A Kaleidoscopic Game of Football

English: the language of Chaucer, Shakespeare and Wilde. The tongue which gave itself so freely to the Romantic Movement; to indulgent descriptions of the wonder of the world we inhabit, and the bedfellow of hyperbole. The global language of business and commerce. Yet still, staggering bereft from Craven Cottage a few weeks ago, ruminating on Middlesbrough’s 4- 3 defeat to Fulham which brought a symbolic end to our automatic promotion hopes, I perceived it a language which remains insufficiently developed to pay justice to the exhilarating, captivating, life-affirming game of football.

No words can be given to the fierce defiance with which six-thousand travelling supporters exhorted to the heavens that they would be returning to the capital, Wembley bound, within the month. Only the shrillest shriek could possibly hope to evoke the dawning horror of Ross McCormack racing towards the Middlesbrough goal, Albert Adomah, Lee Tomlin and Dimi Konstantopolous each slipping with tragicomic effect in his slipstream. Adjective and analogy alike are struck dumb in their effort to describe the hope which swelled with every mounting attack as, joyously unburdened from the tactical straitjacket, 10-man Middlesbrough eroded Fulham’s hitherto insurmountable 3-1 lead to parity. I left Craven Cottage a turmoil of emotion; euphoria, heartache, infuriation and pride in equal measure.

Football’s beauty, I reasoned, lay in its ability to summon conflicting, dissonant emotions. What other past-time reflects life’s precarious cruelty with such clarity? What else offers one a glimpse of Heaven one moment, only to be cast into Hell’s eternal flames the next? The most played song on Spotify; the book which changed your life; that box-set you devoted last weekend to: nothing stirs the soul quite like the humble game of football.

However one chooses to do so, one seeks to measure their life in the number of moments experienced which took the breath away. If the 90 minutes spent in the company of Middlesbrough Football Club at Craven Cottage left the body battered, bruised and torn, Friday evening’s trip to Griffin Park, home of Brentford, for the first leg of the Championship playoff semi-finals served as the perfect ailment.

Like Craven Cottage before, I left Griffin Park overwhelmed. A seismic surge of electricity coruscated down my spine. Hairs on the back of my neck stood to attention. My mind refused to comprehend what my eyes had just seen. Once more, I was left in a thrall to football’s rich sense of theatre, and its ability to make heroes of the unlikeliest figures. This time, I owed the multi-sensory breakdown to one emotion alone: ecstasy.

If I cease typing for a moment, amidst the stillness, I swear I can feel the reverberations of the communal EIOing spreading Eastwards across London. I close my eyes and hear the echoes of a celebratory roar primal and disbelieving in nature. Mundane tasks are interrupted by the recurring memory of the bulging net: the sound of Fernando Amorabieta’s boot contacting so sweetly with ball; the bead of sweat trickling down my cheek as the Brentford bodies lunged in desperate defiance; the momentary, eternal silence as the ball spun away from the goalkeeper…

My sanity attempts to rein me in; to inform me of another 90-minute battle to be waged at the Riverside next week. It attempts to reason that the Boro spent most of the second half dazed by Alex Pritchard’s trickery, hanging grimly on for a 1-1 draw. Yet the introspective reservation with which – for better or worse – I carry myself is overawed. For that moment of reflection, no longer am I timid, tongue-tied and shy. I am the raging, leaping, vaulting volcano of happiness, embracing strangers and exhorting undying love to a man I would struggle to recognise in the street. I am transported to an alternate dimension of consciousness. I am another person entirely. Over 1,600 others, the nom de plumes of the country, are the same; one congealed ecstatic mass of humanity.

I analyse every other aspect of my life and wonder what other significant event could conjure a reaction so unrestrained and emotions so raw. No promotion at work, professional qualification earned, or meeting with long-lost friends could compare. Whoever met the birth of their children with a thousand fists raised to the air, emerging breathless from the strangulations of strangers fifty metres from where they started?

It is only the good grace with which I was born a fan of Middlesbrough Football Club which opens me to such shared experiences. ‘Bliss it was to be alive in that dawn’ Wordsworth wrote. ‘But to be a Boro fan is very heaven’, is what he would have added had he lived today. What a privilege it is to be one of God’s Chosen Tribe.