(Soundtrack: still Robert Forster's new album. Might go on for a while, this. There's very little I love in life more than thoroughly effortless, articulate, intelligent guitar based pop. And Forster does it brilliantly.)
One thing I do love more than the aforementioned 'effortless, intelligent etc etc' is my wife. I adore my wife. And we're talking. It's derby day and we're talking. The pressure isn't really there yet, the tension isn't really there.
Except it is. For me. Internally. We need this today. We need this like I don't think we've needed any derby win since the cup finals of the eighties.
There was an Anfield Wrap show a few weeks back. Wildcards. A show where the questions are set by the listeners. One of the questions set was "What is our most important match now?"
Consensus was that the correct answer was always 'the next one' which, in this case, was the Leicester game. Which we drew.
My answer though? My answer was 'the derby. We win the derby and we win the league.'
I believed that then, I believe that now. I'd anticipated dropping points at Old Trafford. Hadn't anticipated dropping them at home to bloody Leicester and away at West Ham, now the most Tory of all the football clubs.
City have moved a point ahead. We have a game in hand. This game. Always one of the most important games of the season but this year so, so much more so.
I vividly recall going to Goodison in the eighties on a night when we needed to not lose to beat what was then Leeds' record for an unbeaten start to a season (this is obviously before Arsenal's 'Invincibles' season). Obviously we lost. To a goal from Wayne Clarke, brother of Leeds' Alan Clarke.
Bastard.
In what's been a weird season for Everton (the team that came to Anfield and lost to what is quite definitely the jammiest goal I've ever seen was the best Everton side I've seen in the best part of thirty years but the following three months have been mixed to say the least), this is their chance to put a block on probably the most serious title challenge we've had since 1991. And wanting to put that block on would be the most understandable emotion any football fan could have.
The atmosphere in Goodison is going to be incendiary, incredible. It will be a bear pit. I'd love to be in the away end today. It's a match with so much riding on it.
So, as a married couple who are deeply, deeply split on this subject, you're probably wondering how we deal with days like today?
I'm glad you asked.
Here's something I wrote five years ago.
People ask how I got into all this/ How I started writing about football, how that brought me to guesting on podcasts, talking as though I knew anything about anything. And sometimes getting away with it. Well, this is it.
Gareth Roberts had advertised for writers for the site. Asked people to pitch article ideas. I was already writing for Sabotage Times, about Liverpool and other things, so I pitched. I pitched about what it's like to be a red married to a blue on Derby day. And Gareth asked me to write it. So I did.
It was used in what was then the Wrap's new onsite magazine.
And I can't find it anywhere. It's not on the Mac, it's not on the iPad, it's not in the cloud. And the issue of the magazine it appeared in doesn't seem to exist anywhere on line. The magazine stopped at issue 13 and I can only find as far back as issue 10. Which is from 2014. But I definitely wrote the piece in 2013.
Apparently not all history exists on the internet.
Luckily, a year later, in the space between a derby game and a 4th round FA cup game, I bastardised the piece (as I'm always stealing from myself) to get a bit more attention.
And here it is. This is what it's like. I don't come out of this very well but that's nothing new ;)
*I should preface all that follows with this caveat: I adore my wife, she is a wonderful, beautiful, astounding, intelligent woman and I am thoroughly aware that I am punching so far above my weight that it’s not even funny.
MY wife’s first words to me on the morning of Wednesday, January 29: “How did you get through the double lock I put on the door? And who said you could come home anyway?”
This, my friends, is my life.
I’m from a mixed marriage: I’m Red, she’s Blue. All through my teenage years my Dad had one message: “Bring home any girl you want, any race, creed or colour, I’m not bothered. But not a Blue. Don’t bring home a Blue.”
Sorry, Dad. Not only did I bring home a Blue and go on to marry said Blue, but I married a girl who is passionate about her team and hates ours. Really hates ours.
Her hatred though is nothing compared to that of our youngest son. Matty is 13, has a Gwladys Street season ticket (look, they’re easy to get) and is as bitter, biased and bigoted a Blue as you will ever meet with a special enmity reserved for our Uruguayan magician.
Suarez – not that popular with Evertonians, it seems. Pic: Propaganda
Apparently I’m not allowed to argue against my son’s position or with his many, many barbed comments. Apparently I’m the responsible one here. Apparently I’m the adult. Well, when he turns 18, all bets are off. My wife though, my wife’s a grown up, I could argue with her. If I were stupid. I’ve grown to quite like sleeping in my own bed and being allowed to eat in the house. I keep my own counsel.
Derby days are obviously a little edgy. The build up is a slow simmer; dancing around the subject, both of us aware of the elephant in the room; the ticking time bomb just waiting to explode in the midst of our marriage. Avoidance is everything; avoidance of discussion, avoidance of comment and ultimately, during the match itself, avoidance of each other.
It’s best when either or both parties are at the game but sometimes contact can’t be avoided. The road to Wembley for the 2012 FA Cup semi-final saw myself in a car with both brothers and a friend while J and Matty were on a significantly more luxurious coach with their blue brethren. Matty was adamant that he had no intention of travelling to London with “a car full of Kopites”.
He’s aware that when he sings “Kopites are gobshites” (and he does, I don’t kid myself on this point) it’s his Dad and his two uncles that he’s singing about. He doesn’t care; we cease to be family, we are simply the enemy. Obviously the one stop that we made on the road to London was at the same service station at the same moment as my wife and son. Conversation was stilted.
WEMBLEY 2012: A bit awkward… Pic: Propaganda
At least there was conversation on that occasion. The legendary 4-4 draw saw the two of us occupy separate floors of the house with separate radios playing the same commentary – J upstairs for the first half listening to the match in the bath, myself occupying that position for the second half, crossing on the stairs at half time without as much as a sideways glance at each other.
But that was civilised and peaceful compared to what we must refer to as ‘the night of the Gary Mac free kick’. We were both at home, watching the TV coverage. The first half had (if memory serves) clearly gone our way, Liverpool dominant, Everton ineffectual and as the whistle blew on the first 45 minutes J turned and said “we’re going to get nothing from this”.
I was young, I was naive, I was bloody stupid. I thought that this was an invitation to balanced discussion of Everton’s tactical inferiority rather than the complaint against perceived refereeing ineptitude that it was designed as.
“Well you won’t if you keep playing like that,” I muttered.
You know that moment when you can hear words coming from your mouth but you can’t believe that you’re actually saying them out loud and there’s no way to stop them emerging into the world no matter how you try? Yeah, that.
Our house is kind of open plan. The living room is an L shape leading into the kitchen. My wife spent the second half in said kitchen with the radio on. I occupied the living room with the TV and when that free kick hit the back of the net I celebrated in what I viewed as the most sensible manner possible given the circumstances.
I made no noise. I was utterly, ineffably silent. I’m stupid but I’m not that stupid. I had no intention of drawing attention to myself. I sank to my knees, I hammered (quietly) at the floor, I screamed (silently) “you fucking beauty” over and over and over again. I was deliriously happy, ecstatic, transported. I turned slowly and there was J, standing (equally silently) in the doorway watching this pantomime.
OH WE LOVED YER DERBY GOAL: Gary Mac celebrates that goal with Carra. Pic: PA
Four days. Not a word between the two of us. Four days.
This week? This week was easier. A 4-0 humiliation speaks for itself. There is no room for argument, no space to claim that a single questionable event unfairly turned the path of the game. Liverpool were better than Everton. Far, far better than Everton. Protest becomes pointless, discussion irrelevant – Liverpool deserved to win.
That’s obviously not a sentence that will ever be used in this household. We’re not going to talk about this.
Ever.
There is precedent. There have been equally convincing thrashings handed out. There was a lunchtime kick off where we embarrassed the Blues; by late afternoon I had been talked into furniture shopping. Two thousand pounds that win cost me. I’ve no idea yet what the cost of Tuesday, January 28 will be but I’m fine with every single penny.
Peace and harmony have been fully restored. Until we beat Arsenal, they beat Swansea and the FA’s little black balls make their tense way from bag to bowl and breath becomes bated once again….
Comments
Post a Comment