Football over Christmas is all about nostalgia, even if nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.
It’s the joy of waking up on Boxing Day as a child and going to a game with your dad, and without fail there would be someone with you who didn’t usually attend.
Perhaps it was an uncle, looking for something to do that day. Or maybe an eldest son back from university for the holidays.
This is their first match of the season and when your team slip into the bottom three in April what’s the betting they are nowhere to be found, but that’s okay. Different rules apply at Christmas time.
Once-a-yearers are a welcome, even crucial, element of festive football.
With the car heaters at full blast you negotiate the traffic and then you’re there, the ground looming and beautifully austere.
With new gloves on and Christmas money burning a hole in your pocket you avoid the icy puddles, and smirks are shared at the drunken guy in the santa hat causing a scene. He deserves his revelry after being extremely busy two nights earlier.
A programme is bought, that has on its front cover your team’s manager awkwardly smiling with tinsel around his neck.
His side are short-priced in the football betting odds to drop this year and here he is being asked to summon a yuletide glow in late November, but he complies, nonetheless. And then the steep steps are climbed, your last, and best, present nearly unwrapped.
In reality this happened only once in your childhood but when you go to the nostalgia well, it was always thus.
That it’s snowing, or at least the pitch is pristine white, and down the sides, covering the advertising hoardings, are banks of dirtier snow, shovelled out of harm’s way by groundsmen that morning when you were tucking into bacon and eggs.
When the players emerge, the captain is nestling by his midriff an orange Adidas Tango football.
You exhale a balloon of plumed air. Like the last verse of a Chris Rea song, you are home for Christmas.
It’s not the same these days but then again, how can it be? You’re no longer a kid and the once-a-yearer coming along for the ride doesn’t appreciate that you had to pay £15 extra online to secure him a ticket. You’re not seeing that back anytime soon.
Getting to the game is a pain now too, because your club moved a good while back, the ground now residing next to a shopping park. Sales hunters add half an hour to your journey.
But when you’re finally there, amidst the throng, outside the big spaceship that already has its lights on to combat the dimness of mid-afternoon, it all comes flooding back.
The half-smiled exchanges between strangers are that bit warmer. The anticipation is that bit different. We’re all still full of turkey and chocolate but the brisk, sharp air livens up our senses and reminds us of what Christmas is really all about.
It’s Boxing Day and you’re at the football. And there is nowhere better to be.
*Credit for all of the photos in this article belongs to Alamy*
