Not that long ago, football got close to running my life. Holidays were organised outside the football season, weekends away would only occur when Bristol Rovers were away and parties and social gatherings were missed. I would frequently be ‘gutted’ and ‘devastated’ if my team lost or something equally serious (not) happened. Perspective? I have much more today.
The tragic events at Leicester have cast a shadow over football. Many had seen Leicester’s owner climbing abroad his helicopter on the pitch at the Kingpower Stadium. I confess to feeling it was a little decadent, but hey, the man was a squillionare. Who would say that we might not do the same if we were as wealthy as him?
I have mentioned the issue of mortality before. When we are young, we tend to think we are indestructible, that we will live forever. The truth is that none of us get out of here alive. In an ideal world, we might like to die in our sleep at the age of 100, following a long walk to a country pub and back where we spent the afternoon with our family and friends. Real life, sadly, is rarely that way.
The pictures from Leicester were truly horrifying. No one would have escaped alive from the raging fire. I just hope they felt no pain, that it happened too quickly for them to even realise what was happening. In terms of a comparison between feeling ‘gutted’ that Rovers had lost at Barnsley, the Kingpower inferno was on a different planet. To be fair, I don’t think anyone would seriously compare the two. That would be simply absurd.
It’s the words we use these days. I’m as guilty as anyone. I try to think about using the right words. I sometimes fail. However, as tragedies usually do, I’m thinking hard about using the appropriate ones today. No one will be paying the slightest bit of attention to what happened at the Kingpower Stadium before the helicopter crash. The game was irrelevant.
I am glad football no longer runs my life. There were 87 games available for live viewing this week by way of pay TV and streaming and I watched one of them, the European Champions League tussle between Liverpool and whoever it was they were playing. I only watched Match of the Day last night to see the reports from Leicester, beautifully and touchingly presented by Gary Lineker.
And when I see that my team has lost, I am not gutted or devastated. I am disappointed but life goes on. There will be another game next week, if I can be bothered to watch it.
