It used to mean so much.
I have shed tears over sport. Tears of joy, tears of frustration, and yes, tears of irredeemable loss.
Pathetic, I know. It’s just sport.
But there’s the problem. It isn’t ‘just’ sport. Nothing is ‘just’ anything, if you care about it. The ‘Oh it’s just a load of people running around after a ball’ dismissal of football is too glib, too easy, applicable to anything that doesn’t float your own personal boat.
‘Oh it’s just some people wandering about on a stage singing’; ‘Oh it’s just words on a page’; ‘Oh it’s just mooching around the countryside with a pair of binoculars.’
‘I don’t see the point.’
Oh well. Hard luck. I do see the point, the glorious and idiotic futility of it all perfectly encapsulating what it is to be human. See you on the other side.
Where this passion came from, I’m not sure. My parents weren’t sporty. But England won the World Cup when I was 1, and there must have been something in the air. How else do you explain my almost constant wearing of a green goalkeeper’s kit for about four years from the age of 4? As I recall, I wanted to be Peter Bonetti. After 1970, fickle soul that I was, I probably wanted to be Gordon Banks. (NB this is a footballing reference that will make sense to those who know. Ignore it if it means nothing to you – it’s really not important).
As a teenager, my desire to belong to something – anything – drove me, every other Saturday afternoon, to the Manor Ground, home of Division Two’s mighty Oxford United (‘we’re Oxford United – Oxford United FC – by far the greatest team – the world has ever seen’).
Walk down the lane, 280 bus to Headington, troop up the narrow alleyway next to the service station. London Road end. ‘We are the left side, we are the left side, we are the left side London Road’; inevitably countered with ‘We are the right side, we are the right side, we are the right side London Road’ – there is wit to be found in football grounds, but it was in short supply in 1970s Oxford. Gristleburger and coke, chill wind whistling through my inadequate jumper, worming its way past the polyester/wool-mix yellow-and-blue scarf as I stood on the fringes, part of something big but not part of it, the threat of violence never far away, thrilling and terrifying, the concrete terraces awash with testosterone on the rare occasions when Oxford scored. ‘Come on Oxford – clap clap – come on Oxford – clap clap’; repeat until braindead. 0-0 draw. Bus. Home.
Cut. 4th July 1990. Streatham. Telly in the corner. Four of us watching. Three Englanders and a German. Chris Waddle blazes the ball over the bar.
A small part of me dies.
Somehow it endured, the passion sparking from time to time. New generations of England footballers rose and fell, none more promising nor ultimately disappointing than the ‘golden generation’ heralded by Michael Owen’s miracle goal in the 1998 World Cup.
They were young, vibrant, talented; before we knew it they were old, jaded, an emblem for the disappointment of a generation, the hopes of a nation withering like Paul Scholes under the far eastern sun. Those years, each moment vividly experienced at the time, are now bundled up into a decade-sized blob of letdown.
2012 was when all interest in the game finally ebbed away. In the grip of Olympic fever I became, like many others, a passionate advocate of Other Sports. It was releasing. We tasted handball, badminton, hockey, table tennis, fencing, canoe slalom, beach volleyball and all the others, experienced them first hand, saw that their skill and athleticism were at least a match for what now seemed the slightly-less-than-beautiful game. And after that glorious summer of honest amateur endeavour (an illusion, yes, but how magnificent, how perfectly wrought), the brashness of football – its arrogance, its bullying swagger, its overpaid theatricals, its assumption that the month-long festival of Olympian and Paralympian endeavour was just an interlude and now it was time for the proper sport to pick up the reins again – turned me against the game for good.
We’d followed the progress of plucky 53-year-old shot putters who’d funded their Olympic campaigns by selling their priceless collection of rare budgerigars; we’d spent the previous weeks and months agawp at the variety and extent of human athletic achievement, thrilling at the surprising allure of everything from archery to wrestling. Somehow a back-page headline about Frank Lampard’s Ferrari didn’t do it any more.
So I stopped following football. I was aware of it, burbling away in the background. I knew just enough to keep abreast of conversations struck up by people who knew of my interest. And then, suddenly, I didn’t. There was too much of it anyway. I simply didn’t care any more.
But football, that old bastard, was merely sleeping.
Gareth Southgate was appointed England manager. I gave it no more than a passing glance. Nice chap, missed that penalty, didn’t he? Oh well. So it goes.
We qualified for the World Cup easily. Yeah, whatever. Been there before.
And now, almost by stealth, I find myself browsing waistcoat catalogues, catch myself humming ‘It’s Coming Home’ as I do the ironing. It’s one short step to styling my hair like Harry Kane and wearing a replica shirt.
It’s Gareth who’s done it. In an era of belligerent charlatans and mendacious frauds, soon-to-be-Sir Gareth is a quiet, decent, diligent, honest and professional man getting due reward for his hard work. And, as is the way in a well-functioning organisation, those qualities filter through to his team – you’d have to be a curmudgeon, in this moment, not to warm to them.
Yes, they’re overpaid. So are many sportspeople. It’s not their fault – put a pot of gold in front of any young person and their eyes will inevitably widen. And yes some of the theatricality is ridiculous – for all their likeability, England aren’t completely exempt from blame in this department – but maybe VAR will go some way towards getting rid of this. And yes, all they’re doing is kicking a bit of leather around a field. But there’s the glory of it, football’s essential and deceptive simplicity – see ball, kick ball, over there. Goooooooaaaaaaalll! Shit, did you see that‽‽‽‽‽‽
And yes of course there’s more to be said about tribalism, violence and ugly nationalism – but if those hateful things didn’t have football to cluster round, you can be sure they’d find something else to leech onto. Ballet, maybe, or Morris dancing. Or, heaven forbid, birdwatching.
‘They’re coming home, they’re coming home, they’re coming – the swifts are coming home (although of course they spend most of the year in Africa.)’
So gather round the telly on Wednesday evening, acknowledge the frivolity of it all, and come on, England.
Maybe, just maybe, there will be tears once again.
That takes me back — I remember in the 1960s seeing the men and boys walking or cycling up Headley Way, on their way to the Manor Ground. My father and brother used to walk, because we lived not far from the ground. I only went to there once, for a friendly, to see what a football match was like (duller than I’d anticipated, because I couldn’t see anything), but my father and brother carried on going to matches — my father had been a supporter since it was Headington United, and my brother still goes when he can. And the ground was always there, something to be skirted via Cuckoo Lane when were walking home from my grandparents’ house in Old Headington.
I remember 66 we’ll. World Cup Willy was the mascot, wouldn’t be allowed now.
Can’t imagine a world without sport – simply wouldn’t be ‘just’.
Great post!