I know, negativity from me when we’re in the play-offs probably wasn’t expected, but last night I found myself really angry.
I thought it might be a passing mood, but I’ve awoken this morning in exactly the same frame of mind. I’m a little short-tempered, I’ve already called a passing driver a word you shunt use for going above what I perceive to be an acceptable speed, and I fear for the dog if he drags his heels when we head out in a second or two. The problem, in my mind at least, is the ticketing ballot for the Sunderland game. Like many of you, I’m sure, I’m really quite stressed out about it. Not at anything the club has done, they have been dealt a hand and they have to play it, but just at the situation in general. In short, I’m sick of ‘Covid times’. I’ve been a good boy, masked up, been vaccinated, kept my distance from people, stayed at home, and frankly, this feels a bit like the final straw.
I’m genuinely worried about missing out, as I’m sure many other ST holders are. I feel bad for people who couldn’t afford to leave their money in the club and were I one of those, I’d be upset at not even being given the chance to attend. I feel for those who, for one reason or another, are not ST holders and who simply won’t get a chance to be there. The club, as I have said, have done the right thing in my opinion, the problem lays outside, in general policy. It’s rubbish.
Still, whatever the reason, the potential for missing out on the game actually kept me awake last night. I missed the 2018 Exeter games as you may recall due to having a back operation, and it felt horrible. I laid on my sofa at home, watching a packed Sincil Bank game on my TV and it felt wrong. All season, we have talked about disconnection, about trying to pull the fans and the club together. In my mind, I’ll feel more disconnected watching fans in the Bank from home than I would watching the game at an empty Sincil Bank on television. At least during the season, we were all in the same boat but when Sunderland roll into town, policy and legislation mean the fan base will be truly divided, all on the press of a Ticketmaster button.
All week I’ve seen other fans feeling the same, lifelong Imps, season ticket holders, everyone panicking that they might not get in. I’m pleased there’s been no ‘I’m better than you’ type posts, in the main fans accept the club have little leeway in the process and have to abide by the rules, but personally, I think the rules stink. I didn’t watch the Brits last night, I have no interest in the posturing and self-congratulation from the music industry, but I’m told 4,000 fans were at an indoor event and didn’t have to wear masks in their seats. I get it was a test event and subject to different rules, just like the one in Liverpool where people were hugging and chewing their faces off in a nightclub, but it just really galls me. It might be irrational, unfounded and basically just utter jealousy, but so be it. The same goes for the snooker the other week, people indoors and not socially distanced, but when the biggest prize in half a century is on the line for the Imps, only 3,000 or so can sit outside and watch it? I should coco.
I appreciated the messages last night after my tweet about feeling angry. I’m not suffering generally, I’m in the same boat as everyone who has expressed concern, worry and anxiety around the ticketing process. My first reaction when the announcement was made that we were going back in the ground was not one of utter joy, which it should have been, but rather one of immediate concern – purely selfish too. ‘What if I don’t get a ticket?’ was my first thought, not ‘how great we’re going back?‘. I’m sure the club doesn’t feel the same as me, they’ll be delighted to have some fans back and rightly so, but I’d rather everyone missed out and we went back as one, rather than this staggered, random ballot deciding the fate of people who invest their lives into supporting the club and who will or will not be there based on nothing more than an algorithm.
Of course, if my name comes out of the hat, I’ll be delighted and of course, I’ll go. Maybe that’s rank hypocrisy too, I don’t know, but it is those feelings that I haven’t felt this season and I shouldn’t be focusing on them this morning, but I am. During the season, you may or may not know that I was given the chance to go to Burton at home on Boxing Day to record Match Day Live. Sam wasn’t going to be there, but I was allowed by the club to take my stuff, set up in a box and do my portion from the ground. I politely declined, because there was no pressing need for me to be there without Sam. I didn’t go because I felt I shouldn’t take advantage of my position in that way when others couldn’t go, I felt comfortable with that. The world really is on its head when I feel more comfortable about myself not attending a match, than I will if I am successful in the ballot and can go on Wednesday. Hypocrisy, jealousy, envy, anger, anxiety, worry – these are not feelings that I should have around the biggest play-off game the club has ever had (in terms of where we could end up), but they are, rightly or wrongly.
I guess there’s no real point to this article other than to vent at the fact we will not be ‘Imps As One’ next Weds, we’ll be 3,100-odd Imps As One and the rest Imps At Home. It’s not the club’s fault, I know that and wouldn’t have anyone believe otherwise, but it just feels so desperately unfair to end this wonderful season at Sincil Bank in this manner. That’s is without the potential of a final appearance where only 4,000 can go – we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
I’ll tell you something else as well – if that 4,000 is reduced because UEFA chooses to let the two breakaway Zombie League teams compete their final at Wembley and move us to a smaller ground, it will anger me even more. I agree the Champions League final should be moved, but why not to a neutral ground such as the Millennium Stadium, rather than shunting the play-offs around? What is the deal, when the Zombie League was being planned real fans mattered to UEFA, but now it’s back to normal we’re the ginger stepchild of the football world, consigned to wherever will take us because the prodigal sons have returned from their plans to bastardise football? Great, cheers.
I might not do any more articles today, because I’m clearly seeing a half-empty cup and the dark lining around a huge silver cloud of a Sincil Bank return. If a cloud can be silver. Jeez, even my analogies are off, where’s Ben when I need him?
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