Fair-weather-fan

Saturday 22^nd July 2006

After breakfast and before leaving for the demonstration against the Israeli crimes in Lebanon, I post a message on a few sites which reads

i am a watford old-boy, living in london now and back from japan, trying to get sufficient ticket stubs from last year to enable me to qualify for a higher level of membership and take my 11 year old nephew, joss, to plenty of premiership away games this season (got him a season ticket). he lives down on the hollywell but his dad is a man u fan (i know) and i have to ensure his conversion. please help.

Although this message clearly marks me out as a fair-weather-fan, taking advantage of the success of Adrian “Betty” Boothroyd’s first full season as manager that ended up with us winning the play-off final in Cardiff 3-0 against Leeds, and therefore being promoted to the Coca-Cola Barclaycard Sky TV Sony PlayStation Premiership and getting to play the big boys like Man U, Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and Portsmouth, I can live with that if other ‘Hornets’ can.

My wife Jun and I cycle down to Nelson’s Column and meet up with Tim (West Ham), Julie (also a Hammer), Rod (a convert to the Watford way after coming to the play-off final) as well as a Thai and a Turkish student of mine. We march for a couple of hours, from Embankment back past Trafalgar Square and up to Piccadilly, past the US Embassy and on to a rally in Hyde Park. Normally we might sit and pretend to listen to the speeches, perhaps playing a “spot the cliché” game – you each choose a likely phrase and whoever’s is used most times by the speakers wins – but it is raining and we decide to decamp to the nearest pub instead, which has a rainbow flag hanging above the door. Since all discussion of the political situation has been exhausted by now we turn to football, the lingua franca of the straight male. The Turkish guy, Ozer, is a Newcastle fan (never quite find out why) and asks us how many Turkish players we can name. I get Turgay, Alpay and Emre. Kick myself when he mentions Hakan Sukur. Tell Tim it is exactly a month till Watford play their first home game against the Hammers.

“Can you stay up?”

“It’s possible. Others have done it.” Bets well and truly hedged.

There is some talk about the World Cup and I poke fun at the Turks who believed after they came third in Japan/Korea that they were a major footballing force (they didn’t qualify for Euro 2004 or the World Cup this year). Ozer laughs about it. Otherwise, the conversation is remarkable only because it’s not quite 2 weeks yet and for the first time nobody mentions the Zidane headbutt.

After the football chat, we leave the flock-wallpapered gay pub and head our separate ways. Jun and I go to a Japanese restaurant that’s playing Japanese TV with the sound down and there’s an educational programme for children on that is explaining the Hizbollah/Israel war with maps and plastic figures. I can’t help laughing as four pre-pubescent kids in the studio standing near the presenter nod as he explains about the bearded figure labelled Nasrallah (or Nasurara in katakana, the alphabet used for foreign words) and the party of god. I can’t imagine how far I’d get through an explanation of the situation to Joss before he switched off.

The truth is that it’s been 9 years since I lived in Japan and so implying that has something to do with the fact that I don’t have any away ticket stubs from last is a tad disingenuous. However, I was back in Japan for the England games in 2002. Although I had tickets for the first four games, I was one of the many who were at Shizuoka station on the morning of the Brazil game with a notice indicating that I was hoping to get hold of a quarter-final ticket at the last minute. However, unlike them, I stood for no more than 5 minutes. In that time a Scouser came over and asked “Do you think that message’s gonna help you?” Someone else with an accent I couldn’t place said “That’ll give you no chance mate.” Both laughed. A third English fan stopped to take my picture, by which time I felt resigned to admitting: “This’ll be the only time I smile today” as I grinned for the camera.

The fourth person to pause in front of me went “Go on you Hornets. Today is your lucky day, mate.” Charlie from Aylesbury appreciated the English message I had written (“Watford boy needs a ticket”) and obliged at face value (a friend had gone home with his wife because she was ill). I could only utter clichés (“You’re a godsend, mate”) and handed over my 30,000 yen (about 165 pound) happily out of sight of the police. So, if a Watford fan could come through on that one, I was sure ticket stubs from last season would be do-able.

When Jun and I got back home, I checked the email. Three replies.

The first:

Try finding out what the purpose of this group is, then maybe you'll
understand why this posting is totally inappropriate

Snidey twat. So, it was a discussion forum for the world cup…

The second:

Thanks for the e-mail. I'm afarid this sisn't soemthing we want to get involved
in - similar to tickets really, not something we do as we've been hassled too
much in the past. By all means ask on the mailing list.

Poor typer.

The third, from the mailing list mentioned above:

Sorry Robin
I do not have any stubs to give you as other than the play off semi and final I only attended 2 games last season at home and was not keeping the stubs.
good luck and here is to a good season for the Hornes.

Stephen

Err, so why reply?