When the football is frozen off... (From Your Local Guardian)

When the football is frozen off...

12:53pm Friday 8th January 2010

• Print
• Email

Although you may not think it, with buses and cars sliding off the roads and children unable to attend school, the biggest inconvenience caused by the freezing conditions is to humble football columnists such as myself.

With Sunday’s FA Cup third round tie against Doncaster Rovers called off, I must admit it leaves me scratching my head a little as to what to write about.

It’s all very well prattling on about the transfer window, our good form over Christmas and which formation best suits our squad, but what I need, much like Carl Cort, is matches.

For me, the beauty of football is not in the minutiae of tactics and transfers but in the stories, characters and freak occurrences, often little to do with the game itself, that you can only experience by attending games.

Take, for example, the Charlton Athletic fixture just after Christmas.

Before the game, I phoned my brother, whom I was meeting later on the Ealing Road terrace.

He said he had “a big surprise” for me that concerned his girlfriend. Obviously, pregnancy or proposal were the two thoughts that popped into my head straightaway.

In the hour before kick-off, I was turning these options over in my mind and even started, a touch presumptuously perhaps, practising my best man’s speech in my head.

As I approached him at the ground, I braced myself for the big announcement – when it came, it was bigger than I could ever have imagined.

“Katy has made us sandwiches,” he said cheerily.

And that was it. Rather than a new sister-in-law or nephew, I was getting a ham and mustard bap.

I told him what I had been expecting and we had a good laugh about it. A ludicrous moment that has nothing to do with football, but it would not have happened without it.

Sadly, no such sandwich-based hilarity will take place this weekend.

As I was writing this column, it was announced that tomorrow’s game at Brighton has also been postponed.

My Withdean debut, alas, will have to wait.

The athletics ground, where Brighton have been temporarily plying their trade for 10 years, is, by all accounts, a pretty inhospitable place.

With a blanket of snow covering the stadium, making it more suitable for Scott of the Antarctic than Scott of Brentford (geddit?), clearly the decision to postpone the match a couple of days early is a sensible one.

As a supporter, I am pleased to know where I stand. As a columnist, I am gutted.