While on my January summer hols, I wasn't totally cut off from football. I didn't see any matches on TV, read reports or even get the results. But one afternoon, I walked from our hotel at Cobblers Cove to a fisherman's bar in Speightstown, in the north of Barbardos, and sitting there was Mick McCarthy, manager of the Republic of Ireland. He had been on my plane on the way over, but I didn't talk to him then. I was with my wife, and she would have stopped me. When she sees a well-known face, she crosses the road, pretends they don't exist. Me, I start mumbling, coughing, smiling.
So I went over and said hi, congratulated him on Ireland getting to the World Cup finals. He said sit down, have a beer. Very friendly, no side, is our Mick. At Lucerne, for the World Cup draw, he went out afterwards with some English hacks who were covering the event (if you can call drawing names out of a hat an event). Next day, one of them rang him and said: Sven never socialises with the press the way you do, Mick, never shares a few drinks with us, don't you think that's a shame, Mick? Guess what Mick replied? Piss off, or words to that effect. Mick might be friendly, but he knows a loaded question when he hears it.
He did pass on some football gossip, which I can't reveal, but didn't pass on any scores, so the minute I got back to Blighty, I rushed to find out the latest news - going straight to the Third Division table. No sign of Carlisle United. Oh no. What's happened? They'd been hugging the bottom when I left - their normal place these past few seasons, the 92nd worst English team. Don't say they've fallen off the edge, left the known world, demoted before the season has even finished to the Auto Windscreens Heavy Vans Eddie Stobart League, Division Three, North. I turned away in disgust, but then, out of the corner of my eye, spotted them lurking miles up the table, with at least four teams below them. Amazing. While I've been away, they've managed a miraculous spurt, winning two matches.
But what about Spurs? That was more incredible, beating Chelsea 5-1 in the Worthington Cup semi-final, their first win over Chelsea since they had Alfred the Great as centre forward and Ethelred the Unready in goal. I am now totally fed up with hearing about it. "You didn't miss it, did you?" caring neighbours have asked on the hour. "Oh, you should have been there," someone says on the phone every ten minutes. "Spurs were absolutely brilliant," everyone remarks, every second. Oh shurrup, the lot of you.
I have missed other things, such as John Gregory leaving Villa, but a manager always leaves at this time of year. Beckham has grown his hair - but then, what else has he got to do, still playing his little-boy-lost, peripheral game? Arsenal have amassed 300 red cards while I've been away, boring, boring, and there's been a big story about players' enormous bonuses, yawn, yawn, as if every fan didn't know.
I see Dwight Yorke is still at Man Utd, still not playing, hanging about, counting his money. I'm just guessing, but I bet it's something to do with his Nike deals and others for which he gets about an extra million a year. I assume they depend on him being a Man Utd player, so if he leaves, he loses a fortune. As does his agent. Satellite TV can muck us, the punters, around, forcing matches to be played at stupid times, not Saturday afternoons as nature intended. Players' careers can be mucked up by their commercial contracts. So it goes.
Robbie Fowler has apparently been doing well at Leeds, and is already greatly loved there. But then he always will be: it's part of being a flawed personality, someone with human weaknesses, who does silly things. Same with Lee Bowyer and Gazza, Tony Adams and Paul Merson. Fans take them to heart, partly because of their faults. I don't sense a great well of love among Liverpool fans for Michael Owen, because, as a person, he is just so perfect, polite, sensible, nice. Just like Gary Lineker before him. A bit like Tony Blair, really, whereas old John Prescott got himself a huge amount of goodwill by that silly punch-up.
Missing Spurs beating Chelsea, and feeling guilty and depressed that I wasn't there, is part of what makes football fans football fans. You become attached to a club, following them through thick and thin. The more attached you become, the more you have to follow them. Man City's 30,000 or so diehard fans could not give up during those decades of rubbish football, getting demoted, being a laughing stock. They had to stick with it, enjoyed sticking with it, worried that if they gave up or looked away, even for a moment, something wonderful might happen. Now something wonderful is happening. It's only taken for ever. All clubs have, in their history, had small moments to remember, whether stuffing a deadly rival, enjoying a good cup run, managing a jammy win against a higher league team. It's the hope of such things happening again which keeps us all going.
Supporting Carlisle United, for example. Imagine that you have faithfully followed them for 50 years, yet for some reason you happened to be poorly, in hospital, working abroad, in prison, off your trolley, or that you lost your memory, during the 1974-75 season and you never saw them in the old First Division. It was a short stay - blink and you missed it - and the moment it was over, the world knew it would never happen again, not in anyone's lifetime.
I'm now blocking my ears to the score against Chelsea, telling myself I merely missed a skirmish, a small battle in a big war. I'll be there at Cardiff for the Worthington Cup final. Come on you lily whites, I'll be shouting. Which means they are bound to play badly, get well stuffed. That's the way it goes.
