STRICTLY ARMCHAIR

Following from a distance…

Like so many million suckers worldwide, I am a football fan. And like so many million suckers worldwide I am a non-participating one. Meaning what? Meaning that I follow my team, and those around it, with diligent verve; checking out the fan websites, following all the results in the paper (reading from back to front, naturally, though it’s not so easy in the modern era of daily sports supplements) and through the daily twin media of radio and television. And I follow football to the total exclusion of all other sports bar a spot of tennis (and even then only Wimbledon). Rugby? A clutch of red-faced fat boys chasing an egg. Cricket? Rule 4162: Never trust a ‘sportsman’ who wears a jumper. Grand Prix? Bunch of insufferable James Hunts. Golf? Don’t even go there. And when I say don’t go there, that really encapsulates the kind of fan I am: strictly armchair.

It wasn’t always thus. There were times, in my early teens, when I would be a regular for home games. It was when I subtly shifted my allegiance from a very popular ’70s team in red to the monochrome set I still follow today, owing to a move from a small Welsh village with no local allegiance to a big city club with an absolute stronghold on its captive audience. I played every hour I could too, though the move was, in truth, a difficult time and a hard transition – going from bossing all-comers in a titchy village school to a bumbling playground bumpkin in my new locale (something that had a negative drip-drip effect on an already fragile confidence). And if I indulge the time to reflect, it was this schism that edged me away from football into music.

For some deep in the throes of adolescence music and sport can live together in perfect harmony. For me, however, a line needed to be drawn – so the two became mutually exclusive. Was it possible to nurture those dreams of being pale, frail and interesting with backcombed hair to match with the more vulgar, muscular and hair-flattening demands of the football pitch? Hell, no. And nor was it possible to consort with its followers either (with their ugly miniscule collections of Phil Collins and Tina Turner records, stupid blue jeans and enviable ability with the fairer sex) when the pressing intellectual concerns of the young and effete (Bowie, Burroughs, Bauhaus, badinage) pressed so heavily. And ne’er the twain should meet.

And yet in my early twenties, as the hairline started to go north, football, or at least my dogged resistance of it, crept back into my affections. It may have been the England qualifier I was forced to endure at ULU – where suddenly I was punching the air and hugging my fellow student – that started it. It may have been when I was asked to make up numbers at work for their regular five-a-side and discovered the skills I thought long vanquished were merely dormant (and while I’m not saying I was any great shakes I didn’t feel hopelessly out of place, just a bit off the pace thanks to a heavy nicotine addiction and lack of any meaningful exercise for over a decade). It may have been sharing a Walthamstow flat with a trainee dentist whose sole three passions were football, football and football (and, to be fair, amassing the world’s largest archive of dodgy porn) that gradually eroded my carefully worn resistance to the extent it was futile. It may have been elements of all three, but not quite.

No, the tipping point came during a brief recuperative stay with my parents in 1992. While there a well-meaning friend took me to a few home games at St James Park (yes, for better or worse, my mast is nailed firmly to Newcastle United). And while at first I confess I played it cool – the fare was, in truth, pretty ropey and relegation to the old third division seemed a certainty – a very definite switch was turned on full on April 25, at the home game against Portsmouth. Eighty-nine minutes of the most grindingly tedious ineptitude had passed and old mother doom had settled like a heavy fog over the massed ranks of the Leazes End, where we were perched disconsolate behind the goal. And then, magically, David Kelly unleashed a poacher’s grass-cutter of the first order that spun into the corner of the Portsmouth net. A semi-heart-attack-of-disbelief, then bang! Total euphoria. Inexplicable. Uncontained. Brilliant. Dancing like a stupid bear. A deal was sealed, and I’ve never been quite the same since.

Football, fortunately, is not quite the same as smack or crack. Once you’ve had that first big hit you can attain it again and again, and reach an even bigger high, though the path to enlightenment is invariably paved with potholes. Circumstance, cash and that old foe of geographical proximity mean that, with a few notable exceptions, I’ve followed most Newcastle games since from the comfort of my armchair. And while I’m hardly a vociferous chanter or shouter, and would certainly balk at exposing my beautiful belly in sub-zero temperatures, it’s certainly a far different beast when squeezed through the cathode ray nipple. Yet there are a few advantages. Take five…

1. Comfort

You’re not squashed next to some hair-lipped gurning idiot berating pizza-loving Micky Quinn for being a ‘useless fat c***’ every four seconds, as I once was. Revenge was swift and sweet though, as the mighty Quinn scored seconds later, ruining his one-man hate campaign for that day.

2. Shouting

Similar to the above, only you can bawl what you damn well want at the screen; most of which is best kept within your own four walls. That said, a very hairy Newcastle fan of my acquaintance might have been singlehandedly responsible for my neighbours emigrating when, during one televised game, he shouted “SPACKERS!” with such venom a crack verily appeared in the wall.

3. Refreshments

You can’t drink while watching a live game – only before or at half time – you can at home (and take a ‘lucky’ break in the necessarium as you please). And if you support Newcastle, it’s often a necessity.

4. Storming Out

When you frankly despair at the third rate rubbish played out in front of you, it’s a lot easier to have a hissy fit and make a dramatic exit when you haven’t paid £40+ for the privilege.

5. Pies

You’re missing a critical trick if you don’t accompany your game with some sort of lucky pastry-based ritual (besides the ones served at most grounds invariably tasting of dog food). When not going homemade I plump for the calorific haven of McDougalls Chicken & Asparagus family pie – crucially with no accompaniments, just salt and pepper. Sometimes the pie boasts more luck at the start, sometimes at half time – you have to be flexible and work with it. Remember, whatever happens on the pitch is a direct consequence of what you shovel into your pie hole. And that’s empirical fact.

All five of these went out the window on Saturday when, conspicuously crumb-free, I attended my first game since god knows when at Ipswich, courtesy of a ticket (and lift) from my kindly, slightly deluded, next door neighbour, a card-carrying Tractor Bore, sorry, Boy. In fact, the last game I saw Newcastle play was also at Portman Road, a pre-season friendly when a roundly-booed Craig Bellamy was still in the team (which takes us back at least five years as the most popular Welshman in Sierra Leone has since played for Celtic, Blackburn, Liverpool, West Ham and Man City, as well as proving his sporting credentials with a golf club).

The first difference was nerves. It’s possible to work yourself into a small frenzy of anticipation watching from home – it would be stupidly pointless not to – but that’s nothing to the gut-churning sensation that afflicted me almost an hour before kick-off. It was almost as if I was playing myself, and even if I wanted to I was far too nervous to eat a peanut let alone a pie. And then, of course, there are just so many thousands of people crammed into a small space, amplifying any latent strains of claustrophobia and misanthropy – and I have both in different measures – to the max. It took a quick visit to the gents to truly settle down.

But then, a revelation. Once we’d located our seats – just over the halfway line in the Cobbold Stand – it was clear that, despite the meagre comfort this flimsy plastic base would afford my pampered butt, the view was incredible. And even just watching the warm-up everything seemed thrillingly three-dimensional and, well, real and alive. Not the thin grey eye-gruel you get when processed through cameras you can’t control and not tediously underscored by the procedural inanity of the tried and tested commentator/pundit combo. While that affords the viewer some knowing detachment – with the tacit knowledge that if it all goes tits up you can always get on with the VAT return – here all eyes and ears are trained on the prize. And despite being knee-deep among Ipswich fans and unusually schtum and restrained for large swathes of the match, it really didn’t matter.  

If you’ve any passing interest you’ll already know the result (and if you don’t it was Ipswich 0 Newcastle 4, the Toon winning at an almost contemptuous canter) – a stat that merely proves there’s a real gulf in quality between the Premiership and the Coca-Cola Championship (Newcastle have already won as many games in this league than they mustered all last season). With any luck it will also play a part in the ultimate unravelling of Roy Keane. As Alf-Inge Haaland will testify, the psychotic leprechaun’s not the world’s most balanced individual, and after fluking his first managerial appointment with the Mackems his powers of alchemy seem to have quickly reversed. Once he forgets the Just For Men and lets the beard freely flow Ipswich fans will need to seize the keys for his ejector seat with haste.

“Stop looking so smug,” spat my neighbour as we waded through the massed ranks of blue, black and white back to the car opposite the Dark Horse pub. But I couldn’t. When Newcastle were relegated last May I was following the score on his TV amid the hurly burly of an early summer barbeque. He laughed at me then as I laughed at him now – poetic justice had been served, and never had it tasted quite so sweet. And if this whole post is an exercise in stating the bleeding obvious, so be it. It was just something to get down before the armchair claws back my soul.