Proper Football still exists!

As you’ve probably gathered, I’m a big Rugby fan. It’s the best sport in the world and I absolutely love it.

I’ve always been a fan but also, in my misguided youth, I used to be a keen follower of football and, in particular the English Premiership.

I’m now not much older and not much wiser, but I just don’t watch the Premiership anymore and on Tuesday night, I remembered why. OK, part of it was because Leeds United when tit’s up, but an even bigger part of it was because has just become crap.

Tuesday saw the Unibond League Cup Final in which local boys Farsley Celtic took on Stocksbridge Park Steels.
Me and a mate through we’d go along to see what all the fuss was about and it made for a good excuse to get a few drinks in.

So, we meet up at six, walk into Farsley and make for our first port of call, the Fleece. A swift one in there and it’s onto the ground. And then, the first reason why I don’t go to pro football games anymore was right there infront of me, the price. Getting into the ground set us back £7:00, as opposed to your typical Premiership game, which can easily cost £30 more than that. The other bonus was that you could pay cash on the turnstile, none of this mucking about with namby-pamby pre-purchased RFID smart cards. Just hand other your cash, and get a get a cheery thanks from the bloke behind the counter, who was obviously happy that he’d been filmed by the local news crew who were wandering around.

So anyway, we get through the turnstile and head for a pint in the clubhouse, which again, is something that you couldn’t do at Old Trafford or Elland Road. Instead of having a decent, fairly priced pint in friendly surroundings is something is but a distant dream at pro games but here, it was the norm – even to us ‘bandwagon jumpers’ who were just there for the final.

We leave the clubhouse just as the teams walk out, grab a burger from the van parked outside tha main stand and take our place on the terrace – yes terrace (none of this sitting down rubbish for us) - and the game gets underway.

It was a decent game aswell with two proper teams. None of these prima-donna foreign superstars who are more bothered about their hair-do. Just honest working blokes who aren’t frightened to get a good kicking and a centre half built like a heavyweight boxer. We even got a good laugh from the PA announcer when a sub came on. Evidently the team sheet he'd been given wasn't the best so he basically had to announce "coming on, number 12............................ some player!"

The whole game was a refreshing change from that shite I’m currently paying Sky £30 a month for. There was none of the predictability, none of the cheating, none of the diving or none of the whinging that is blighting our ‘flagship’ league, nor was there any of the police or segregation that you get in the pro ranks, just proper football.

After Farsley had won the match, the fans were invited onto the ‘hallowed turf’ for the presentation. After that was done, it was back to the clubhouse for re-fuelling, where we stayed till about 11:30 before heading back home.

All in all, a good night out, we’d not spent much and we’d got a good game and a few drinks out of it. Why people fall sucker to the Premiership marketing machine I’ll never know, more fool them I suppose.