Travelogue 927 – August 30
What’s the Score?
There’s the sound of a crowd on the wind. It’s not so common a sound as it once was. I can hear their cries hundreds of metres away.
The clouds have cleared, and I’ve decided on an evening walk. My usual route takes me by a set of community pitches. And there’s a match on. I can see their uniforms, yellow and scarlet. I can see the modest grandstand mid-pitch, where plenty of seats are still empty. These spectators have powerful lungs.
I circle the pitches in my usual way, passing close to one team’s net. I stop to watch, and it happens that I’m fortunate enough to see a goal. It’s the yellows, looking like bees with their black stripes, who swarm down the pitch to score. It’s not the prettiest goal, a ball that the goalkeeper gets a piece of and then quickly bounces among the players to dribble into the net. But the fans are happy, letting loose another surprising volley of sound.
I carry on with my walk, accompanied by the echoes of the cheering and jeering of the football crowd. Evening walks are made for trivial thoughts, and two lines of meaningless inquiry compete for the floor in the parlour of my mind. One is topical. I wonder at the vehemence of their enjoyment. That they’re excited is not surprising, considering the enforced general hiatus from sport. What I wonder is how much of their exuberance may be a show for the benefit of the community, which they may feel still disapproves of their gathering in this way. I wonder, also, how much might be attributed to unconscious fear, fear for their health and fear that this match might be one precious bit of joy between waves of illness and shutdown. In short, how exceptional is this occasion, and, looking deeper, how sincere?
My second line of thought is less topical. The sight of the match, small league play on a local pitch, strikes me as the essence of sport. It is exciting. And it’s timeless. The spectators know the teams, know some or all of the players, and their dedication to one of those teams may match their dedication to Manchester United, or whoever they watch at the bar. That’s how it should be. I notice, walking by again, there’s not even a scoreboard. Everyone just knows the score. It’s among the best forms of entertainment, a kind of theatre. The local theatre company doesn’t need to tell you which act of Hamlet they’re in. You remember, or it doesn’t matter. When the first image to come to mind of European football is one from a multi-million-euro match broadcast around the world, I think the sport is done a disservice. The local is the real.
I walk on. The skies have opened up. The clouds are glowing with sun. These are the skies I was encountering in early April, when the crisis was new, when we were beginning to wonder how serious all this was.