FIXTURE LIST IS NOT THE SAME
As was made abundantly clear to readers of last week’s Non-League Paper, the fixtures are out. Page after page of them, so much so that there was no room for the column that you are currently reading. The week’s deferment has at least given me some extra time to study Chester’s fixture list.
To be honest, apart from the essentials, I’ve scarcely given it more than a cursory perusal. Like everything at the moment, it’s just not the same. Who knows what games I’ll be allowed to attend, or if they will even take place? Following the sorry demise of Macclesfield, it sometimes feels like the whole house of cards could come crashing down.
Ordinarily, the annual secretion of the mysterious fixture computer is reason to rejoice, often preceded by a nerve-jangling daily countdown. Arriving in the midst of that barren inter-season wasteland, it’s far enough away from the previous term for the scars to have healed, and close enough to the next one to allow you to dream of fantastical possibilities. To the untrained eye it might be little more than a list of dates and obscure northern towns, but this is the scripture by which the next nine months will be lived, a glittering roadmap of our hopes and dreams.
Grim missive
I was once on holiday in some pigsty, Bali or something, when the fixtures were announced. With smartphones still but a madman’s dream, I was mercifully able to locate somewhere with internet access and a printer.
Safely stowed for the duration of the tour, those two well-thumbed sheets of A4 gave me something to cling to as I was forced to endure barbaric conditions, unfamiliar food, and an endless succession of godforsaken ruins. A temple is a temple, but an away day is a trip.
Sadly, this year I haven’t even got round to printing them out yet. Traditionally they take pride of place in the kitchen beneath the calendar, providing a happy counterpoint to the more mundane activities listed above (although a trip to the dentist can arguably prove a less tortuous fixture).
I’m not sure if it’s a cryptic message, straightforward trolling, or blind indifference, but in the exact spot where the fixtures habitually go is now a grim missive detailing how to PREVENT A SECOND WAVE OF CORONAVIRUS IN BRENT.
So this is where we are right now, tentatively looking forward to an October start against an as yet known FA Cup opponent. Mad to think that when I embarked upon The Card in 2016, I already had 11 games under my belt by this stage, as reflected by a fully-fledged league table.
I don’t actually mind the October to May shift, and it may even have to one day become permanent as mankind hurtles towards a fiery demise, in the short-term rendering
August untenable for meaningful physical activity.
That said, the longer gap between the end of the school year and the beginning of the season would expose me to the possibility of further holidays.
Glittering oasis
No such monstrous excursions have been forced upon me this year, as I’ve barely left the house for six months, the only trip of note being a solo visit to Altrincham to get dumped out of the play-offs. But enough is enough. If there are games on, and it’s safe and legal to do so, I will be there with bells on, or at least a facemask. I’ll turn up in
full hazmat suit if I have to.
If you don’t follow sport, it’s been a strange time. If you do follow sport, it’s been like waking up on a different planet with a brain injury, everything you once held sacred ripped asunder in a baffling bizarro world of empty stadia, artificial crowd noise and cardboard supporters.
I would desperately welcome any semblance of normality, piling into a ground at ten to three. York’s new stadium early doors, Boston for my birthday, Telford on Boxing Day, the smell of Kettering’s Weetabix factory in February, Easter in Gateshead, each a glittering oasis in this footballing desert. I can almost taste the first league game, away at Kidderminster under lights. I might weep. And is there cottage pie for tea? Longlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2018, The Card: Every Match, Every Mile by Steve Hill is published by Ockley Books.