Don’t get me started on Football

Now it’s not really football – as in the game – that I hate it’s more the people who are actually involved in it in one way or another.

Particularly; the fans.

I like watching England play but what completely naffs me off is when you get shouty fans yelling at the screen when it is glaringly obvious that they have no idea what is going on. For example shouting “referee!” for no reason at the telly when the ref isn’t even in sight and anyway, it’s not actually the ref it’s the lines man… Duuuh…!!!

Another point – which also bothers me – is that they have no idea of any history of the football team whatsoever! Plane crashes, Busby, Hillsborough etc. They just focus on the here and now. They don’t even know how, when or why football was invented. They just read the glossies. Since when has a footballer’s choice of car borne any relevance to the match itself?

Then we get the non-committal types. The people who only support a team because their friends do, because their boyfriend or girlfriend does… They buy the team strip, wear it down the pub and they’re in the ‘gang’… Is that all it takes? Maybe if I come to work dressed in a suit and sit in the head’s office his secretary will totally accept me as the new leader of the school and I’ll get a pay rise to boot!

It’s a nice thought but in the real world acceptance doesn’t just happen overnight.

THEY DON’T EVEN WATCH MATCH OF THE DAY…!!!

I also can’t comprehend the whole “loose Geography” thing that football has acquired over the years. Is it something like “96% of Manchester United supporters don’t live in the UK”? I have four brothers, two older, two younger; the eldest doesn’t do football in general, the younger two support City and the other supports United. But then all of a sudden one of the City fans decided to support Newcastle! It happened right before my very absence! One minute his room was blue and then the next it was black and white with magpies all over it…

WE LIVE IN BOLTON FOR GOD’S SAKE – AT A PUSH I SUPPOSE YOU COULD SUPPORT MANCHESTER BUT NEWCASTLE IS MILES AWAY.

I wandered in to his room one day (I dunno why, probably to nick something) and I saw he had a poster with “Big Up The Geordie Army” above his bed. I glared at it suspiciously. It had a guy with no teeth, wearing black and white face paint and a Newcastle strip. I just shook my head and said “Mate, I hate to break it to you but you ain’t no Geordie.”