A great day for all footy fans

It is the first day of the season today for all the Football League Clubs in England. The Premier League have another week but seventy-two of the ninety-two professional clubs start their season in a few hours time.

There is nothing quite like the build up to the first game of the season. It doesn’t matter what happened last season or whether you have scored a goal in any of your pre-season friendlies against the local Rag Bag Rovers and Dog and Duck pub team, you are full of optimism as you wait for the referee to blow the whistle and get the season underway.

You might well be proudly wearing the club’s new shirt and wondering whether the seventeen year old discovered from the Northern Intermediate and Average players league or the forty-one year old experienced pro who once nearly sat on the bench at quite a good club, are going to be the missing pieces of the jigsaw for the team.

Many of us are internally quite pessimistic about our teams chances. Maybe pessimistic is the wrong word. Realistic is probably better. We know that we haven’t signed any world beaters and we know that we have sold our best player and we know that we didn’t do too well last season and there is absolutely no reason to think we will do any better now.

So although we have this sensible switch inside our heads, in these last few hours before the season begins, we forget how to switch it on and all semblance of common sense disappears.

We become convinced that the lump up front who only managed three goals all last season will be challenging for an international cap before Christmas. The keeper who last season couldn’t catch a cold, will have sorted out his problems and will top the clean sheet table. The creative midfield player will…well, create.

Of course, we will accept that the first half an hour might be a bit scrappy. First game and all that. We’ll be disappointed to fall behind in that period but in the overall of scheme of things it won’t be too disastrous.

Going in at half-time 1-0 down and without having mounted a serious attack or attempted a shot on goal we will be struggling to maintain our optimistic stance. The manager will turn it round with one of his inspirational half-time team talks.

The second goal for the opposition in the second minute of the second half will be a bitter pill to swallow. Your optimism will disappear on a gust of wind. You might even join in with one of the ‘Sack the Board’ chants.

There was no need for that third goal near the end. That was cruel and just rubbed salt into the wound. A 3-0 home defeat wasn’t the start you were hoping for. You leave the ground knowing that you’ve just had a reality check and that it is going to be a long hard season.

The great thing about being a fan however is that you quickly get over it. There’s another game to look forward to in three or four days. You convince yourself that there were some positive signs in the last game and that if that lump of a striker can just get a goal, if that keeper can just sharpen up a little and if that midfield player can find one of his own players with one of his passes, things might just be alright and the play-offs aren’t out of the question.

And so it goes on throughout the season. A regular pattern of excitement, expectation, frustration, disappointment, doom and gloom, hope, excitement…

Maybe this just applies to being a Watford fan? I don’t think it does though, I think it applies to millions of fans all over the world. We’re all the same. We have hope and expectation way above what any realistic person would have in the circumstances.

Anyway, on to Watford’s first game away at Crystal Palace today. Well, we’ve sold our top scorer and our best defender (second top scorer). We haven’t brought anyone of any note into the club and there are dire financial warnings around. We haven’t won a pre-season friendly against league opposition despite them all being against teams from lower divisions. We only won about five of the last thirty-five games last season. Both of our first choice goalkeepers are injured and we are playing against one of the favourites for promotion.

I can see us winning 2-0! That’s what being a fan is all about.