, and that word shall verily be “Semen”.

I truly dislike the insinuation that mothers are the cradle of life.

Only my wife is privy to the mysterious contents of my ball sack and she shalleth voucheth that, YEIGH, that semen is surely mighty.

Just try, darling, just try to have a baby without the involvement of a man, and his goods, and his very goods.

You, sister, can give birth, but I can paint the walls with what I’ve got to give – now thats miraculous.

The physical side of sexism is altogether an accepted state of affairs.

Women, the best of them, can be just as tactically sound as a man in military conditions. But when it comes to a punch-up; Mother-Mary’s getting knocked the fuck out.

Take myself.

I could walk into a UFC ring to engage in combat with a mediocre trained female fighter and she would, within a minute, have me pleading for her to get her knee out of my mouth (or perhaps to leave it in there; but those are my issues and not for discussing right now).

Take that same UFC fighter and give her an absolute, fledgling, greenie, newby trained fighter to get punchy with and he will take her face away with him.

The same premise carries over to other sports.

World-Football. I’ve seen those female footballers play and I’ve been highly impressed; in particularly by their set-pieces and ball skills.

Put a top-flight female football team against a lower-league men’s division and those talented young ladies are going to need the rest of their careers’ off to get over the bruising.

And to think I started this Write about my sugar intake. Remember my issue?

That’s something female sports stars can look forward to as long as chaps like myself are sucking that sugar down, gradually becoming a meatball that can be undone by a sudden need to stand up quickly.

That’s a thought, oh my yes it is!

So, female footballers have altered their game to become less physical and more tactic-based.

Even blind folk play football, and their game is altered to cope with this and use their skills best.

Why not a fat-chap league?

A game in which pace is a matter of the fastest waddler.

Shooting can remain the same, set-pieces the same too, along with passing and skills.

It just means that goalies stand a better chance owing to sheer mass and the defensive wall for free kicks is going to have to have one hell of a curve ball put around it to make it past.

The downside would have to be that these people are supposed to be role models. And role models shouldn’t be named as such because they continue to roll down-pitch owing to a particularly influential tackle.

Ball-shaped men are not applicable; it would seem.

I’ve got a radical new diet to hopefully ensure this sport never sees the light of day.

It involves more water than previously and far less of eating fistfuls of honey raw from the jar (as was my former method of getting by in the evenings).

But I’ve run out of time; so I’ll tell you on the next Write.

See you tomorrow,

Sam