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Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby

I don’t ‘get’ football. I imagine I never will. That moment when the whole crowd stands up with an almighty roar – I find it disconcerting. The gestures, the singing, the sense of belonging with a weird bunch of fanatics, no, I don’t get it.

I’d go further and state that I find football alienating. When people are getting all pent up about which team scored against whom, I’m wondering if I’m the only one who hasn’t lost the plot. When football funks last not minutes but hours and days (and since my family support Leeds United, sometimes years) I’m not going to pretend not to judge you. I find that eccentric bouncing off walls after a rare win similarly annoying. My favourite result: 1:1. You can’t complain that nothing happened, there were two goals, but it’s also (mostly) an emotionally neutral result. Pretty forgettable.

I don’t, despite my family’s joking, hate football. I always enjoyed playing football. I’d say I’m crap at it, but in my short history of playing for a team I was part of a defence which kept a clean sheet in every match we played. I admit I was about nine at the time and didn’t play often. At a similar time in my great footballing career, alongside another friend, I made a case for us girls being allowed to play football to the primary school headmistress. We won the right to play and chased down the pitch with great glee.

However, what was always clear was that the Midget was simply better. She was faster than me, despite being a head shorter, and could coordinate the ball going into the back of the net. She also remained interested.

And my sister’s interest fuelled my mother’s interest. And my father dutifully paid attention. And so began a family love of football that involved everyone except me. The Saturday afternoon division began when the Father decided that he wasn’t paying for me to attend another match after I’d spent the entire 90 minutes plus teaching myself to read back to front and upside down with the assistance of the program. It escalated as the Mother became more obsessed. I enjoyed the Saturday afternoons left to my own devices, but dreaded the emotional implosion that would come through the door in the evening.

Why am I thinking about all this now? Because I’ve been reading Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby. It’s a book about obsession, and his obsession happens to be football.

I recognise the truth of the fact that in a good football match, where both the team and the fans have bothered turning up, you can close your eyes and feel what’s going on by the sound and motion of the crowd. The Mother talks about this as you might a religious experience. Perhaps, if I could allow myself to shut my brain off and just join this, then I do believe that I would feel some great sense of belonging. After all, it’s not ‘You are Leeds and I am a fan’, but ‘We are Leeds’.

Instead it all makes me mildly anxious.

I’m fascinated though with the concept of belonging. It is a weird need which so many people I meet seem to struggle with. If football stands in for religion or village communities and satisfies a basic human need, who am I to argue with it. In a way, I have a deep respect for football’s ability to create a sense of belonging. I just can’t be part of it. For unknown reason, I’m not wired that way.

But I enjoyed the book, Fever Pitch, probably because as much as it talked about score lines and players to whom I cannot relate, it also tackled masculinity, depression and identity. Nick Hornby blended his mental patterns with the character and history of his own, intimate relationship with Arsenal, and allowed him to write how he felt. Quite an achievement when feelings are so tricky to truly grasp.