Wednesday, August 26, 2020

A Season in Sun and Shadow


Inexplicably, when I was ten years old, I decided to support Norwich City, despite growing up in Horley in Surrey, 150 miles away. (My excuses, well-practiced as I have been asked this question endlessly for nearly thirty years, is that I had a poor grasp of geography, and liked the colour yellow. At least I didn't become one of those boring tossers who sat around 'wearing a Brazilian shirt with a number 10 on the back and swigging from a bottle of lager, whilst talking of the beautiful game', which Half Man Half Biscuit rightly suggested should be a criminal offence.)

I've been a season ticket holder at Carrow Road for the last nine years, since I moved from Brighton to London, but I'm not expecting to use it much, if at all, during the 2020-21 season. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, it is still unknown when English Football League (and Premier League) clubs will admit fans again, and when they do, stadia will most likely be well below capacity. As I have to travel to Norwich matches by train - often completely packed, especially on the many occasions when the Liverpool Street route is closed and I have to take two, far smaller trains from King's Cross - I probably won't get to a home match again until things are closer to normal.

Watching or listening to matches behind closed doors doesn't appeal to me, as I wrote about here - the live experience is everything. So I was delighted when I saw that fans would be allowed to attend non-League matches, below a certain level, and made plans to watch as many new teams at new grounds as possible. (A prospect that, if I'm honest, enthused me far more than that of traipsing through another season in the Championship with Norwich.) I hope to revisit my hometown club, Horley Town, as well as teams with an interesting history (e.g. Corinthian Casuals or Dulwich Hamlet) or political resonance (such as FC Romania or Deportivo Galicia or the Chagos Islands national team) or community-run sides such as Clapton CFC or Enfield Town.

Ten years ago, I was part of a vibrant football blogging community on Twitter, and I miss it. So, as a throwback, and to give me something to do after the final whistle in the absence of crowded post-match pubs, I thought I'd write about the games here. I hope you enjoy it.

No comments:

Post a Comment