The Saturday afternoon ritual

We’ve all got one, those of us who are enlightened enough to enjoy football that is. We do the same thing every week, the only difference being how you feel at the end of the day, which depends on the success/failure of the team you follow. I’m thinking about this because I’m currently sitting in my father in law’s living room. Watching Man United play Southampton on one of those dodgy streams on my laptop. You know the ones where you have to close a million adverts before you can even see the video player in the middle of your web browser. Where they try and trick you into downloading some software because you’ve “got a virus on your laptop”. The ones that probably give you a virus, if you do have one that is.

It’s what I do every other weekend. Not always at my father in law’s (but often there). I do it every other weekend because on the weekends in between you’ll more than likely find me at West Ham. That’s the other thing I do, my other ritual.

It’s funny because we, football fans, do these things on a regular, habitual, basis. Often in a particular manner as we think it has some sort of bearing on our team’s fortunes that weekend. For example, I watch West Ham on these dodgy streams, I potentially fill my laptop with viruses (don’t worry I run two separate virus scans regularly, and I don’t install that crap, I’ve been using the Internet long enough to know better) but I’m convinced it’s bad luck. I couldn’t tell you the last time I watched us on a stream and we won. But a) I still watch pretty much every other week (provided I’ve got nothing else on), even though I think it’s bad luck; b) I, a rational adult in his mid 30s, believe that somehow me trawling through pages and pages that offer “singles in my area” (I mean I’m not even single, where were these attractive women when I was?!?) to watch some often pixelated, and sometimes Turkish or Chinese broadcast of my team playing will have a negative effect on them.

But I do it because I can’t not see. Not if I have the opportunity to see. If I am out, fair enough. But if I’m indoors on a Saturday, with my laptop and connection to the Internet, you’ll find me screaming at the laptop screen because West Ham are inviting too much pressure from Watford or making Sunderland look good. And even when we’re not playing away at 3pm on a Saturday and I’m at home, I watch another game which can range from Bournemouth v Aston Villa  (yes I did actually watch that) to the latest  action from Serie B  (no joke).
Ahhh! The things football makes us do! I’m gonna go a run a virus scan on my computer...

PS I’m not at West Ham today because I object to Sky scheduling Saturday evening games! If it were up to me all West Ham home games would be at 3pm on a Saturday (couldn’t give a toss about the Premier League’s money)!