STRICTLY, THERE ARE NO LIMITS
We are often reminded that football is in the entertainment business. While this is nominally true, it’s a very different beast to that which falls under the traditional umbrella of entertainment. Even more so at Non-League level. I had time to consider this recently when attending a mass entertainment event some distance outside my sphere of expertise.
There’s no easy way of saying this, but I had ringside seats at the Birmingham Arena for the opening night of the Strictly Come Dancing live tour. Admittedly, they were free, as was the luxury hotel, which crucially gave me a hefty head start on the long road to Chester’s Deva Stadium the next day.
It was a spectacular performance in front of 8,000 fans, the majority of whom had paid upwards of forty notes for the privilege, even indulging in a pre-show Mexican wave. Despite being unsegregated, there was no hint of trouble, no vulgar chanting, in fact no antagonism at all beyond some mild booing of the pantomime villain of the piece, judge Craig Revel Horwood. Joining in with the fun, after he had doled out another wilfully low score, I bellowed at him to “Grow up!” To be honest, that was misjudged. Amid the mind-bending choreography, I spotted one lad who looked more like a burly centre half than a stereotypically twinkle-toed dancer. He was actually doing a decent job of man-marking the deceptively mobile Angela Rippon, and cursory inquiries revealed him to be Kai Widdrington, who apparently could have pursued a career in football. This would have been in keeping with family tradition, as his younger brother Theo plays in midfield for Aldershot, who are managed by their father, Tommy.
Jeopardy
Serendipitously, they were just down the road on the Saturday with a league fixture at lowly Kidderminster Harriers, where the Shots took a two-goal lead before finally succumbing 4-2. Pray for Kai, simultaneously performing in the Strictly matinée show, surrounded by scantily-clad dancers when he could feasibly have spent a freezing afternoon being kicked all over Aggborough then rollocked by his old man. I’d like to think that Tommy and Theo made a post-match dash to Birmingham for the evening show to make an intervention.
But we all have to live by our choices, something brutally confirmed by a solo trip to Chester v Bishop’s Stortford, unable to convince anyone else to join me. A late spanner was thrown into the works by a noon pitch inspection. I joyfully received news of GAME ON in a multi-storey car park before almost ploughing into the throngs of Strictly fans laying siege to the hotel. As sometimes happens, once the logistics were negotiated and I was close enough to the ground that making kickoff was assured, I got a surge of adrenaline at the enormity of the forthcoming proceedings. I think football fans are addicted to the jeopardy, allied to an intense commitment to their club. While there was a competitive element to the Strictly show in the form of a mobile phone voting system, I very much doubt anyone’s weekend was ruined by the outcome. Conversely, in football the result is everything. You never know what you’re going to get, and quite often it’s not what you want. If we didn’t care so deeply we wouldn’t put up with the gruelling travel, the service station food, the intemperate weather and the primitive bathroom facilities (or indeed pay £9.50 for a sporadic single camera stream with no commentary). Misery craves company. Along with the communal experience of the match day, there’s an element of horror, as captured in a second half incident when Bishop’s Stortford hit the post, the ball freakishly bouncing back into the grateful arms of our keeper. The crowd bucked as one, a terrifying jump scare to rival anything spewed out by Hollywood as we held on to our slender lead.
Even a bit of comedy was delivered in stoppage time when their keeper went up for a free-kick and missed his header, thus enabling our striker to sprint the length of the pitch and roll the ball into an empty net.
That’s Entertainment.