A Significant Game For The Significant Other

Every Game An Away Game by Bluebeard

(first published in the May 2011 Mervue United match programme)

Tonight’s game with Mervue will be a particularly significant event, for me, if no-one else. In fact for me, if no-one else, it has a number of significances.

Firstly, it will be the first time I have had the chance to see Mervue play “in the flesh” in the three seasons since they entered the League. Despite my efforts, to date the only bit of Mervue action I have had are the clips I’ve seen on the Blues Blog (http://bluestid.blogspot.com/ – check it out tomorrow!). That, and of course the ten seconds footage from last June, of the greatest own goal of all time. That must have been a tough one to take for the Mervue fans, and particularly for their defender, Mike Elwood. While I will happily take any goal we get, and I hope for a few of them to give us the win, I hope for his sake that he is not responsible for any of them – he has done his bit for the Blue cause already. I am sure that he will not want to be the reason for them hitting youtube again in this their 50th anniversary season!

Another reason I’m anticipating this game is that it should be my first game for nearly a year. Previously the commute from London was a pain but rather manageable – depending on work, flights, and other factors, I’d be sure of a game every couple of months at worst. The journey now is from the US, and considerably more troublesome. The plan now is to visit when a couple of games are clustered together. I booked back in January, looking forward to back to back games with Shels and Longford. Unfortunately, this time around, the collapse of Sporting Fingal led to the FAI deciding at short notice to change the schedule, and the airlines don’t buy into this as a reason to change your tickets. So Mervue it is, and an outside chance of Monaghan.

And it will be good to see proper football the right way for the first time in over a year. Granted, I have gone to a few games in the US. I had the pleasure of watching the MLS in Los Angeles: a spectacular experience in many ways, and I can tell you that the football is good and very watchable: it’s not La Liga or Serie A, but far better than, for example, than the A-League in Australia. The fan experience was very different, and even though there were a large number of tifosi in the curva, the majority watched football in a very different way to how we look at the game and more like how they watch many other sports here. Yes, it was an enjoyable experience, but as we all know, for an uninvested visitor to the town, a footballing tourist as such, attending a game doesn’t have the same buzz.

My local team, for now, is a club in the US Premier Development League – the fourth tier of US football – called the New Orleans Jesters. Sadly, they don’t have much of a following – seldom do you see above a couple of hundred at the Pan American Stadium for anything other than a high school American Football game. And to be honest, they don’t have much of a team either: you know that the season is coming soon when they advertise for new players at a “combine”. Some of the players are quite good, most are nothing special.

However there seem to be a lot of people with a love for Waterford United in New Orleans. Again and again, when people ask me what my interests are and I tell them that I love the Blues, there is great recognition and mutual love expressed. Many have told me that it is the best city in the world for the Blues – I would however disagree as listening over the internet isn’t in the same league as watching them in the stand.

The third reason that tonight’s game is important sees me in my missionary garb. This is the first time that the new Mrs Bluebeard attends a game, and I am set on redeeming her fully. Yes, as you may have guessed from the above, she is indeed a Yank. Be nice if you meet her, mind, and don’t talk about America meddling in the Middle East or how dreadful George W was or anything – she’d probably agree with you, but it’s just plain rude to carry on like that with someone you haven’t met before. The good news is that she is a willing convert to football, having been baptized with an Ireland game, and taking communion on a couple of occasions at Pan American Stadium and on TV during the World Cup. During the World Cup she displayed classic football fan superstition, leaving the room whenever the US needed a goal desperately, as it had worked against England!

Unfortunately, she has yet to see the Blues play, and thus cannot be fully Confirmed in the new faith. But it isn’t for the want of trying. A trip to a game two years ago against tonight’s opposition was planned for a Saturday evening, but then it got shifted to the middle of the day which blew it out of the water as a possibility. Then a volcano intervened, and prevented her from seeing a game last year. Despite the long flight, and subsequent train trip that still awaits us at the time of writing, I am hopeful that we’ll break her jinx this time. We have had our fill of disasters, natural, chronological, decreed from on high, and other. Fingers crossed tonight that she’ll achieve her Confirmation. And with a bit of luck she’ll do better than the sporadic fivers and tenners usually available on Confirmation day, hopefully it will be three points and a couple of goals!