Inspired by the Beautiful Game

 

Did you enjoy the Euros last week?  I can hardly believe that it’s only six days ago that England lost to Italy in the final.  Did you catch the feeling of togetherness which spread over the country a week ago?  We were gobsmacked by Luke Shaw’s goal after only two minutes and gutted when Italy equalised and even more so when we lost on penalties.  Football has, over the years, contributed many words - like these - to our language.  We ‘kick off’ an event or a journey.  Many schools’ disciplinary systems involve red and yellow cards.  And ‘goal’ has unfortunately embedded itself into management speak.  

So disappointing that all the goodwill before and during the match got spoilt by a few disgusting comments by a few racists, which the rest of us – the vast majority of us – condemned.  Real football fans are not like that.  Some of them are even writers. Auntie Google has provided me with a list of famous authors and the teams they support so I’m certainly not the only writer who does football, and possibly not the only ACW member. Also I was very proud to learn, from ACW Twitter, that England players Bukayo Saka and Raheem Sterling are both Christians.

I grew up loving books, reading them and attempting to write them, in little red Silvine notebooks, while my father and grandfather held long and heated discussions Leicester City FC in the background. Every Saturday afternoon we watched BBC Grandstand, presenter David Coleman with his finger in his ear (adjusting his old-fashioned earpiece) and the teleprinter banging out the results using a smudgy ribbon and frequently stalling. Man Utd 1 Leic City… Oh, oh, oh! Just tell us. Please!

Me myself, I have been passionately into football at various times in my life and at other times detached from it.  I enjoy writing about it.  A novel I wrote some time ago about a professional footballer was recorded on to cassette tape by a writer friend in Scotland and read to the blind students he taught.  My short story about women supporters sadly has yet to find a home, despite being close in a Writers Forum competition.  A near miss is no better than a mile, I’m afraid – as our penalty scorers discovered.  I’m now hoping to get together plans for a novel on football fans, in another setting and using different characters, in readiness for NaNoWriMo this November.  

It’s the emotion which football generates that grabs you.  When your team scores, you leap up from your seat, throw up your arms and shout “Yeees”.  Your heart races.  Some euphoric chemical I can’t name floods through your soul.  This  feeling is what I want to share with my readers, and the togetherness that we all felt last weekend.  The vast majority of football fans are normal people, often Christians - but always partisan. 

The previous vicar at our church, the Reverend Peter, held the post of sports chaplain at Sheffield Wednesday FC before he joined us.  He and I once got into a discussion about whether God was into football.  Peter assured me He was.  “So,” I asked, “who does He support?”  I think you can guess Peter’s answer.  

 

Rosemary Johnson has had many short stories published, in print and online, most recently at The Copperfield Review, 101 Words, Fictionontheweb and Café Lit.  She has also written a novel about the Solidarity period in Poland which she is – take deep breath – trying to get published.  In real life, she is a retired IT tutor, living in Suffolk with her husband and cat.  Rosemary is also the ACW's webmaster.