The Virtual Rambler

Number forty: 20^th September 2013

Sporting Stoics

Nowadays there are many men describing themselves as ‘football supporters’ , who may favour a particular football team but have never been to an actual “stadium” (that's what used to be called a football ground). They watch games involving 'their' team (necessarily a Premiership team) via Sky Sports. Often on a pub's big screen in the company of bawling chaps wearing the same replica shirt as their own. Not for these lightweights the long bus journey to a ground untroubled by renovation over several decades , there to join 2,000 other die-hards in savouring both the mediocrity of the chaps who are playing and their dilapidated surroundings. Here we join a chorus of disillusion , mingling with other connoisseurs of disappointment for an experience diametrically opposed to the bloated Premiership world of millionaire foreign players , dodgy billionaire owners and saturation media coverage. As far from the “paroxysms of the festival” as its possible to be , we’re making an ironic gesture in the same hallowed tradition followed by collectors of The Big Ben Banjo Band⁽¹⁾ albums and aficionados of Norman Wisdom⁽²⁾ films.

We pass through a rusting turnstile and make our way to the Pukka Pie Stand. A youth is parading a chalked blackboard containing the winning number for today's lottery around the pitch touchline. In your match program , the new manager calls for a rolling up of sleeves , the need to get ugly , to dig deep and to stand tall. Evidently it has slipped his mind that those who pass through the turnstiles here are in brief flight from an existence requiring those very activities. The supporter of any lowly football club is tested like Job , season upon season. He is powerless to prevent the transfer of any promising youngsters to asset-stripping clubs in higher divisions , in return for the acquisition of burly veterans from them. There is a phrase in the commentator’s lexicon , “they were frugal in their own half of the park.” Here it is skills that are frugal all over the park. When so few of the players appear to be able to kick the ball in the right direction or control one should it arrive in their vicinity , we ponder just what they actually do in their weekly training sessions. An average game will see over half of the free-kicks and corners sail directly into the crowd. These “dead ball situations” are something of a metaphor describing the fortunes of the club as a whole , its annually-renewed ambitions sailing away into empty space as each season gradually evolves into another grim battle to avoid relegation while barely remaining solvent. In that pundit-favoured phrase , they are going nowhere.

Among those making their exit after another goalless draw , most are ironically stoical (“we were lucky to get nil”) but a few sanguine souls entertain a prophetic voice within. “Out of their affliction shall one day come a shrewd and powerful manager who will restore the team’s fortunes. Under his guiding hand they will put their rivals to flight and an age of promotion shall begin.” For the time being , supporters’ disenchantment over each successive season forces them to transfer any ‘glorious consummation’ into the next one , rationalising each outgoing incumbent of the managerial chair as a precursor who has made the way straight for a messiah to come. “And his name shall be upon their foreheads , for the time is at hand. He shall come like a morning star from out of the dust to make all things new. Let us then be glad and rejoice , when salvation shall greet his reign” . . . and we behold a winning team.


Wig

⁽¹⁾ Studio assemblies of 50s musicians who played 'popular' old favourites like Knees Up Mother Brown and Ilkley Moor Bahtat as leaden collective instrumentals , with strummed banjos and syrupy strings. Not to be confused with Bluegrass banjo style.

⁽²⁾ Star of several films of the 1950s featuring his hapless , tight-suited character Norman Pitkin. He achieved cult celebrity status in Albania , where his “parables of the class war” were the only Western films permitted by the communist dictator Enver Hoxha. A single about him was aimed at that country's sparse music market and “Big In Albania” duly entered their obscure pop charts.

Archive

Virtual rambler #1 – Posturing, 9^th March 2010
Virtual rambler #2 – Managerialism, 17^th March 2010
Virtual rambler #3 – Nostalgia, 27^th March 2010
Virtual rambler #4 – The Alpha Male, 13^th April 2010
Virtual rambler #5 – General Elections, 3^rd May 2010
Virtual rambler #6 – The Leisure Industry, 15^th May 2010
Virtual rambler #7 – Guide to The World Cup, 15^th June 2010
Virtual rambler #8 – Human Nature, 12^th July 2010
Virtual rambler #9 – Communities, 13^th August 2010
Virtual rambler #10 – Worlds Apart, 6^th October 2010
Virtual rambler #11 – Dawdling, 22^nd November 2010
Virtual rambler #12 – ELVIS, 24^th December 2010
Virtual rambler #13 – Transience, 4^th February 2011
Virtual rambler #14 – Regional Accents, 15^th April 2011
Virtual rambler #15 – The Afterlife, 21^st July 2011
Virtual rambler #16 – Bizspeak, 27^th August 2011
Virtual rambler #17 – Night Walks, 3^rd October 2011
Virtual rambler #18 – Bob Dylan & Charles Dickens, 8^th November 2011
Virtual rambler #19 – Another Nutty Professor, 16^th December 2011
Virtual rambler #20 – Customer Choice, 16^th January 2012
Virtual rambler #21 – Wearing Shorts, 18^th February 2012
Virtual rambler #22 – A Brief History of Progress, 17^th March 2012
Virtual rambler #23 – The Myth of Sisyphus, 16^th April 2012
Virtual rambler #24 – Natural History, 20^th May 2012
Virtual rambler #25 – European Self Importance, 26^th June 2012
Virtual rambler #26 – Sweet Dreams, 25^th July 2012
Virtual rambler #27 – Excess, 17^th August 2012
Virtual rambler #28 – In Denial, 20^th September 2012
Virtual rambler #29 – The Way, 21^st October 2012
Virtual rambler #30 – On Rambling, 14^th November 2012
Virtual rambler #31 – Gazing Into The Abyss, 18^th December 2012
Virtual rambler #32 – Intellectual Gloom, 25^th January 2013
Virtual rambler #33 – Great Human Achievements, 20^th February 2013
Virtual rambler #34 – Autobiography, 20^th March 2013
Virtual rambler #35 – Your Good Health, 21^st April 2013
Virtual rambler #36 – Deconstruction, 20^th May 2013
Virtual rambler #37 – My Home Town, 19^th June 2013
Virtual rambler #38 – Ancient History, 21^st July 2013
Virtual rambler #39 – Possessions, 20^th August 2013