That film came out in 1997 and I saw it 18 months
later. By this point Manchester City had
been relegated from the Premier League and relegated from the first
division. ‘Where there’s life, there’s
hope’ they say, but I couldn’t see it. There
was life…just…but very little hope in my heart.
I still went to games but 98/99 was a long hard season to deal with.
Christ, that seems like a long time ago now. The modern Manchester City are 13 years and a
million miles away from that ragtag team, that needed to play less football and
use more aggressive grit from bad tempered Scotsman Andy Morrison to get out of
the division. Colin Firth character’s
Nirvana could not have seemed further away.
On Sunday, at around 4.50pm that all changed. And get this Hornby, our late winner was
better than yours! Your Arsenal side had
only gone eighteen years without a title, we’d gone FORTY FOUR. You only pipped Liverpool to the title, we
pinched the title from our biggest rivals.
You’d won numerous cups in the interim, we had a thirty-five year barren
spell. Your win crowned only your hope
of that ninety minutes at Anfield, we were dealing with the loss of an expectation that we'd gub QPR.
I didn’t dive across the settee when Aguero scored. I leapt off it, ran into the kitchen, ran
back into the lounge, opened the front door for no reason and closed it again
and sank to my knees whilst for the first time in my life dropping the work ‘fuck’
in front of my father in the midst of other undecipherable yelling.
Pure unadulterated ecstasy.
And as a result, I am going to watch Fever Pitch again. This time I might enjoy the whole thing.
