Fear of failure

Well, I was as good as my word and went to Orient's final home game of a frankly wretched 2014-15 campaign on Saturday.  We were a shambles.  It's just as well they slashed the ticket prices because I'd have been spitting blood had I shelled out twenty quid to watch that sheight.  We were actually worse than at the first game of the season, and I thought that an all-time low at the time.

I suppose one should take succour from the fact that we were playing high-flying Sheffield United and still manged to bag a point, but they were having an off-day so had we been any use, we'd have turned them over.  The game (if I might dignify the players' efforts by employing this word) was an absolute howler.  Route-one football, poorly executed.  At least it was a nice day.

Come the end, it was clear we were doomed.  Every other team around us won, against the odds, and our fate is now out of our hands.  The mood among the fans is one of resignation.  We don't deserve to stay up; it would be daylight robbery on one of the other blameless clubs if we did.  No, we made our bed, shat on the pillow, and now we must lie in it.  The best we can hope for it a steamroller season next year.  Come up as champions with 100 points.  I'll be there for some of it....again.  The trouble is I've been doing this for 30 years and I'm less emotionally and mentally robust than I used to be.  It takes its toll.

Up The Os, as we say in my neck of the woods.

He's got football pie all down his shirt

My local team, Leyton Orient, are on the cusp of relegation to League Two.  Despite the high falutin' name, League Two is the lowest professional division available to English football teams.  It's the Poundland of the beautiful game.  And it's traditionally a notch below even Orient's modest abilities.

We've been in League Two before of course, but our natural habitat is League One, the middle of League One to be precise.  We tend to get a nosebleed when we stray too close to the promotion places.  We led the division for nearly the entire season last year, and we're still reeling from the trip, which in some way explains our shocking descent to Aunt Sally status this time around.

Relegation this year will, as it always does, cause a schism among the faithful - between those who want heads on platters and the Pollyanna set, who would turn up and cheer even if the team decided to play inside a nuclear reactor.

I have some sympathy for the moaners on this one.  The club has been laughably mismanaged this year, and this has led to lacklustre performances on the pitch.  Also, dropping into League Two means there's no scope for a repeat performance next year.  There's no safety net down there.  If you slip up, you're out of the professional game, and that is unacceptable.

It's true that some Orient supporters thrive on complaining.  You can hear them screaming for the Government to step in and compulsiry purchase the club after back-to-back goalless draws.  But everyone will be in a foul mood next season, myself included.

We Three Kings of Orient Are

My football club, Leyton Orient, are in the throes of a massive disruption at the moment.  During the summer, in a fit of temporary madness, some Italian billionaire or other decided to buy the club.  Why he chose to do this now, and why Orient is between him and his wayward marbles.

The club, which admittedly, is debt-free, thanks to the good offices of its previous owner, Barry Hearn, is in a parlous state otherwise.  Local rivals West Ham are about to move into a new ground a stone's throw from Orient's.  They, being a top-flight outfit (at least in name), will purloin Orient's traditional catchment area for fans.  Much as I love The Os, I wouldn't wish supporting them on my worst enemy.  I support them because I have too; that's where I'm from.  You have to be born or at the very least have spent your formative years in their (vee small) catchment.  Basically, there's a 2 mile segment of about 240 degrees to the north and east of the club's ground inside which sentiment demands you support them.  To the south is West Ham territory.  And any further than 2 miles from the ground brings you into the gravitational fields of any number of massive London clubs.

It should be clear to even the dullest Italian wit then that this is a club that will never attract a large and moneyed cohort to its home games.  And that presupposes that the club survives the West Ham scandal at all.

Added to this, our Italian has behaved in the way all billionaires do, i.e. to threaten and demand instant success.  As a direct consequence of this hectoring in broken English, our long-serving manager resigned on Wednesday.  So far, so poor.

Why are billionaires so cliquéd?  Is it because they give all their mental energies to cultivating money?  Perhaps.

Fickle Gerkin

Mrs O and I were in central London yesterday for the end of the Tour of Britain bike race.  When I started attending these bashes, about 15 years ago, it was club cyclists only who showed-up.  Then as cycling's profile increase, so did the audience numbers.  The last two or three years have been absolutely mobbed.  Yesterday, however, it was eerily quiet again.

This was a bit of a shock, as the weather was pretty good and there were plenty of star riders present.  I suppose it must be a result of having The Tour in England during the summer.  Going to see The Tour is like going to see Led Zeppelin in the 70s -  everything is bigger, better and louder than anything else you've seen in your life.  All other bike races look like Brother Beyond in comparison.  I imagine people took one look at the riders in British version, and thought "Sod it - I'll go to Ikea instead.  I need a new splashback anyway."

I can sort of understand and empathise with this attitude.  I have a similar distant relationship with football.  I dislike watching football.  At best it's boring and at worst it's torture.  And yet every second Saturday, I delude myself into thinking I seriously intend going along to my local team if they're at home.  Then about 2 o'clock I sober-up decide to waterproof the seams on my tent instead.  And, if I'm honest, it's cheaper and more fun than watching Orient.

You can't choose your family...or your team.

Summer lovin'

Another bank holiday here in dot-coe-dot-you-kay yesterday, and another hosing-down from the gods.  We're in that difficult transition period between "it's been a shit spring" to "it's being a shit summer".  No-one's quite sure where the cusp lies.  It's like Easter; only the Vatican seems on top of that sheight.  All we do know is that it's close.

The point of this equinox of course is that one must abandon hope if it can be shown we've passed it.  Summers in this country and short and brutal, like a spell in a young offenders' institute.  If we've missed even a week of the summer season to poor weather, then statistically-speaking it cannot be saved.

As Bill Shankly or Buddha would no doubt have averred: it's the hope that kills you.

This spell of appalling weather has come at the end of a very trying weekend too.  On Sunday my beloved Orient were beaten in the League One play-off final at Wembley.   I've seen Orient lose more play-offs than I can shake a stick at, but this one hurt particularly  

I was stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the same cohort of people I was in the 80s when Orient went up against Wrexham, and we've been there for every major game since.  The difference this time is that if we needed 13 years to reach another Wembley final (the gap since our last play-off final), would the club even exist?  It was this thought that played on my mind on the interminable tube journey home.

If West Ham get Olympic Stadium, I fear we're screwed.  The children of Walthamstow, Leyton, Leytonstone etc. will grow up to be Hammers.  You can't blame them; I would have done the same.  The idea of Orient not outliving me is hugely troubling.  I've got football existential angst.  I wonder if my GP will sign me off work?  He is an Os fan after all.

Be still, my beating ar5e

Well, that was an intense evening.  I jollied along to Orient last night for the second leg of the League One play-offs.  All went as planned and Orient prevailed.  It did remind me, though, of why I don't attend football matches.  It was two hours of nerve-shredding confusion and anxiety.

I have, even if I say so myself, a "footballing brain" as it's termed.  I see the game well, its territorial aspects etc.  A lot of schoolboy footballers, while technically adept, have no feel for the sport.  They look at their feet, the ball and about 20 feet of turf in front of them.  And their reaction to receiving the ball is always the same: running with it.  You'll never develop into a useful footballer with that world view.  One needs to look up and assess the situation.  You only pin back your lugs and give it the full Forest Gump if the lie of the land demands it.

Despite my sang-foid on the pitch, when spectating, I'm a gibbering wreck.  It's just a blur of colours and sounds.  All I can do is tremble and swear.  I cannot follow the game at all.  It's like trying to watch a production of The Cherry Orchard from a roller coaster.  The see the action, but it doesn't really sink in; the nuances are lost.

Unfortunately, my torment isn't over.  We're off to Wembley en bloc on Sunday week for the final.  For everyone else this will be like a works outing, full of drunken laughter and tears.  But for me it's the emotional equivalent of Cain carrying a burning-hot cauldron in the opening credits of "Kung Fu".  If you're under 80, you might need to Google that neo-classical reference.

I'll try to maintain a phlegmatic expression, but the beads of sweat on my brow and quivering lips will tell their own story.  - I come in peace...up, The Os.

My trouble is I care too much

I'm off to a football match this evening.  That's a rare occurrence for me.  I used to go regularly, not often, but regularly.  But as real life has increasingly encroached upon childish pursuits, I've rather left the beautiful game behind.  This trend was exacerbated by most of my friends moving away from the area we grew up in.

I did go alone once, but it was an horrific experience for all concerned.  I ended-up sitting in the family enclosure, and was surrounded by 12-year-olds and their mothers, all in scarves and rosettes.  In any other circumstance this would present no problems; I'm a polite well brought up sort.  Unfortunately, when it comes to football, the veneer of civility slips away rapidly.  As soon as the referee gets proceedings underway, yours truly starts swearing like a docker - one who's just stubbed his toe on a red-hot javelin.

The reason for this is nerves.  I get really het up at football.  I hate it in all honesty.  It's the one arena in which I do let the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune get to me.  I look upon it as a personal slight when an opposition team of journeymen professionals contrives to beat my beloved Orient.  It's like someone having a pop at your family.

I know this makes me sound like a nutter, but I'm really not.  I wouldn't categorise myself as much of a supporter at all.  I don't slavishly follow the club's news, or pour over match reports.  I don't even really care that much for the game anymore.  I used to, as a boy, but now I've bigger cultural fish to fry.

The reason I can get upset to such an unseemly degree is that for me football is territorial.  The club is a reflection of what and who I am.  That's why I could never support a team with which I had no geographical or cultural link.  What would be the point?

The club is akin to a river for me.  I was brought up on its banks, and so it belongs to me.  I care not a jot for the players in the squad at any given time.  I appreciate what they do for the club, but they are not the club - no more than the water is the river.  The river's quiddity transcends its individual temporary elements.  And that is why I eff and blind all the way through the game.  Yes - including the halftime break.  QED.

Football Pie

Being a dyed-in-the-wool lover of the beautiful game (no, not darts this time, football) like what I am, I feel duty-bound to at least attempt to get a ticket for Leyton Orient's upcoming FA Cup tie with north London's pre-eminent poseurs, Arsenal.

To make things fair (and expensive), Orient have decided that you must have tickets for the two Tuesday night home fixtures that precede the cup tie. They dropped this bombshell the day before the first game. This means then that I've had to shell-out for a ticket I can't use. Even then, I'm only buying the right to queue for a cup ticket. If they're gone before I pitch up at the box office, I'm screwed. But what can one do? If I leave the sauce alone, I might live another thirty-five years, and not see Orient reach these dizzy heights. They've got me over a barrel. I must attend.

All football clubs do this of course, but generally it's the reserve of the top-flight clubs to wring quite so much financial advantage for a single game comme ça. It's unusual for the blood-letting to descend to League One. Consequently, the wound is a little sore. Come on, you Os.