Showing posts with label sick of football. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sick of football. Show all posts

Tuesday, 2 December 2008

Day Five - 30th November 2008

Wake up on what is normally 'Super Sunday'. Several plans I have to get involved in exciting activities fall through. One of my suggestions for today was 'Trannyoke' (Karaoke for Transvestites) but I can't muster up the confidence to go to something extreme this early on in the experiment. I spend the afternoon searching for anything to do. I text one of my friends saying I'm bored, and get the reply "It's your own f**king fault!" I get slightly depressed that football seems to play such a pivotal role in my social life. My sour mood is worsened by the fact that I know Arsenal - Chelsea is on at 4pm.

I think about how my relationship with football started, how did we manage to get here? How did something so beautiful cause me so much pain? My love affair with football began in the mid nineties. My earliest footballing memories are of Scotland trouncing San Marino, Pierre van Hoojidonk scoring the winning goal in the Scottish Cup Final, going to Firhill to watch Partick Thistle and my little cousin falling asleep for the entirety of a 0-0 Queens Park versus Albion Rovers thriller. Good times, but has this nostalgia clouded my realistic expectations of how good football can be?

I resist the urge to give in to my romantic urges, and instead fully commit myself to thinking about more ambitious schemes to fill the next forty five days...

Saturday, 29 November 2008

Day Three - 28th November 2008

Friday night = respite. Today seems to be the only day of the week where there are never any great matches of importance to be played. My day is filled with classes for uni and other deadlines, so even on a normal Friday I wouldn't check results or football news very often. Manage to find a pub that shows MTV rather than footy on its screens for early evening drinks.

Later in the evening, I meet a few of my friends locally. As there are some people in our party that I have never met before, I'm slightly nervous about not being able to talk about football. For guys in the pub random chat about my banned subject acts as an icebreaker. To avoid uneasiness, I come clean immediately about my plan. It actually acts as good topic of conversation, and there is debate about whether I will succeed or not. The real challenge will come at the weekend though. Nonetheless, as the alcohol begins to kick in I relax. Spirit in the NFFFD camp is good....

Day Two - 27th November 2008

More European matches tonight are the major obstacle. I decide that if I'm going to do this, I may well do it properly and clear all football related memorabilia from my room. The walls are stripped of my Lubo Moravcik print, Siena scarf and signed Nesta and Pirlo prints. All back issues of footie magazines and my football books are placed in a box under the bed. Most painfully, I remove my copy of Football Manager from my laptop and it joins the rest of the stuff.

An unnamed German friend of mine finds it hilarious to post results on my Facebook wall. I tell him to stop pissing on my bonfire. Whilst walking through the living room, I inadvertently view my first goal of the football famine. I successfully manage to ignore it, although its by an English team wearing an Orange top so I infer its either Man City or Spurs. An this stage, I still have no desire to go back to my old ways.
DAY TWO - DONE!

Thursday, 27 November 2008

Day One - 26th November 2008

So it all begins here. I'd love to say that I am feeling refreshed and like a new man, but I actually feel a bit sick. It may have been the happenings of last night (which I can no longer talk about) or the Jack Daniels which was consumed afterwards. Anyhow, today shouldn't be too difficult as I am still not in the mood for the national game.

My first challenge comes in the fact that the newsroom where I work has two large TV screens which show news channels. Naturally, the sports bulletins involve the F word. Hence, I am forced to move seats so that I can no longer inadvertently catch any goals.

By early evening I'm in a pub and there is a whole level of difficulty involved in being a recovering footie-aholic. I can feel Sky Sports News presenter Georgie Thompson staring at me in the corner of my eye, urging me to watch last nights goals from the Championship. Although I resist, conversation with my mate Chris is slow as we normally rabble for hours solely about football. In the end, I make my excuses and leave feeling unsure as to how this experiment will go.

I avoid the evening's catalogue of European fixtures by locking myself in my room and working until bedtime. 12 hours into my football free life, I fall asleep blissfully unaware of how Liverpool done or whether or not Didier Drogba started for Chelsea.