emergency crumpets

‘Scuse the dramatics, but I’ve fallen out of love with football. Well, that’s what I like to tell myself, and whoever else will listen, when I try to explain why my one year sabbatical away from the game is now into its 4^th season. But to fall out of love with something would imply that there was a time when I was in love with it, and, really, I’m not sure that I was.

It had its moments, of course. Trips to Wembley and Old Trafford, B&Bs in Morecambe and a freezing cold Don Valley Stadium will never be forgotten, and nothing can dampen my enthusiasm for some pre-match pub action.  Well, I say nothing, but increasingly it turned out that the football could always ruin a good drink.

Perhaps it was down to the league club that I still consider myself as a supporter of - if not an actual attender of games at - going through some well-publicised and damaging changes that prompted me to call it a day. That’s a bit of a cop-out though, if I’m being honest. The inertia kicked in some time before the new owners rocked up and things started to go awry on and off the pitch. I was bored bored bored.

Have I missed it? Not really. I miss the pub, and I miss travelling to away games, but I haven’t missed the 90 minutes of ‘action’ itself, so I’m not sure why, hungover and on an emergency crumpets mission at the local shop, I picked up a copy of the Non-League Paper for the first time and read it front to back, soaking its pages with Lurpak-stained fingers as I read match reports for teams I’d never heard of from leagues I didn’t know existed. 

What the frick is the Isthmian Premier, I pondered.

Perhaps I’ve missed it more than I thought then, and buying that newspaper with those crumpets was my gateway back in. Whatever the reason, I’ve bought the paper ever since and have subsequently spent months Wiki-ing the heck out of non-league clubs and its divisions, principally in an attempt to work out why Gloucester City are in the National League North.

There’s a lot to go at, isn’t there, and I like the cut of Non-League’s jib. There’s history and there’s passion and, excuse me if this comes across a little patronising, there’s a ‘properness’ about it that appeals. 

As such, I’m going back in, but am eschewing Big Football in favour of the non-league stuff. 

Let this be the season where I make my glorious re-entry into the world of football, and let this website be the place where I write stuff about it.

There will be blethering. 

There will be mis-remembered match reports. 

There will be pies.