I know I am not the only one feeling weird about watching from home, but as an Ipswich Town fan, the season never continued and watching a home game from home hasn’t happened to me before.
Sure, there have been times when I have watched from home, when I was a kid, and when I was unable to travel to a home game once, I watched on an internet provider but, as the Sky cameras panned round the empty stadium, I saw my season ticket seat, empty.
I don’t think anyone could get used to this. In fact, I have watched more live TV games since lockdown than I ever used to, but, it’s not the same.
I sit in the armchair, and the team news surprises me, a couple of players unfit due to training, I would normally have heard that hours ago, but instead the Twitter feed alerted me moments before the TV did.
My better half has taken herself away to a different room to watch a movie, and I sit in cinematic style with soft drinks and snacks, as opposed to beer and pies.
I can’t even be sure what to expect. Wigan have lost twenty-one players from last season’s squad, I don’t know who most of the names are; I can’t second guess a moment of it.
Somehow, this feels foreign, and with the possibility of not attending for quite some time, I can’t be sure I will tune in every Saturday and Tuesday – even if the results are going our way.
On the back of this, my season ticket from last year was refunded in vouchers, by choice, and I think I am going to need to buy a shirt to feel connected. I haven’t bought a club shirt for several years, an overweight man in his late thirties wearing sports apparel is not something that sits well for me. I do own last season’s shirt, signed by the first-team squad, the worst Ipswich team in seventy years. What a collectors item! I didn’t buy it, it was a perk in a bit of promotional nonsense that I was involved in.
Anyway, onwards and upwards…hopefully.
