The end of the season

As far as I am concerned, the football season is over. I can’t call myself a supporter because in my book supporting a team involves actually going to see them play. Bristol Rovers will always be my team, although during the last 17 years, I’ve lost much of the emotional attachment. Under its current manager, the odious Joey Barton, and its financially doping owner, the Jordanian banker Wael al-Qadi, I won’t be going to another game, although to be clear I stopped going sometime before the club lost its mind and appointed such a little toad to take charge. And despite falling out of love with the Gas, I can’t just decide to support a different club. I mean, I really like Liverpool but by no stretch of the imagination could you ever call be a supporter. I’ve no interest in seeing them ‘live’, as I used to see the Rovers.

I’m sure there must be an element of glory-hunting with my loose attachment to Liverpool, although they’ve always been my ‘second team’, an utterly meaningless term if ever there was one. Over the last few years I’ve revelled in their success and have sometimes celebrated as if I was a real fan. But I’m not really. In my active Rovers days, it could ruin my weekend and possibly beyond if they lost. With Liverpool, once the initial disappointment has subsided, usually very quickly, there’s nothing much left. So the feelings I have for ‘my’ teams vary enormously.

It’s not just my attachment to Rovers that has wobbled over the years. It’s my general passion for football. We pay Virgin an obscene sum to watch the football and guess what? I only watch games in which Liverpool are involved. There’s just the one game on Sky’s Super Sunday today: Arsenal v Crystal Palace. Why on earth would I watch that? I suppose I could force myself to ‘support’ Arsenal in the hope that they win the Premier League and that Manchester City don’t and because Crystal Palace deserve to be relegated after sacking Patrick Vieira, but that’s hardly a recipe for a fun-packed afternoon, is it? There was a time when I could watch any and all football, but that time has long gone (apart from international football competitions). With Liverpool having nothing left to fight for, other than trying to pip Chelsea to that all important Europa Conference League position, I can take it or leave it, with the emphasis being on leaving it.

All that’s left for this season, which I believe runs into next season due to the Human Rights World Cup taking place in the depths of winter, is for international matches featuring England and maybe the Netherlands, the land of my mother.

When Barton is but a dirty stain in Bristol Rovers’ history, I intend to return, not for every home game – I have discovered another and better life away from wall-to-wall football – but to be with my friends, the football being very much a secondary consideration. Maybe my passion for the Gas will return, too. Stranger things have happened, but not many.

Until that day comes, the golf course, the pubs of King Street, plane and train-spotting, day trips and weekends away will hopefully fill the void.