Diary of a football fan

There's always next season

As promised, here is a précis of my Sunday which might make you smile

It was quite an afternoon.

13:00 – My friend John and I go into Earls in Maidstone where I ask the barmaid if they are showing the game. She turns out to be the gobbiest barmaid on planet earth…...  In fact her exact words were “****ing hell these blokes want the ****ing football! I suppose you want a ****ing beer too! **** me some people! And they’re ****ing Leeds fans!”.  We were very scared.

This ‘banter’ continued for the next couple of hours – every time we ordered a round we got a torrent of abuse – I was beginning to think she had tourettes syndrome. She was quite nice in a filthy kind of way though – in the end I was rude back and she seemed to like that….. Anyway, she told us that the footy would come on at 3 exactly as they didn’t have sky and were picking it up from some dodgy Arabic station. We would have walked out there and then to find an alternative but for the fact that we suddenly became aware of two 18 year old girls sitting in front of the big screen talking to a couple of older fat blokes who had already identified themselves to us as Leeds fans. Then we noticed one of them (the better looking one – a real cutey) had a Leeds shirt on! And that was that, we moved in and joined the group, and they were our drinking partners all afternoon.

15:00 – The P.A system bursts into life and we become aware that a band are warming up. The gobby barmaid finally confesses that they can’t get the Arabic footy channel and we are forced to run in the pouring rain over to Ashes, which is absolutely packed with Leeds fans, unbelievable. A few Watford fans and neutrals there but the vast majority were on my side.

15:00-17:00 – Leeds fail to show up and the promotion dream is over.

17:00 There are hugs of commiseration at the end with the cutey which is nice. No funny business though, I was old enough to be her father.

I’d thrown my rule book out of the window. 8 pints and no food. I stumble out of Ashes, waving goodbye to the cuties and the fat blokes. Only football could unite such a bizarre cross section of people.

17:15: A taxi drops me off. I am hugged by my wife and children, and relive my pain for the next 45 minutes, apparently talking about the cute Leeds girls a bit too much...

18:00 – I am in bed asleep.

Oh well. There’s always next season...

Ed - BLCF 95% - Audible laughter followed by sagely nodding in a 'been there, done that' kind of way.