Why Shankly Was Wrong...
Why Shankly Was Wrong...
uptheline has always disagreed with Bill Shankly; football should never be a matter of life or death. But sometimes life can remind you how embedded football is in your everyday, and a new life more than any other.
Yesterday saw the birth of uptheline junior number two. He has a sister who has just turned two and he is currently asleep in his Dad's arms on a maternity ward as his Dad types this on the notepad of his iPhone. So this is not the first time we have been here but, without sounding too 1975, already there is a resonant self-imposed responsibility to get his football induction just right.
36 hours or so ago, this little man was still waiting to be born and, in pauses between pain relief, this same phone was being checked for football scores. Less than 2 miles away, Reading were being promoted so I guess you could say we have a 'local' team for him to support. I'll do my best but I know I will feel childishly traitorous in the process. Football on Tuesday night was by no means bigger than life, it couldn't have been less consequential, but it was there like Marley's ghost rattling its nets in the background.
In fact, it had been there pre-labour. With mother and baby bags packed, I gave thought - genuine, meaningful, thought - to which home shirt I should have with me for the birth. Part superstition - it worked for baby number 1 - and part performing for an audience of none, this seemed to to sum up support (faith????) in so many ways. It was at once pointless but important to me, in no way bigger than life but there all the same.
Football has been there in the naming process (Mauge will never get through), in the local fixtures that were just too close to the due date (sounds like we did okay at Swindon) and in second guessing what his 'first' game will be (turns out it could be the one that guarantees our safety). With a kind of announced absence, it has always been there.
So what's the point of having a website if you can't do your own Oscar speech every now and then?
To Mrs uptheline: although for 9 months of the year, 4:30 to 5pm on Saturdays may make you doubt it but you'll always be the love of my life. Always.
To uptheline Junior Number 1: you are free to choose your own path with a father's blessing. Given the chance, I'd probably run the other way.
And to Tynan Littlejohn Dalton Lyndhurst Francis Drake Smeaton Dockyard and the Warships Cap'n Jaspers Jesters Number 12 that's right you the Green Army (Sam for short) - welcome to the world. For you I am afraid there is no choice: we shall stand together in Green knowing that whatever the Argyle Gods throw at is, it won't matter. Not really.
That said, three points on Saturday would be the perfect start.
Resurgam.
Thursday, 19 April 2012