You can always tell when the new football season is about to commence. Sky salivates about a pre season friendly between Stoke City and a Singapore Select XI in the prestigious Barclays Asia Trophy, ‘Arry Redknapp appears in all media outlets saying this will be the greatest Premier League season yet and of course Bristol Rovers will be involved in some fuck up or other regarding their new kit not being ready for sale for the annual fun day. Who said tradition in football was dead?
The trouble is that in the media world, football never really went away. Even though the Ashes are in full flow, the Open Golf Championship has only just taken place, as has Wimbledon, the talk is all about football. Overhyped, overpaid and over here.
Even when I obsessed unhealthily about the game, the new season did not fill me joy. I like the summer and I want it to go on forever so when football arrives, I know it will not be long before I will be seeking out my winter wear. I get a bit out of touch, too. I discovered only this morning that my old team, Bristol Rovers, have already played a number of pre season games, one of which was against Arsenal, just last Saturday. I could say I don’t know how I missed it, but the explanation is easy enough. There was a harbour festival in Bristol, my son was playing cricket, I was playing a lot of golf, I had a family to care for and be with. To be honest, a pre season friendly was so far off my radar it wasn’t actually on it at all.
Sky is desperate to show as much meaningless football as possible. There are tournaments going on all over the world with English teams – well, English in name, anyway – raking in huge sums of cash in remote places. I have not watched one of them – in fact, the Stoke v Singapore game was one I would go to great lengths to avoid – but I can imagine just how excited the Sky commentary and punditry teams will be getting.
That first league game always troubles me too. Fans turning up in three-quarter length trousers, along with ill-fitting replica shirts which never look good on middle aged men (and I should know) and wearing sunglasses has a more than slightly surreal look and feel to it. I have thought this ever since the very first games I watched at Eastville in the early 1970s. I should really have been at our local park, or having a crafty fag from my pack of 5 Park Drive in the local woods (you never know who might be about), or just lazing about playing music. But no. I’d take the number 36 bus to Lawrence Hill, walk past the Pit Pony (ask your parents, kids) and wind my way through Easton before watching the Rovers, all and always in blazing sunshine, as I remember, probably wrongly.
Once the new season gets going, it’s full on for the next 10 months, what with the Euros following on from the end of the league season. The prospect, not just of the Premier League but of live Vanarama, JPT Trophy and the Premier League Under 21 football, fills me with dread.
Once the weather gets all autumnal – any day now, I should think, now that the school holidays are underway – I’ll probably get back into it again, getting hopelessly over-excited at the Super Sunday clash between Leicester City and Stoke City, but for the time being, I’m just trying to keep the summer alive.
