I felt it when Callum McManaman said his important goal against Preston North End last Saturday ‘didn’t feel as good’ as it should. In simpler times it would’ve been cloud nine stuff. Not now.
The sheer drama of it, should’ve provided a scene replayed over and over again in the mind. A drop of the shoulder, that strike, the against-the-odds wonder, the timing and the survival bid implications – wow! It had all the necessary ingredients of a water cooler moment, to be talked of all week.
Leave aside the virus-affected social distancing implications of that office-based scenario being rendered unlikely, and we’re left with the glaringly obvious – it didn’t feel good for the hero because you weren’t there to share in the magic.
That, for me, is the drug too. That crowd communion at The Kenny. That community. That togetherness. That unity. Ecstasy or despair, experiencing the same momentary epiphany as 10,000 people, that’s what realise I crave. That’s football for me.
It’s part of the reason why my goldfish memory cannot recall each inconsequential kick of every game, as I know some can. I’m slightly envious if that’s you, but I do write them down, so that kind of counts. Though, stored away in the grey matter, in perfect technicolour and surround sound, are the big magic moments.
There I can find reruns of the entire Luton Town staff and squad, arm-in-arm, facing 5,000 of you, singing as one at Notts County, in League Two promotional bliss.
It’s the synapse sizzle of a last-gasp winner and never-ending knee-slide in the snow on a Tuesday night against Portsmouth.
It’s why, when he emerged triumphant from the tunnel as a League One champion, that visceral roar for Mick Harford will forever tingle the spine.
I could go on.
You may have a different view. Indeed, I have friends who love the minutiae of it all, the five-yard passes, the tactical machinations, the defensive header back to the goalkeeper.
I see them, I’m just a hopeless romantic for the drama, the pageantry and the big plot twists. That’s where the dopamine floods this brain with a sense of feeling part of something bigger than 22 blokes kicking a football.
But without you there at the Kenny, Saturday felt like a dress rehearsal.
Don’t get me wrong, Luton did a wonderful job to accommodate the media, with all the social distancing hoops they had to jump through, and there was a novelty to it. And I never will forget what a privilege it is to travel the country, speak to managers, players, fill my face with press room food – the good, the bad and the inedible – and write about my hometown club.
I’m also very mindful of the fact that, after three months away, footballers need more than three weeks to prepare properly for a return. It’s the same for all clubs, of course, but what the ‘new normal’ is, is half-baked, an unusual compromise in unprecedented times. But, as it’s not currently for the fans, what is it for?
During lockdown, football is all I wanted. Any football. Behind closed doors? Sure. Or so I thought. But I was beyond bored.
Yet Saturday emphasised something, which is not an original notion by any stretch of the imagination, granted, but something that cannot be stressed enough – football without fans is nothing.
It also crystallised something that I’m sure you know to be true too. It may be locked away and mentally masked, such is our constant quest to prove our unwavering devotion to the game, or a club – but football, on its own, is mostly rubbish.
Usually, we can revel in that fact together. Like life – and good luck to you if yours is a rare, non-stop rollercoaster of James Bond-style adrenaline, adventure and bedroom gymnastics – football, for the most part, is long passages of mediocrity, sprinkled sparingly by that rare gem of explosive emotion. When it happens it needs, no, deserves a suitable reaction.
Take last weekend against Preston, it was five minutes of thank-heavens-football-is-back promise, 82 minutes of rusty, no-shots-on-target Town tedium and then McManaman stepped forth.
What once would have been fireworks turned out to be a damp sparkler. The goalscorer knew it. Somewhere, in the – admittedly underused – rationale part of your football brain, you knew it too.
You weren’t there for a start. That’s not a dig, just fact. Perhaps you were battling against the predictable omnishambles that is the EFL’s iFollow platform. Perhaps you got connected in time to see what Harry Cornick had done to his hair, or McManaman’s goal in real time. Perhaps you didn’t.
I don’t know, perhaps to any armchair football fan out there, there was little difference. The net bulges, you jump out of your seat, crack open another can of lager and Bob’s your uncle – a very valuable point from the jaws of almost certain defeat. It most definitely was that.
But, if like me, what you’re really in the market for is what happens on the pitch, plus simultaneous human connection off of it, it was nowhere close to what it should have been.
I guess, what I’m saying is, I miss you. Yeah, you. We’ve probably never met, but for 90 minutes on a Saturday afternoon or a Tuesday evening, I can’t wait to spend my time with you.
It’s because of your passion, your singing, your cheering, your hilarity, your nonsense, your seething indignation, your hope, your disappointment, your joy and your sardonic moans at the Beech Path announcement.
That is what elevates football beyond the pure mechanics of a talented FA Cup winner hitting the top bins in the 87th minute.
With virtually no-one there to see it, I’m with McManaman – it just didn’t feel as good.
The Swansea stayaway
I won’t be going to Swansea today. In a pros and cons list, I can’t lie and say the mammoth trek for an early kick-off and the prospect of a ghost game didn’t loiter in the latter column. But the truth is, I feel uneasy about travelling to Wales, when it is under more stringent – and I would argue better – lockdown regulations than England.
It’s a personal decision, but it doesn’t sit right that I’d be allowed to cross the border and drive to the Liberty Stadium, when millions of Welsh men, women and children have not been permitted to travel more than five miles from their home, for months. If you’re not from Wales you can’t go there on holiday either.
So, instead, I’ll be hoping the football and internet gods can get iFollow to work so I can sample the strangeness on my laptop.
