Confused: Football

My interest in football is on a par with my interest in fishing. That is to say I am aware of it, I know it is popular and if stuck on a desert island with a magazine devoted to the subject I would probably read it.

I played quite regularly until I was about eleven.

I'm sure we looked quite a lot like this. Life was in black and white
back then. Tell that to kids these days and they won't believe you.

It may come as a surprise that I was quite good, preferring to be in goal. But my interest only extended to actually playing the game. The comings and goings of the Saturday matches played around the country left me cold. The ritual of the results on Saturday afternoon TV, with its pompous, liturgical rhythmic intonation was one of the more tangible forms of tedium along with church and Sunday afternoons.

I wasn't there...

Being a north London lad, my friends tended to support Spurs or Arsenal. The father of one of my classmates was a director of Arsenal and I had an open invitation to the ground and the Director’s Box. I did not know what a Director’s Box was, but assumed it to be a ‘good thing’, as it seemed to be blessed with a fridge full of a free Coca-Cola. Nonetheless I never accepted the invitation as I could not see the attraction of watching other people play football – even with free tooth-rotting fluid.

Most of my school friends were very knowledgeable about football. They not only knew the names of the players, they had their favourites and would discuss their relative skills and strengths. Bizarrely they also seemed to know previous members of the team, some going back into the mists of time. And of course they knew how their team was doing, which teams were a threat and even how many goals they had to score in any particular game to get closer to the final; to win the cup.

Johnny Haynes, one of the few names I could remember...
oh, yes, and Nobby Stiles and Danny Blanchflower

For some reason all this detail failed to register with me. I could remember the names of a few players but had no idea who they played for. But there was also something was wrong with the model of our national game. One week a particular team was a dead cert to be in the final, the next they were knocked out. On the odd occasion I watched a final, and could swear that one of the teams had been relegated (or something) a week or so earlier. It just didn’t make sense. So I stopped even trying. I still played, I still declined invitations to watch The Arsenal, I still sat through the results on TV, and the analysis which followed, with a feeling of deep gloom. Who would win The Cup? Who cared. Not me.

Seaview, where I learned the truth about football.

In the early 1980s, well into my twenties, I shared a house with Mike and Pete. Both of them are interested in football and sometimes watch Match of the Day, a programme I have studiously avoided for decades. On one such occasion I was moved to try and explain why I was not interested. I explained that at primary school I could only name a couple of players but seldom the teams they played for. I explained how much I had been confused by the sudden changes in fortune which seemed to beset many of the teams and their chances in the cup. I explained that this inability to understand had finally led me to stop trying. It also accounted for my contempt for the TV results service and the inarticulate men endlessly discussing possibilities (which in 2008 I discovered was called post match analysis) an exercise in speculation only outdone by political pundits. 

Mike tried to help and asked if it was the League or Association competition that I did not understand. I did not even understand his question. He did not understand that I did not understand. Some time later a missing piece of the jigsaw fell into place.

For any of you who share my ignorance, the same teams play in two competitions at the same time. This explained why a team could be a dead cert for the (FA) Cup one week and knocked out of the (League) Cup  the next.

These days they label the cups to reduce confusion.
If you are still unsure the FA Cup comes with a lid.

But by this time, I am pleased to say, it was too late. In an attempt to be open minded I attended a pre-season friendly between Spurs and Brighton and Hove Albion at the old Goldstone Ground. I went with Andy Smith a sofa-based cable-TV sports fanatic and very talented musician (how often those two characteristics coincide). I was bored to tears and spent most of the game inspecting the structure of the stadium. I do not remember who won, though I suspect it was Spurs as B&HA trotted out first and looked all shiny and fit, but then Spurs ran onto the pitch, I though 'Fuck me! they're massive'. I kid you not they made the Albion look like children.

If you think this is dull, you should have seen the game.

On reflection, and in justification of my decades of ignorance, I blame the phrase ‘the Cup’, as in ‘We won the Cup’. It should of course be ‘We won one of the Cups’.

But I doubt it will catch on.