Day 234. Ee-Aye-Addio. (22/8/13)

I've just done something that I'm fairly sure that I haven't since I was about seven years old.

I've just been to a non league football match. Bootle FC vs AGC Liverpool in the Liverpool Senior Cup Final. Last year's Liverpool Senior Cup Final to be precise; apparently there was so much messing around with cancellations of semi final dates that the final couldn't actually fit into last season so it slid into this.

I'd intended to make the effort to watch Bootle play for over a year now; they're local for a start and, moreover, their manager lives three doors away from us and he's a good bloke so I'm a little biased toward his team.

After reading in today's Echo that the match was tonight at the wonderfully named Delta Taxi Stadium, I came home and asked our Matty if he fancied going to a Cup Final.

So, for a combined cost of £7, the two us went, on a pleasant summer's evening to a Cup Final.

It's a different game at that level. When you're so close to the pitch, when there's no roaring crowd to give background noise simply a couple of hundred people watching a game and chatting quietly, when you hear every word that passes between the players. You know deep down that professional players are talking to each other throughout the game, know that they're not really that different to the lads on a pitch on a Sunday morning (other than their level of talent and lifestyle) but to be close enough to see the relationship between the players, to hear the contact with the ball, to hear the contact of defender on attacker?  It's a key into the real physicality of the game.

And the result? No idea. It was 1-1 when we left. Matty was bored so we came home, I think the pull of the XBox was greater than the experience of leaning against a metal bar on a touchline in an industrial estate. In fairness, it hadn't been much of a game; a lot of interplay in midfield, Bootle having the better of the first 20 minutes before Liverpool edged into dominance, taking the lead in the 31st minute. Bootle equalised early into the second half and the game swung back toward them again. And soon after that we were gone. If I'd been alone I'd have stayed. I may have still been there. It could have gone to extra time and penalties for all I know.

I've always maintained that people should support their local clubs and pointed out that I've been lucky, my local club has been successful on a worldwide basis. The joy of this is that I live 30 seconds away from another local club, there's no reason not to do this more often.