It’s gonna take a lot to drag me away from you

“It’s gonna take a lot to drag me away from you,” I once thought about the close association I had with my only football club, Bristol Rovers. A team is, after all, for life. You don’t choose your team, your team chooses you. And when a friend told me he’d lost the emotional attachment to his team, also Bristol Rovers, I wondered how that could be true. It couldn’t happen to me. Except it could and it did. They’ll always be my team, in the sense that I can’t replace them with another team, but now they’re close, at least geographically, yet so far.

There have been moments, times when I thought the magic might come back and I would be back on the terraces. Never say never again and even now I won’t say never. But any remote prospect of renewing my vows with my team all but died when Joey Barton became manager. I had been with the club through thin and thinner, but his appointment was a new low, even for Bristol Rovers.

I didn’t actively seek out a replacement team to follow, I just turn up from time to time at Bristol Manor Farm, Stoke Gifford United and I watch Liverpool on telly. In no sense could I be regarded as a fan or a supporter. I know the difference. But it’s not just Rovers I’ve tired with. It’s football, nearly all of it.

For most of my life, I’ve watched Match of the Day. Gary Lineker is a wonderful presenter and the analysis is on a different level to anywhere else, with the possible exceptions of Ally McCoist and Gary Neville. But I’m not interested in any of the games. Last weekend, I watched Liverpool’s draw with Brighton (don’t asked me how since it wasn’t on any of the mainstream sports channels) and nothing else. There were loads of live games including the North London derby and the Manchester derby but I wasn’t interested. If I’d watched either game, it would have been to see the team I hated least lose. That’s no basis on which to watch football. More than ever, I’m not interested in being neutral. At least not in club football.

The Human Rights World Cup I shall watch. England will of course disappoint and doubtless Wales will deaden my spirits by winning a few games, but I’ll fill my boots until the domestic drudgery resumes. So I’m not completely falling out of love with football. It just seems to have slipped down my list of priorities.

What I miss about going to football is the social side. What I don’t miss is the football. Another revelation for me was learning to watch the game with two eyes open rather than one. Once you do that and recognise that actually the referee wasn’t as bad as everyone round you seemed to think he was and that blatant offside that led to the opposition’s goal was actually five yards onside, it’s probably better to do something else. What is the point in supporting a team unless you think the whole world, but especially the referee, is against you? That, I now believe, is more of a symptom of my increasing apathy with Our National Game than it is with my divorce from my team.

There’s nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do that could bring me back to football. Or is there? Maybe when Joey Barton has moved on to another club whose reputation he can trash, I might think again. There’s no other club for me, never will be. Maybe that’s where the story ends?