Why Football No Longer Matters

Forgive me… Some might disagree… But bear with me as if you stick around long enough you’ll hopefully eventually get to see my point.

It was all going so well… Notts were in a beautiful run of form at the business end of the season in the National League and aiming for a return to where they belong at the first given opportunity. Forest were in the Championship playoffs, ambition on returning to the Premier League after 21 long years with both our cities clubs finally looking to end their Wembley exile this May… A potential finale under the arch for what has been a great season for the respective clubs on opposite banks of the Trent.

For Mansfield, the end of the campaign could not come quick enough… Neither here or there, the Stags season had fizzled out from as early as October… Not so for Basford United under Steve Chettle, gunning towards the top of the Northern Premier League, promotion sights towards step six of the football pyramid…Imagine that… I remember playing against them in the old Notts Alliance.

Carlton Town too were hovering towards unprecedented ambition never seen before. Promoted to the step 8 second tier of the Northern Premier League in 2007 they have been there ever since. Tommy Brookbanks and Mark Harvey have this season lead a young exciting side to the brink of the playoffs and a highest ever potential league finish… And then… Someone in China ‘as they say’ ate a bat???

Now I’m still not sure if that last comment has any factual evidence beside it so anyone offended please don’t take offence as I’m not even certain if I even think it’s true… But the global hysteria that rightly or wrongly followed… Certainly affected all of the above and more… As my sport football (along with others), was suddenly taken away from me, my friends, my fellow people of Nottingham and everyone else in the world for that matter, bar Belarus.

It wasn’t too bad at first… ‘Ah it’ll be alright’… ‘We’ll be back to normal soon’ we thought… ‘A month, six weeks, it’ll all blow over’… But we currently open up the first week in May, a week that is traditionally the end of the football league calendar from the Championship right down to Sunday mornings, and we still don’t know where we bloody are???

Parklife to be fair has all been agreed, null and void anything below the top four tiers of the football league don’t count… The year that never was… Carlton didn’t go up… Basford didn’t make history…. Notts didn’t return at the first attempt… As for Mansfield, well they still don’t know what’s going on… Not that they care?? There season ended a long time ago… They won’t go down… They won’t go up… Finances aside this whole malarkey doesn’t really affect things at Field Mill?

But for Nottingham Forest Football Club…. Now that’s a whole different matter.

Hypotheses on various solutions are in full swing.. ‘Play the Championship without playoffs’ some say (largely in Yorkshire rose white or with a yam-yam accent)… ‘Award the team with the best record against those in the playoffs promotion’ say those mostly wearing Red… Whatever is decided, the outcome will annoy somebody somewhere, but the longer it goes on I’m starting to think ‘does it all really matter’?

Notts County have had their season completely ruined, a pointless exercise and any history witnessed now tarnished from the memory books due to the season’s premature closure… The Magpies still have a ‘slim’ chance on making Wembley as no decision has yet been made to ‘stop’ the FA Trophy… I really hope they get to carry on in that cup and reward the fans with the day out they deserve… But as rumours circle more… It would be pointless any form of football taking place without the fans.

For Forest, Mansfield and Notts it is now likely that any remaining fixtures they have to fulfil the 2020/21 calendar they may have to do so without their fans, it will be promotion for the Reds in an empty stadium… It could be Notts reaching Wembley in front of nothing but a couple of Directors… Do we really want that to happen?

I’ve gone on record saying ‘professional football needs to be concluded’ but it cannot be played without fans, especially as we head towards what should be the most exciting time in the season for those clubs still with hopes and aspirations… Football can of course be played behind closed doors and it might have to be to get some sort of closure on the current campaign, but if it is, please do not start another season on the premises that everything will be alright in the end, because the implications of having football without fans far outweigh the joy of playing it in front of packed out crowds of supporters. Me, You, Our friends (and enemy’s) at the match?

If football concludes without us… It doesn’t matter… It doesn’t matter that Forest go up and we don’t get to enjoy it… It doesn’t matter that we open our season in the Premier League at home to Manchester United or away at Liverpool in front of nobody… It doesn’t matter when we are finally allowed into stadiums next January that Forest are already ten points adrift at the foot of the table… Because football without the fans, well it’s just not football.

At first thought I would have said ‘we need to do everything’ to conclude the 2019/20 season but as it drags into potentially car crashing the next campaign too… I’m starting to think we are simply just ‘better off without it’… I don’t want to see my club reach the Premier League without me, I don’t want to miss out on those great potential away days at Spurs or Man City and our chance to redeem ourselves against Ole Gunnar Solskjaer who ran riot against us the last time we welcomed him to our ground over 20 years ago… I just want things to return back to normal… First, foremost, then when it does… Bring football back and let us go see our teams play… Because until then… Until we can walk the busy banks of the Trent to the games with our friends and family whilst mingling through the crowds before trudging through a tight turnstile up the concrete steps to our favoured seats… Football, simply will not matter without us, the fans, the people that pay the rent. The life and soul and heartbeat of the very sport we love.