The Mildly Attractive Game

 

I knew that somewhere along the line there would be an event which underlined the enormity of what we were doing in abandoning our London life for its rural counterpart. For me that moment came last Wednesday, when I received an email from Fulham Football Club inviting me to renew my season ticket for the coming season. I turned away from the screen choking back a sob. 

Apologies to non football enthusiasts already having to deal with the imminent Euros, but please feel my pain with me. No longer will I get to enjoy the walk to Craven Cottage with an old friend along the Thames through Bishop’s Park,  to sing along to the Clash’s “London Calling” over the ground’s PA (“I LIVE BY THE RIVERRR!!!”), to see Billy The Badger waving to the crowd before kick off, to endure the grinding monotony of the players’ insistence on passing every ball back to their own defence… Actually maybe it’s not all bad.

I had displayed unwavering loyalty to my boyhood club Arsenal until, three years ago, I decided that supporting your local side was somewhere closer to the true spirit of football. Having abandoned one club, surely it’s not too difficult to abandon another, if I uphold the same Purity of Football values?

Once you’ve been a season ticket holder it’s hard to imagine not being one. The tribalism which repels so many is my reward for paying over the odds to sit in a windy seat with a big pole in the way of the goalmouth action.  I need to find a new footballing loyalty. The closest club to our new house is Yeovil Town (or, as they’re known to the cognoscenti, “Yeovil Town, Nil”). Ninety places below Fulham in the English leagues, I fear any promise of excitement is for diehard Yeovil natives only. My decorator reacted with horror when I mentioned the possibility of following them. He stopped just short of holding up a crucifix and saying “Don’t ‘ee be goin’ down there,” but his meaning was clear.

You're not really from Yeovil, are you?

About five minutes further away lies the ground of Exeter City. They are at least in a league (League Two, the old Fourth Division) but I’m haunted by the comment of a friend who supported another League Two club, on the time they resurfaced the pitch: “I don’t know why, the ball never touches it.” But then, is being a supporter really about how much finesse the players display? Is it not more about the grit of battle, defenders throwing themselves into the mud to block a crucial shot, the winning goal bundled in off someone’s backside in the dying minutes of the game?

I perused Exeter City’s website. They score high on ethics, being owned by their supporters with no dodgy benefactor. They also boast the largest standing terrace left in the football league (Lower league clubs were excused the compulsory conversion to seat-only stadia in the 1990s). This was surely what I was looking for, the chance to be crammed in behind the goal with the true lovers of the game, honking out witty songs and gesticulating eloquently at opposition players. There was a photo of some fans on the terraces in question. They had heads like red footballs and were leering drunkenly towards the pitch at a 45 degree angle. I thought of me in my barbouresque country raincoat swapping badinage with them.

Now this looks like my kind of terrace

I moved on. There was an all seat stand along one side of the pitch, which would give me the opportunity to indulge some Denial and get an equivalent seat to my one at Craven Cottage: near enough to the end stand to enjoy the singing, near enough to the pitch to feel connected to the action. And so to the dilemma. Should I go for it and get a season ticket at reduced Early Bird price, risking the fact that the football, not to mention the badinage, might be unbearably bad? Or just buy tickets for single matches, until I decide to commit and find all the season tickets have gone?

This is where Helen and I tend to diverge. My approach is to hold off cautiously until the data proves it’s a good idea. Helen’s view is do it now; if it’s a bad idea you can find a way to extricate yourself (Was this her first thought when I proposed marriage, I wonder?). I thought about extricating myself if it proved to be a bad idea. The only thing I could come up with was standing outside Exeter Central station, hawking my part used season ticket. This being spontaneous needs a lot of careful planning.

Thus we find ourselves heading for a fortnight corridor at the end of June in which the Early Bird Season ticket offer expires, we leave our London flat, my Mum moves into our annex, and we collect our puppy. Hmm.  Is it possible football isn’t the most important thing after all?