Faking it at football

The engineer arrived to service the boiler the morning after England v Croatia. ‘Did you stay up to watch the football?’ I asked, as I moved the recycling bags and the hoover from the cupboard where the boiler lives.

‘Yeah,’ he said.

‘Very exciting, wasn't it?’

‘Well, it took a bit of time to get going. Too much passing the ball back to the goalkeeper, but they had a plan.’ I remembered the gruff-voiced pundit on the ITV coverage, explaining the triangle and diamond formations with diagrams. ‘That triangle thing, it worked for them, but there is a danger if they lose control of the ball, as they're already in the penalty area.’

I nodded. Despite the gruff-voiced woman's diagrams, I'd exceeded the extent of my football knowledge. ‘That Croatian goalie,’ he continued, ‘he was brilliant. Those three saves in quick succession...’

‘Stunning,’ I said. I had held my own, I had faked it at football.

One of my favourite episodes of Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? is ‘No Hiding Place’, the one where Terry and Bob are trying to avoid finding out the results of a football match, England v Bulgaria, as it's been shown on TV later in the evening. There is a clip here. They run out of the pub when threatened with being told the score. They drive past a newsstand, ducking below the dashboard so as to avoid seeing the poster on the board. When they finally sit down to watch the match, they discover it has been postponed.

It reminds me of my late brother John, hoping to do the same, to watch the match after the news. Suddenly, the newsreader threatened to announce the score. John ran out of the room, his fingers in his ears yelling, ‘La la la la la’. Such a thing could not be imagined now, with all the news available all the time, and matches that can be streamed on portable devices.

Just after dawn one morning this week, unable to get back to sleep, I switched on the World Service. There was a piece about delays in streaming services and DAB broadcasts, which cause live matches to arrive seconds later to our listening ears and viewing eyes. FM radio gives us real-time broadcasts; TV has up to five seconds delay, likewise streaming. DAB can be up to a hundred seconds slower than FM radio. The broadcasters claimed that this is spoiling the communal experience. One person remembered running into the street after a David Platt goal in Italia 90 to find all the neighbours had done the same. Now the shouts of celebration and groans of disappointment could arrive in a Mexican wave of cries along a terrace of houses, depending on whether they are listening to FM, DAB, watching TV, or streaming.

Despite my brother's and my daughters’ football obsession, I never really got into it myself, except for the charity football matches that were prolific in the seventies, where you got the chance to see celebrities from TV on the pitch. Dennis Waterman, Richard O'Sullivan from Man About the House and Robin's Nest, and Robin Askwith from the Confessions movies were just yards away from the crowd at small grounds such as Epsom and Ewell FC. So close that my younger sister was once hit in the face by a football glancing off Dennis Waterman's boot, and was treated to first aid in the changing rooms, meeting some of the concerned celebrities in the process.

From the late 70s to the mid-90s, football played no part in my life. I can even remember a time when my girls and I snuggled up on the sofa to watch Beaches while their dad viewed a match on the portable set in the bedroom. Those days were not to last once my daughters were infected with the football bug.

But there was a time when I followed Gillingham FC, for the 98-99 season. I was seeing a man who was a Gillingham fan. It became apparent that if I wanted to see him on a Saturday, I would have to join pre-match drinks at the Livingstone Arms, AKA the Livvy, go to the match, then to his local, the Fox and Hounds. My older daughter Laura was running the Adrian Pennock Fan club at the time. Pennock was her favourite player. APFC had a mascot, Little Ade, a yellow soft toy with handmade Gills shirt and headband, and there was a newsletter, edited and mostly written by her.

She once interviewed Adie, the real one, not Little Ade, and amongst the questions was: ‘Your hair is so wonderful and flowing. What shampoo do you use?’ The answer was Herbal Essences. Laura even had a drink with Adie, just before his wedding. She had discovered the church at which the wedding would be held, and persuaded her dad to drive her there. She only intended to leave a card from the APFC, but when Adie walked in, he invited Laura and her dad to a nearby pub. [Edit: Younger daughter, Rachel, tells me that she and her sister were invited to Pennock’s wedding after going for a drink with Adie and his dad]. Adie later became the manager of Gillingham FC, and the APFC was revived.

Laura asked me to write a poem about GFC for the APFC newsletter. It just about sums up my experience and knowledge of my year of faking it as a GFC fan. For context, the club motto is Domus Clamantium, Latin for ‘the home of the shouting men’. Here is my poem:

I used to go to Priestfield with a load of shouting men.
We all went to the pub before and then went back again.
I didn't know the offside rule, it's still a mystery,
but I have to say the players' legs did something nice to me.

The first match I went to it was raining so hard it was almost horizontal. The pitch was sodden, the players soaked, I wondered why the hell anyone would want to stand and watch this for 90 minutes. I became familiar with the work of Adrian Pennock, ‘I can't believe it's not’ Guy Butters, Carl Asaba, ‘Super Bobby Taylor’, and the plucky Johnny Hodge. ‘Johnny Hodge, Johnny Hodge, Johnny Johnny Hodge. He kicks the ball, he scores a goal, Johnny Johnny Hodge.’ I also learnt that when the away goalie took a goal kick, the chant went up of ‘Aaaaah, you're shit! Aah’, with ‘shit’ shouted just as they kicked the ball. Football chants tend not to be sophisticated.

My relationship with the shouting man who introduced me to Gillingham FC lasted a little beyond the Division 2 playoff between Gillingham and Man City at the old Wembley Stadium in 1999, where it seemed like half of the Medway Towns travelled, faces painted and in high spirits. Until the bloody ref found a few extra minutes at full time, in which Man City equalised, bringing the score to 2-2. It was reputed that Noel Gallagher was in the crowd, and was so sure his side was heading for defeat that he left before the full time whistle. City won on penalties. We was robbed.

During my season with the Shouting Men, my work colleague Brian often joined us at matches. He couldn't persuade his partner Linda to join him. ‘She'd have to be anaesthetised,’ he told me. At the end of the season, he said that he wouldn't be going next season. ‘Football is addictive,’ he said, ‘and all it leads to is more football. I don't like being addicted to anything.’ I went cold turkey, too, but football hasn't left my life due to my daughters’ ongoing addiction to GFC and international football. I now check the Gillingham score on my phone from time to time, on match afternoons, in memory of when I had to celebrate with, or console my children at Saturday teatimes.

The football gene has skipped a generation. My granddaughter is as interested as her grandma in football, and we often watch a movie together while her mum is at a match. She is in the school production of My Fair Lady, on for three days during the men’s World Cup. Attendance by the football-loving part of the family is built around the quarter-final matches. We have opted to see the show on Friday 10th July, taking the young actress home after the performance, so her mum doesn't have to collect her part way through a match.

On the subject of Latin mottoes, my younger daughter's boyfriend plays for Inter Rainham FC, motto: Via Rainhami Inferioris clausa est, which translates as ‘The Lower Rainham Road is closed’. As all of us locals know, there are always roadworks on the Lower Rainham Road.