It happens every year, doesn’t it? Sometime, perhaps in December, perhaps in January, a cold spell hits the land. Pipes burst, roads jam, and football matches are called off. The first frozen pitch is winter’s true herald. The debut sitting of the pools panel is winter's version of the first cuckoo.
And one thing you can be certain of is that, hard on the heels of cancelled matches, year after year, will come the ever so reasonable voices calling for us to stop playing football in the winter.
Even Stan, disappointingly, joined the choir this winter, when in the wake of two close postponements, he made a call for summer football. In doing so, he proved that every rule has its exception. For once, Stan was not always right. In seeking to separate football from winter, Stan was, for once, wrong.
Football is a winter game. At least it is in this country, and that’s just how it is. Sunshine, even warmth, may be permitted only on the opening and closing days of the season, which as we know, are always brilliantly hot and bright days. That’s because they signify the summer, the close season, the bit when football doesn't happen. The opening day reminds us of what we’re about to leave behind. The closing match tells of the lazy months to come. The rest of the time, English football needs snow, frost and ice.
We get a bit of summer football anyway. That’s when we play friendlies. I believe the weather is one of the reasons why it’s impossible to take friendlies seriously. Evening matches when it's still light make no sense at all. Remember Saturday afternoons, when people used to sit on the terraces, stripped to the last layer, or with men taking it further, parading their white bellies? Absolutely pointless. You need winter to make football matter. You need ice to contrast with the fire on the pitch. You need wind and rain and cold and hail for the players and fans to fight against.
This is miserable weather, true, but football in essence is a miserable game. Forget the marketing. This isn’t a cola advert. The lot of any football supporter is to be mostly unhappy. Most of the time, things don’t go your way. Only a minority of sides can achieve success. Football isn’t about being jolly. It’s about hope being kicked back in your face, about the taste of despair, about entire wasted seasons, and the realisation that you've gambled futile time on shattered dreams. Football is about suffering, and so is the English winter. They go together hand in woolly glove.
Don’t listen to the rationalists. Don’t let your Arsene Wenger types with their trendy clipped together glasses tell you that a winter break would be good for the game, that the players need a rest, and that a season split in two will be altogether more sensible. Since when did being sensible have anything to do with following football? They’ll be suggesting transfer windows next. And don’t let anyone say that just because they do it abroad they ought to do it here. I don’t care what they do elsewhere. Here, it’s our game, and it’s a winter game. We invented it anyway, in winter. Football was born from the English winter.
We already have a summer sport: cricket. Slow and languid, this is a sport where five days are frequently insufficient to force a result. Genteel and genial, it’s the perfect sport for sitting back, nibbling on a sandwich and making gentle conversation. Can’t stand it myself. Give me 90 minutes of bile-fuelled unreason where the sheer bitter cold forces you to bang you hands together, jump up and down and lose your grip on reality, just to keep warm.
Take football out of winter and you take away stupid bobble hats and garish acrylic scarves. You take away old people sipping thermos flasks, sometimes alcoholically enhanced, and half time pies and Bovril, and people in the Bob Lord Stand wrapping themselves in tartan travel rugs. All these things are part of our game. As a place to be on a winter Saturday, can you beat Turf Moor, with the sun going slowly down and the superbly bleak surrounding moors slipping into sombre silhouette? Would you really want to lose that? How could we think of sweeping them away?
So whether it be a winter break – doubtless perfectly timed to meet the mild weather and miss the brutal – or summer football, spare me your bright ideas. In fact, we already had a taste of summer football, in our away win at Millwall. That day, it was so bloody hot that even walking to and from the ground was an effort. What must it have been like to play in it? Do we really want our lads running around in 80 odd degrees time after time? After the match, when I staggered exhausted into the meeting pub, I even had to slurp a cold soft drink before I could start on the beer. This is not a state of affairs we should encourage.
There are lots of other nice things to do in the summer, like going for walks, doing the gardening and working out how long it is before the football season starts. How bad would winter be without football matches to look forward to?
Alright, so we get a few postponements in winter football. That’s part and parcel of the game too. We all have our good fierce weather stories. It's a rite of passage for any young football fan. I once went to a match against Scarborough that was abandoned after 90 minutes due to a frozen pitch! When matches are called off, it's disappointing. Good: disappointment is what the game’s all about, and that’s part of it.
Still, I do like the traditions of football, and perhaps this is another one we should cherish: the annual, well-intentioned suggestion that football shouldn’t be played in winter. Just as long as no one starts taking it seriously.
And they should ban players from wearing gloves, too.
