WE WON!!!!
Last night we beat Manchester United. I had been looking forward to it all season. We played like kings and we won. A day later I haven’t even thought about Wayne Rooney, because what matters is we won. I have been wondering if we can possibly finish in the top four and get into Europe, and now I feel like Michael Caine in Hannah and Her Sisters: “I have my answer.”
Winning the big games isn’t just about the result, but about what the result means.
My grandfather used to go and see Everton in the 1910’s. He lived down the road from the ground and he went to Gwladys Street School in the shadow of Goodison Park, where they played. And when he joined the army, he signed up at the recruiting office in Everton Road. When he fought in the First World War he heard about Everton winning finishing top in 1915 as he stood shoulder to shoulder in the trenches with his pals who would be praying to live to see their families again, have a beer and go to see their heroes play.
We are born, not made. Being an Evertonian is about how my dad always knew he was going round to see his uncle (a supporter of bitter rival red-shirted Liverpool) because my grandfather used to put blue ties on him and his brothers.
It’s about Dad losing his shoes in the Boy’s Stand of Goodison in the 1930’s and having to walk home in his bare feet and not caring because we won that day.
It’s about me taking him to that same stadium some sixty years later for his 70th birthday, and how I pulled a few strings to get us to meet the players and walk through the team’s tunnel onto the pitch on a match day and crying as I watched him and his two brothers running around on the turf like kids. And it’s about that day being the last time he saw either of them alive.
So you can say it’s only a game, or that sport fans are shallow or that football is a pastime for people with deep pockets and small minds. And I’ll tell you that it has all the love, passion and fury of a lifetime. And I woudn’t give it up for anything. Bless you Everton. Bless you Harry and Walter and the Grandad. Dad, we can do this. Son, one day all this will be yours. Everyone else - thank you for reading.
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April 21st, 2005 at 1:08 pm
I completely understand. I’m as passionate about Fulham - it runs in my blood and has done so for many generations of my family. Relegation gives me more sleepless nights than any other worries do. And I’m a girl so I’m ‘allowed’ to cry, but some games me and all the men around me are crying or nearly so. Desperation. Who said it’s a game for thugs, if its the only place men are socially allowed to show emotion?
June 30th, 2006 at 8:36 am
[…] I remember being in a marketplace in Gambia a few years back and Senegal were playing someone. Many of the traders had come across from there there there were people crouching around radios dotted around the market. Or when my Australian friend Adam celebrated Tim Cahill’s goal against Japan, I was happy for him, because I like to see emerging nations do well in global sport, but also because I knew he has a connection with millions of people also cheering even though it was on the other side of the world where it was the middle of the night. Also, Tim Cahill plays for Everton, which I support and my dad supports and that’s where are family are from, and you can read more about that attachment if you like and what it means to be a fan. […]