football fan

In a break with my normal habits and character, I have watched a full-length football match on the last 2 consecutive evenings. Tuesday night was the cup final of the Yorkshire Christian Football League and Wednesday night I watched Liverpool v Chelsea in the pub (oh dear). Tuesday night definitely more exciting.

This is the first year our church has had a proper football team in a league, and it sometimes seems that mr me and my brother-in-law have talked about little else all year. Mr me is striker and top scorer for the team and my brother in law (or BIL, as I shall call him) is joint manager. The level of obsession could be made clear by a short conversation.

A couple of weeks back mr me stubbed his toe badly on a nail that was sticking up our of our wooden floor.
Half an hour later...
mr me: I'm a bit worried about this toe.
me: Why? What's wrong with it? (visions of toe swollen/ turning black/ falling off)
mr me: I don't know if it's going to affect my play on Saturday...

Anyway, leaving my quibbles and grievances against the team aside, (think I just miss having mr me to myself on saturday mornings), I had a great time watching the game on Tuesday. About half the church turned out to watch them - there must have been about a hundred of us there, compared to about fifteen supporters for the opposition, which made for a great atmosphere. It was a proper ground belonging to a local club, with stands and floodlights and a bar and everything. It was great to have a crowd, and a stand behind us, as it meant we could actually make a proper noise (albiet a rather high-pitched, female-dominated noise). On the few occasions I've been to watch the Saturday morning games there have been 3 or 4 WAGs on the sidelines, occasionally shouting into the wind, but giving up because clearly no-one can hear us. Unfortunately we lost the game 2-0, but everybody played well, and there was no shame in losing to the best team in the division above us really. I enjoyed watching mr me do exciting weave-the-ball-around-the-feet-of-the-defenders things. BIL kindly translated this for me into "when you did get the ball, you beat your man a few times." Tried to encourage him by saying this to him in the car on the way home, but he did seem a bit down. At least playing for the church team seems to have reduced the effect that Liverpool losing has on his mood. Think that having games that he can actually have an influence on has taken away the impact of the learned helplessness of Liverpool games.