Drowning sorrows

Friday 8^th September

“You are your brother’s bitch,” I hope someone is singing that tomorrow at the Reebok now that they’ve got Anelka: the petulant vagabond whose agent-sibling is portrayed as unsettling him in order to continue creaming transfer fees for his own benefit. Me? I will have one ear on Sky Sports News again. No 1 vs. 100 pilot for me, no away game yet this season either. Thinking my first ‘travelling’ of the season will be up the road to Ashburton Grove on 14^th October if I can get us tickets. The following two games are in London too, so I will be trying to make it three in a row. Despite that, I am going to have to miss our home match against Accrington Stanley in the Carling Cup because it clashes with my first evening back teaching at Westminster. A long CC run could mean dilemmas on a Tuesday, but I’ll play it by ear.

Three games, three goals and one point so far, Watford are 18^th in the table. Betty has consequently played with various collocations of the word learn: “learning curve”, “learning environment”, “lessons learned”. This is very much in tune with his image as a teacher-coach – he is unlikely to be the ‘hairdryer’ type. Progress in top-flight football is what it’s all about now and if the “’Orns” can notch up three points away we can, I’m sure, drag ourselves out of the bottom three and the prospect (in 35 games time) of an immediate return to the Championship.

Last time round in the Premiership, 1999/2000, we only one won away game (at Anfield) and finished bottom of the table with a then record lowest points tally of 24 (thanks Sunderland for taking that record from us). The five teams we beat at home were Coventry, Sheffield Wednesday, Bradford, Southampton (who all finished in the bottom 7 and none of whom are in the Premiership now) and Chelsea (hurrah). So, maybe it’s with those statistics in mind that the club announced today that they’d bought the freehold of the pub opposite the ground – the Red Lion.

Can sorrow really be drowned? Alcohol doesn’t dissolve depression but it should be easier to come to terms with defeat in the company of others. On the other hand, beer and company before a match are more likely to lead to a rise in expectations and therefore the possibility of greater disappointment. Still, this should all be tempered by the essence of masculinity. After all – in theory – men are supposed to be the more rational of the sexes, the less prone to uncontrollable emotion. “In theory.”

After England’s 2-1 defeat to Brazil in the humid heat of Shizuoka four years ago, I saw my first bit of hassle involving English fans (I’d stopped a big Japanese guy hitting a smaller one at the post-Argie celebrations on the streets of Susukino, Sapporo). I didn’t see the thing start and thankfully no fists were raised, but three pissed (in the UK and US senses) English men, older than me, were pushing and abusing a TV journalist from the States (“Why are you here? How many people in your country are watching this?”). His cameraman should’ve been filming but didn’t seem to be and the England troublemakers just walked off after venting a little anger.

No big deal: it hardly counts as hooliganism but what sort of man defines himself through the vagaries of a team’s (mis)fortunes such that he’d lose it in this way? Seneca said “Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power”. The fragile maleness that is threatened by the defeat in sport of 11 other men is not the sort of masculinity that a “man” should be proud of. Failure should be something to strengthen us through an examination of our weaknesses. We need never stop learning.