Today was the last game of the football season for our home team, Wolverhampton Wanderers. They have won the league this year and are due to be promoted to the premiership, so I joined my friends for a post-match celebratory drink in the town.
Given my documented anti-football stance, you would imagine that voluntarily placing myself in such close proximity of hollering, swollen orange bellies exhaling the stale aroma of cheap burger van onions, Stella Artois and ill-conceived reactionary opinions, would be the last thing on my agenda. But if anyone deserves to bask in the reflected glory of the team’s success it’s definitely me. Just because I didn’t go to any games or even proclaim to have the slightest care about any of the scores, doesn’t mean I haven’t made my own investments in the football industry. I’ll have you know, I used to work at the team’s ground when I was a student, doing torturous 14 hour washing up shifts. So don’t try and tell me about the hard life of the football fan. I’ve quite literally invested more sweat into the team than any of them so-called supporters - which is quite an achievement when you think about their disgusting, clammy, pasty-bloated faces.
Even now, years later, I am still obliged to suffer the hardships and emotional journey that the football season entails. Just think about all those countless Saturday nights in pubs, spoiled by my friends endlessly crapping on about “today’s game” – a 90 minute affair, they can somehow stretch to over three hours of analysis – and their tedious waffle left me longing for something more humane to happen; like a terrorist explosion strong enough to rip my eardrums out.
Think about all those frustrating match day traffic queues and parking problems in the City Centre I’ve been forced to endure, just because I’m an innocent bystander who doesn’t happen to be au fait with the fixtures list? Think about the inconveniences I’ve suffered at the hands of TV scheduling changes, made to accommodate the extension of a 0-0 draw? (A particularly perplexing irritation - as if football wasn’t dull enough, they cancel programmes to extend the most tedious games of all. We might as well be watching looping camera footage of Gary Lineker and his pals pissing all over the latest copy of the Radio Times – which would at least have some sort of concise metaphorical narrative value).
So yes - I reckon I truly deserved my place in the festivities. This was neither glory-hunting nor bandwagon jumping. It was my own private celebration. And the end of the ever-tedious football season is always worth raising a glass to.
Cheers!
