As I was trudging through the mud and rain while swigging a luke warm cup of pear cider at the Glastonbury Festival over the weekend it occurred to me that I hadn’t thought about sport since I arrived on Thursday afternoon.
The sun had been shining then, a luxury we Glastonbury-goers soon had to live without, but as the rain began trickle through my waterproof - or not so as the case maybe - Leyton Orient jacket, I suddenly found my mind wandering away from the Lilly Allen performance I was making slow progress towards while trying not to lose my Dunlop wellies in the mud.
Had Newcastle signed anyone? Rumours had already spread across the fields of tents that Thierry Henry had gone to Barcelona and perhaps Big Sam had pulled off his own transfer coup with the capture of a Bosnian wonder kid in exchange for a set of Adidas tracksuits. - wasn’t that how much Wimbledon paid for Warren Barton before flogging him to Newcastle for £4.5m?
Had Freddie Shepherd finally been removed or was the ostracised Newcastle chairman still clinging to power like a small child refusing to let go of the comfort blanket he fondled when sucking his thumb?
Had Sunderland been linked with a player they actually intended to sign yet? Who were Durham playing in the Final on of the Friends Provident Trophy? Were Leyton Orient going to sign anyone you lot had heard of? Paul Terry, anyone, brother of John? Ha, beat that!
And then it happened - no funny guys and girls I didn’t fall flat on my face in the mud - I heard a familiar chant and it wasn’t Lilly singing Smile.
Nope it was a Beatles track, well, at least it sounded like one. La la la la la la la, la la la la, Hey Jude. No, wait a minute, la la la la la la la, la la, la Keano........
Oh God, there it was, a football song and then another, and another, Nyron Nosworthy, We Hate Newcastle, Julio Arca, all the Sunderland favourites. Suddenly I realised that I didn’t want to know what was happening in the world of sport, I wasn’t interested in who had been signed, who was being linked with who and how many season tickets had been sold.
I love sport and I love football. I’m in the very fortunate position where my job is also my hobby, but enough is enough. I had gone to Glastonbury to escape from work and from life and I didn’t need a bunch of replica shirt wearing Sunderland fans to remind me about the outside world.
Thankfully someone wearing a bright orange poncho told them to shut up as they were disturbing the fairies or something, but the damage had been done. If my mobile phone had been working - it had stopped on Friday evening when I dropped it in the mud while leaping about in the dance tent to the Eurythmics classic Sweet Dreams - I would have rung the office straight away to find out if I’d missed anything.
I resisted, of course, there were better things to do with my time like repairing my tent at 5am after some idiot had fallen on top and demolished it while it was raining and I had to go out in my boxer shorts to save it.
But as soon as I got back to civilisation on Monday - if that’s what you can call a motorway service station on the M5 - I devoured every single newspaper in a frantic search for sporting knowledge from the North-East. And there was, well nothing really.
Mike Ashley has taken over - thought he’d already done that , Shepherd is still chairman - at least for now, David Rozenhal is supposed to be signing any day now - just as he was last week - and Sunderland are still being linked with anyone who played for Manchester United or Ireland. ~In other words, it looks like I picked a good week to be off.
If anyone wants my Glastonbury highlights, by the way, I’ll be happy to share them with you, but I’ll wait to be asked, wouldn’t want to bore you, particularly not Gary Metcalfe - comment on Sunderland are going to sign Eric Cantona - who only wants to hear about Newcastle United and Newcastle United only!
Let’s just hope things start to get a bit more interesting in the sporting world soon because watching an ageing Tim Henman go through the process of failing to win Wimbledon for the umpteenth year is not my idea of fun! Come On Tim! Hurry up and lose, there’s a good chap!
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