There were hums of excitement and murmurs of surprise from the crowd at Fulham’s first game of the season. The news of a team-sheet containing a healthy amount of first teamers- indeed, eight of the eleven starters had played in the final in 2010- had been announced earlier, and those inside the stadium making their way to their seats tuned to one another and remarked, with breathless wonder, that it’s actually cooler inside than outside.
It didn’t end there. There was a real summer gala feel to the evening- which is to say that it was an enjoyable event in agreeable conditions and not that children looked bored and their parents fussed about forgetting to bring the sun lotion, though there was probably a bit of that too. Most importantly, though, the long road to the final began, with Fulham no doubt hoping for a significantly smoother journey than the majority of those journeys began in stifling sunshine; new boss Martin Jol no doubt taking heart in the fact that though this level of football throws up its fair share of testing games, few are as likely to be as testing as ones involving small children arguing from the back about the exact rules of Eye Spy.
Yes, summer football has often been the source of derision, but reading the newspaper reports of Fulham’s early start who didn’t feel the slightest tinge of envy? Always a thrilling moment the first game of the season, and what a curiously charged thrill in seeing your seating neighbour- ordinarily an amalgam of ticks and ambiguity, a strange fellow who exists solely in the context of your sitting by him at the football during long and cold winter months- in glorious sunshine? A moment of rare titillation marked all the more titillating for his wearing shorts and a sleeveless vest, one wagers.
It’s easy to act like we have better things to be getting on with football but, reciting things you heard John McEnroe say on Radio 5 in a bid to sound more knowledgeable about tennis than you are during Wimbledon fortnight aside, are we really such animals of varied interest? Watching cricket, going to the cinema and socialising with friends all sounds like something you would put under personal interests on a C.V- not stuff that you’re all that concerned about actually doing- and it’s worth noting, because it's never noted otherwise, that generous offers by most club for families in games like these actually means football represents a much cheaper recreational activity in summer than most others. Barbeques? Yes if you are in deepest Compton circa early nineties having a huge cookout with girls in swimwear and The D.O.C’s No One Can Do It Better blaring out a ghetto blaster. No if you’re going to be eating a crumbling slab of charcoal in your friend’s kitchen watching the rain fall forlornly and listening, through portable speakers, to his Now That’s What I Call Dance albums on shuffle.
And yet still those that opted to cover the match done so with a tone of sympathy for those souls from Fulham who had apparently negotiated one of the trickiest two handers the game can throw at you: managing both a Solero and a competitive European fixture in the same sitting. This, remember, as well, that this is a country apparently largely in favour of a winter break (a recent documentary on Radio 5 proposed that the lack of one was a contribution to last year’s World Cup disaster). Honestly, a nation that resents football in winter and mocks it in summer: we’re in danger of running out of seasons.
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