It’s fair to say
that my two main hobbies / interests are music and football. Plenty of my blogs
have delved into my music tastes, so maybe it’s about time to talk football.
I didn’t really
grow up having a direct football influence in my house. My parents have never
been into football so by default it was never on TV, save a handful of times as I
recall my Dad watching the occasional England Vs Scotland clash, probably due
to a sense of patriotic duty.
Nor did I ever really
play much football as a child, as I just wasn’t that good, and liable to break into a fit of
nervous giggles whenever I actually got passed the ball… though I did get
better as I got older and proudly even scored one solitary goal for the school
team in a mini tournament when I was about 13. In fact it was a bit like Lineker's first in this clip!
No really!
No really!
The only
occasions I got anywhere near close to football exposure was via my
grandparents – both of whom loved the game. My paternal Grandad was a Tottenham
fan (even though he came from south of the River), and his father before him
had been a dyed in the wool Fulham fan. My maternal Grandad was a Brighton
& Hove Albion season ticket holder, but nothing really drew my attention
too much to the sport whilst I was young. Not even the 1983 FA Cup final when my local team Brighton, in unlikely circumstances, actually took Manchester United to a
replay before succumbing to defeat. I do recall watching both games, but really
I was just a seven year old boy supporting Brighton for geographical reasons rather than actually
knowing much about it.
So the tide
didn’t turn until I was ten and a half years old, and around about May 1986.
We had a school
project running about a month before the Mexico ’86 World Cup and we were
allocated teams to write about in ‘news bulletins’.
As I wasn’t particularly fussed about football I just went with the flow, and along with a couple of other girls in the class, I was asked to adopt Scotland.
Were Scotland any good? I really didn’t know!
I do remember hearing that England had beaten West Germany in a pre-tournament friendly (whatever that meant) so maybe this was a good thing?
As I wasn’t particularly fussed about football I just went with the flow, and along with a couple of other girls in the class, I was asked to adopt Scotland.
Were Scotland any good? I really didn’t know!
I do remember hearing that England had beaten West Germany in a pre-tournament friendly (whatever that meant) so maybe this was a good thing?
As the tournament
started I remember learning that England had lost their first game,
and then drew the next and was on the verge of going out of the tournament
early. ‘So what!?’ I thought. I hadn't watched either England game, or any of
the other matches so far – I was just so totally nonchalant about it all.
And then a
strange thing happened which I still can’t fathom out to this day. On June 11th
I went to bed as normal – probably around 9pm, but got woken up by my Dad
at about 1030pm. My Dad – generally a loather of football and all that was associated with
it – woke me up and said:
“Come downstairs and watch the football, England are two nil
up!”
I really only
went down because it was an excuse to be up late, but as I got downstairs, some
guy called Lineker banged in his third goal and England – or we the nation as I instantly now felt –
were three nil up!
England had two
more games at that tournament before being knocked out in the cruellest of
fashions. The Maradona ‘Hand of God’
goal was hard to take for a young child naïve to the ways of fair play
(or lack of it) in football.
Diego Maradona
made me cry about football for the first time (though not the last) and I
couldn’t understand how such a thing could have been allowed to happen. I’m
sure it wasn’t corruption on behalf of the officials, though it was highly incompetent officiating for them ALL to miss such a blatant aspect of cheating.
Maradona was the classic flawed genius whose misdemeanours caught up with him in time; other such talents followed suit in the years to come as England were denied a greater impact on the world stage without the fully realised potential of (for example) Paul Gascoigne, largely due to injuries.
Maradona was the classic flawed genius whose misdemeanours caught up with him in time; other such talents followed suit in the years to come as England were denied a greater impact on the world stage without the fully realised potential of (for example) Paul Gascoigne, largely due to injuries.
One thing I
learnt very early on though in my football education is that there’s one thing
you can guarantee from the beautiful game: Football will continuously let you
down.
Anyway, I digress.
The tricky thing
about getting into football during a World Cup is that I had to learn quickly
who these England players actually played for and I quickly wanted a club to
support. Whilst I knew very soon that Brighton & Hove Albion was to be
my team, it wasn’t out of favouritism for one of my Grandads’ over the other –
in fact I still hold a soft spot for Tottenham in memory of my Spurs supporting
Grandad – plus my son’s great great Grandfather had actually been a Spurs
player.
Add into this I really admired Glenn Hoddle and Chris Waddle during the World Cup, and they were / are absolute Spurs legends.
My Dad’s Mum was from Islington, which likely explains why his only soft spot for any club football team was Arsenal. Regardless, I was born in Brighton, so I proudly opted to support my local team.
The football season couldn’t start soon enough and my brain soon started soaking up stats like they were going out of fashion. In fact I would suspect this is where my OCD started. I was playing catch up with my friends who had been into football for years and I just had to get my knowledge factually correct or they’d cut me down in a second – because let’s face it, kids can be cruel that way!
Add into this I really admired Glenn Hoddle and Chris Waddle during the World Cup, and they were / are absolute Spurs legends.
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| Mullet-tastic |
My Dad’s Mum was from Islington, which likely explains why his only soft spot for any club football team was Arsenal. Regardless, I was born in Brighton, so I proudly opted to support my local team.
The football season couldn’t start soon enough and my brain soon started soaking up stats like they were going out of fashion. In fact I would suspect this is where my OCD started. I was playing catch up with my friends who had been into football for years and I just had to get my knowledge factually correct or they’d cut me down in a second – because let’s face it, kids can be cruel that way!
During that first full season, I became deeply immersed
with it all, culminating in attending my first proper
football match ever with my Grandad on April 10th 1987.
Brighton and
Hove Albion Vs Crystal Palace was a local derby with deadly historic rivalry
and I sat in the West Stand at the well loved, but run down Goldstone Ground on
the Old Shoreham Road / Newtown Road to see us win 2-0. It was a terrific day
and set the grounding for my desire to follow ‘The Albion’ forever, even though we were relegated that season!
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| The Goldstone Ground |
That aside, it was largely good experiences in my
football journey in those early years, but it wasn’t always wonderful.
Yes, I’d been upset about how Maradona cheated England out of the 1986 World Cup, but that feeling was nothing when compared to watching fellow football fans die on the television. Merely watching the Hillsborough tragedy unfold in 1989 was devastatingly awful, so it's impossible to comprehend how those directly involved must have felt - and still feel. I remember watching the presenter of Grandstand (Bob Wilson) trying desperately to keep it together. He was getting so choked up and I was on the verge of doing the same.
Yes, I’d been upset about how Maradona cheated England out of the 1986 World Cup, but that feeling was nothing when compared to watching fellow football fans die on the television. Merely watching the Hillsborough tragedy unfold in 1989 was devastatingly awful, so it's impossible to comprehend how those directly involved must have felt - and still feel. I remember watching the presenter of Grandstand (Bob Wilson) trying desperately to keep it together. He was getting so choked up and I was on the verge of doing the same.
You can’t really go and research to see what it was like
through recorded video footage (not that I’d recommend it anyway), because huge
amounts of coverage were never broadcast on television or elsewhere again, such
were the graphic images being shown. At the time, British football fans had a
reputation (rightly or wrongly) of hooliganism, but this wasn’t the same
scenario. The outpouring of emotion and grief at this tragedy was heart
wrenching and it literally made people ill. I had absolutely no connection with
Liverpool Football Club, but I had every connection with the fans as I was one
of them. I could have been one of them; a football fan dying on a terrace. This
is why the plight of the families directly involved was so enduring in the
years that followed.
Tremendously, campaigns were fought and eventually won in
helping justice prevail over the circumstances of that particular event, but in the initial aftermath, all fans could do was to pray for common sense and changes so that it
might never happen again. It started the slow but sure alteration of how
football was perceived and run in this country, which was has been good in many, many ways. It’s fair though to say that in 2015 football has
nearly become as elitist sport in the eyes of many, but if part of those changes mean that lives are never lost again at a football match, then maybe that's the right way to go.
I try to detach from the financial side of what football
has become, as at the end of the day, I just want to go and watch my local team
with my family, whether they are successful or not - but possibly over time football has changed to the degree that the peoples' game has been taken away from many of the people for better or for worse.
I appreciate the
highs in football so much because I know that the lows are more frequent, and being
a Brighton fan maybe highlights this more than some other clubs! Football for
me over the years has gone from being fun and frivolous, to being tense and
escapist. That’s fine, because you keep going for the handful of moments that are frankly beyond emotive description.
Even now, aged 39, I still get asked “Why!?
Why do you love football – what is it about it that is so good?”
Well I’ll leave the final comment on that, to the
broadcaster (and Millwall fan) Danny Baker, who whilst commenting on Manchester
City winning the league in literally the last couple of SECONDS of the 2011/12
season, captured the overriding and all too infrequent feeling of all football
fans everywhere in one short sound bite :
“Football! F****** football!
Imagine not being into it. Those poor, poor half-alive b*******!”
