When I get home after a round of golf, the conversation with my wife follows a familiar pattern:
“How was the golf?”
“Mixed, but a lot of fun”
“What did you talk about with Pete?”
“Football”
“What else?”
“Nothing, really”
“You were with him four hours – you must have discussed something else!”
In a way, it would be better if I was lying: if we’d discussed the latest fashions, how to resolve the Syrian crisis or the case for parallel universes. But we didn’t. We might have briefly touched on other things, but basically it was just football.
Let me hasten to add – we also don’t engage in Donald Trump-style “locker room banter”. Nor did any locker room/dressing room I’ve ever been part of, I’m happy to say.
Our emotional involvement with football is a kind of escapism, of course. And a much-needed one perhaps, when the news is either unbearably cruel or pathetically trivial, many of our politicians either crazily stubborn or away with the fairies, and the sensible middle ground a seemingly abandoned wasteland.
Football helps.
Pete is an Arsenal fan (hence my soft spot for the Gunners). But irrespective of who they support, talking to other fans reminds us that supporters are fundamentally the same.
Yes, we’ll lay claim to be being special – “the best supporters in the world” and so on. The myth of uniqueness is part of the ritual. However, we know deep down that our commitment – great as it is – is shared by those who follow other teams. Yes, even Ipswich.
At Norwich these days, of course, we do have something special to feel good about: goals and wins. After 12 games the table doesn’t lie – and we sit at the top of it.
I know there isn’t universal satisfaction among our fans, and I won’t try to argue the point here. Results are everything, and I agree we’ve made it hairier in several games than it should have been but I have to say I’m enjoying some of our football.
Saturday’s midfield of Dorrans, Pritchard and the evergreen Wes produced some stuff genuinely reminiscent of Brazil (the nation, not Alan).
In passing, I have to admit to a bit of sloppy writing in a recent piece where I described Graham Dorrans as a revelation. In fact, he’s just showing the impressive form we saw glimpses of two years ago. If it’s a revelation we’re after, there’s the magnificent Ed Balls on Strictly.
We love our club and bristle at outside criticism of it. That’s our club, though. I don’t know about you, but I just can’t feel the same passion for our national team, and I don’t mind it being lampooned.
A play once featured journalists reporting on an England game in Eastern Europe. There’s a serious story, but the writer couldn’t resist putting his creativity into the journalists’ reports. One describes an England defender as “elephantine in everything but memory”.
The author was Tom Stoppard. Like many of his plays, that one (“Professional Foul”) is simultaneously thought-provoking, moving and funny. My own favourite is Arcadia, a play full of original and touching detail.
Set in a country house in two periods 150 years apart, Arcadia is about love – together with sex, scholarship and landscape gardening. In the ‘old’ scene we find the precocious Thomasina Coverly grappling with the science of dynamic, irreversible processes – a train of thought sparked by the image of stirring jam into rice pudding.
Believing he’s about to be killed in a duel, her tutor Septimus Hodge later leaves a letter for only her to understand, using the same jam and rice pudding image to convey his growing feelings for her. It’s a tender and beautiful piece of writing, in the midst of some very funny dialogue (you’ll never think of hermits the same way again).
The point of this? It’s perhaps that good writing doesn’t teach us much new; rather, it recreates what we’ve already known and felt. I’m just starting Volume 2 of Tales from the City. Like Volume 1, it’s a range of different perspectives, narratives and times. They’re all bound, though, by the love of Norwich City; they make us smile as we’re reminded of our own passion for the club.
In the end, it’s all about human feelings. Harking back to my last article, that’s the ultimate thing we’ll create (if we manage to create it at all) in robots: emotional connection and response. Whatever they’ll be doing with us and for us, it’s hard to imagine we’ll ever get much out of kissing one.
Emotional connection – the real stuff of football. And indeed, of life.
Re: your Arsenal supporting friend. Along with Everton fans, they don’t know truly what it is to be a football fan as neither of their clubs has ever suffered relegation from the top tier.
Cup final loss maybe or not finishing quite as high in the PL as they might have..but never real stomach-punching disappointment and summer long yearning for another chance to get back to the top table. Feel free to pass that on to Pete.
If Strachan doesn’t pick Dorrans for the England match, then he really has lost his marbles.
The “elephantine..” line – Gary Cahill to a tee.
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PB (1): Thanks.
I don’t have the heart to pass on your message, though. Given how often their team has raised hopes only to dash them, I’d say Arsenal fans have suffered enough. Not to mention years of taunting from Drogba & Mourinho – can’t be easy to bear.
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I think everybody has a Gooner mate. I’m ‘fortunate’ enough to have two of them.
The only good thing about them not coming here this season (their fans in general, not my friends) is that we won’t be subjected to the BFG song and it’s ally, “You’re only here to see the Arsenal”.
They don’t bother with the “My Old Man” one as it means very little outside London.
I have to say they have some great fans though and if anybody wants to use the ‘diversity’ card, I truly believe the Gooners helped drag the football world into the 21st Century.
PS my “second team” is actually Spurs!
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1. Surely being a football fan is about supporting your club whatever the situation? To belittle other supporters commitment or understanding upon something they have no control is just arrogance. Does your theory make fans of Dagenham & Redbridge ‘true fans’ as they know what it’s like to be relegated from the football league?
Over the years there’s been plenty of bad moments supporting Norwich. That just makes me enjoy the good times, it doesn’t make me a better fan than others.
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Dave H – dismount yeself from that high horse.
It was fact-based banter. Fact – AFC & EFC fans haven’t experienced that full range of fan emotion that we and fans of all other clubs have. Mike Walker of course nearly gave EFC fans that missing piece of the fan puzzle.
As for “arrogance” 🙂 AFC are the most arrogant (Piers Morgan – need I say more) in the land precisely because they have come to expect wonderful things always as they’ve never suffered the slings and arrows of relegation.
And yes, I have far more respect for Daggers fans.
I’m sure Stewart’s friend would take it all in good humour unlike yourself..maybe.
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Ahh, I can only apologise for missing the hilarity of your banter. However, as my feet appear to be caught in the stirrups of my high horse, can I just clarify that as we have never experienced the joys of winning the Premier, the FA Cup, European trophy etc (which is a fact) can we claim to have experienced that full range of fan emotion? Would be interesting to know what clubs could say that from our criteria.
I know plenty of Arsenal fans, not sure I would write them all of as arrogant, but I agree Piers Morgan isn’t a good advert for them.
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Dave H (again) – any fool can enjoy and celebrate the best of times – the measure of a supporter is how they cope with the worst of times.
Finishing outside of the PL top 4 does not constitute hard times in my book – and AFC fans haven’t even had to ‘suffer’ that terrible fate for a long time. Continual unchecked success invariably breeds arrogance and entitlement.
You really need to get those stirrups seen to.
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Too many sweeping generalisations about the mindset of fans from other clubs for my liking.
The sense of entitlement is applicable at all clubs to varying degrees.
Only last Saturday from within the depths of the City Stand, about Rotherham, “we should be hammering sh*t like this five or six nil.”
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Dave H and PBS: Gentlemen – perhaps I can intervene before this goes the way of a UKIP MEPs meeting!
I suspect we judge a team’s fans by the small number we’ve directly encountered or seen on the media. I certainly do. Most Arsenal fans, I believe, view Piers Morgan as a complete embarrassment.
The debate about Wenger has rumbled on for several years now: should Arsenal fans be grateful for the sustained success he’s brought, or dissatisfied at the lack of trophies for so big a club?
I can see both sides. Great credit to him for maintaining a high level while under financial constraint while The Emirates was being built. But in truth, Arsenal should have won the league last season.
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Thanks Stewart – please be reassured I have no plans to lower myself to that level.
PBS – I think I get the point you’re making & in my original comment I indicated that it’s the hard times that make me enjoy the good times as a Norwich fan. Indeed, for all the complaints I’ve read on here about the ups & downs in recent years, in my opinion, it’s still much better than those years pre/post Worthington which is why I’m still pretty happy about our current situation. I just don’t agree that people need to experience relegation to truly understand what it is to be a fan.
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