Football crazy :)

It might shock you to learn I didn’t grow up a sporty girl. We didn’t watch sports or talk sports in our family. The odd world cup heartbreaker to seal the deal that sports was TOO much, but beyond that, my dad was scarred from boarding school and we were just girls who didn’t play sports. I got into ‘FITNESS’ around 19 years old is a fanatic way don’t worry, but fitness is different to sports. There is a language in sports that was alien to me until the most recent few years of my life, and I suppose I wanted to write an essay to say, WOW, sports.

I’ll give an example about the language of sport. If you played sports as a kid or in school you UNDERSTAND something. And I don’t mean rounders ok, I hit the ball and did a lap just like you, but actual team sports is something else. If you are a boy and you grow up in England and you like football, well phew frankly. And if you grow up a girl in this country you either went to a posh school where sports are cool and encouraged, you happened to have hair that looks great in a high ponytail and thus get recruited as goal attack in netball, you genuinely like and have an aptitude for sports and pursue it even though your school is shit, OR you assume the role of I have my period in every PE class for 5 years until it’s over. AND if that’s you - THAT WAS ME - the few times you do have to actually participate you take on a lacklustre attitude, never run, try or break a sweat and are eternally wing defence.

So that was me. And then the example of the language of sports. When I was about 25 I met a nice guy called Tom on my yoga retreat. After the retreat he invited me and my boyfriend at the time for a game of tag rugby. I was thrilled because I had a small crush on Tom. It TRANSPIRED it was a league match and they needed another girl to hit the girl quota and in his mind, anyone could do it. But guess what, I couldn’t. If you’ve played one sport, you can adapt to other sports quite easily. You understand the way people SHOUT at you doesn’t mean you need to cry, you move around other players with ease and engagement. But if you’ve never played sports, well, you don’t. And what you do instead is humiliate yourself. That’s when I really understood the depth of my ignorance.

But anyway I was interested in other things and something as silly as sports wasn’t going to distract me. I took on the attitude I now find annoying in other people. Something a bit dismissive. Patronising even. Look at those silly boys who care so much about football, how silly actually. I am on the true quest of life on my yoga mat :)

It’s summer of 2026 and I’ve got world cup fever. I will say I was thrilled last night’s England match was in the middle of the night and when we played on Wednesday I spent 45 minutes upstairs scrolling my phone because I couldn’t BEAR the tension, but other than that consider me football mad. Watching the games that aren’t England is much easier to cope with, and sure I shed tears when Cabo Verde got knocked out by Argentina, and when I saw Japan’s devastation, but when it is not the hearts of England’s die hard, heartbroken a million times before fans, I can join in. The way it’s swept my algorithm is absolutely phenomenal. I can cry before 7am every day if I want to! My heart has been cracked open by the togetherness, drama, heartwarming moments and well, we needed it.

Tom is what you’d call football mad. He supports Hull City till he dies, but also enjoys watching every other game going. I’ve come to understand keeping up is a fulltime job. Simultaneously my family have become FOOTBALL CRAZY. Beth in particular is absolutely unhinged and has been known to watch games more than once to catch every second, and the other two have also leaned in massively in the last few years. I woke up at 5am to texts from Beth and Tom after the game of their lives and also learnt they’d been texting each other through the whole match (happiness in a bottle for me). For some reason I am more proud and endeared by Beth’s obsession with football than of any of her very real achievements so far. There is something about the purity that I am trying to get to.

When I was busy shunning sports I was in a relationship with a man who also didn’t like sports. He was an intellectual xxx. And we both were pursuing something else. The something else? Ourselves. There is something that suits a certain type of person in yoga. Someone who loves control and no one entering the realm of their rectangle. Have you ever been in a yoga class when someone asks the teacher a perfectly reasonable question but you feel utter shock and disdain because how dare they puncture it? That’s what yoga can be like. It is not a conversation and we are not human equals. Checking, ‘is this where my hand should be’ is a shocking offence. When I taught it I would be flustered beyond words by someone treating me like a mere mortal human when I was busy weaving magic. And I’m not pouring water on all fires, but it is definitely a thing to consider. So team sports is the opposite of that. It is contact, it is disruption, it is collaboration, it is unpredictable.

At this point I feel a bit like singing glory glory hallelujah. But I won’t.

Beth is not the most emotionally expressive of us, she is in fact, always fine, but she will express a million emotions in 90 minutes of play. With absolutely no filter for the people around her. Tom would rather not discuss his feelings at any given moment, but when it comes to the jeopardy of football, his heart is on his sleeve and if Hull are playing I’d rather be out of the house. My inability to handle the tension and heartbreak mean I also lose out on the high. Shame. I just watch them back on safe clips in my phone. Something I’d like to work on. But I can’t help but think it’s connected to the yoga thing. I’m all about energy when it’s energy I can control, but as soon as the stakes are up and it’s all to play for, I’d rather go under the covers.

Before i’ve thought, maybe I’m too much of an empath. What a lovely sweetie just cares too much about humanity xxx but in actual fact, maybe I’m too much of a control freak. I don’t take drugs either - apart from the five occasions widely documented. I never get too drunk. I get home before it’s too late. I don’t ‘see where the night takes me’ or get carried away. I have fun when I decide to have fun and I can be the one dancing on the table, but then I could have a conversation with your English teacher when I get down. Maybe to really support a team, like really really, you need to be prepared to rip the lid off and have your heartbroken. Maybe you have to be prepared to have your nervous system ROCKED BABY.

I historically always found it hard when conversations get derailed. When one person is telling a story that is interrupted and then we lose the narrative. In fact people have complimented me on my ability to keep a thread. And I do think it’s a nice trait in a good listener, BUT I think it’s another example. Life is TANGENTS man, you have to let them. You cannot control a table of people, sometimes someone makes a joke that interrupts your story and you have to learn that’s ok. I am trying. The best way to become ok with a million unfinished conversations is to hang out with small children and their mothers. God fucking luck every completing a thread again. And perhaps that is the realest thing of life.

Football fever in a heatwave has stirred my soul. The emotion makes me glad to be human. Getting through an England match without bailing is my aspiration.