Handling the great expectation

I have odd dreams. I suppose we all do. Sometimes I dream that I’m in a rock band and I get up on stage to play Bass guitar (which I used to play back in Uni), only to find out that I can’t strum a single note! And, the whole band are looking at me thinging WTF, while I look out to the crowd and see that everyone has left! Or walking onto a pitch thinking I’m a professional footballer, only to find out that I can’t even kick a ball – which is actually true.

Handling the great expection that everyone has of you must be a serious dent to one’s confidence. How long can someone remain seated on a pedestal high above everyone else before you are knocked over and someone else takes your limelight? Each week we watch football games hoping, praying that our team wins.  But, sometimes members’ of team commit howlers that make you want to scream with shame.

During the stadium tour, we were given the opportunity to walk through the players’ tunnel and onto the pitchside (we were not allowed to set one foot on the pitch). It’s an incredible walk because you are surrounded in this halo red coccon. Walking down you can imagine what the players could be feeling. For me it was excitement (as I was a tourist), but reflecting on my dreams it was quite discomforting. Everyone outside cheering you on, only to find by the second half they could be spitting your name in blood and booing at your inability to feed the crowds their weekend dose of adrenaline-fuelled wins.

As I write and review my notes that day, I certainly fely very different emotions as to where I was located at the stadium that day. From looking at the pitch from the Directors’ Box there was a sense of elevated objectiveness. But then as we walked into the private warrens of the players’ inner sanctity the perception and emotional values to change to imagining what it’s like being here. I felt almost at times empathetic and to handle that kind of pressure on a weekly basis is not something I could live up to, regardless of the money they throw at you. They are actors in a play which has no script. They must fend for themselves at the mercy of the crowd, for we are the Gods looking down at the pathetic mortals who must win our hearts for that day.

Going back to my story. Has the daughter done something so bad that the expectation of her has entered freefall to such a low and possibly dangerous point? Is the father her only lifeline to bring her back to normality before something terrible happens to her? Could be.

Psychology – It’s a game of two halves

To see the players changing rooms might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but you have to admit this is most probably the second most important place during a football match. The place where the players may vent at one another, or where tactics are rethought or simply a place where the players are elated or downright sobre.

Apparently, Arsene Wenger was responsible for the design layout of the players changing area. Unlike most clubs, Arsenal’s area is shaped in a horseshoe and in the centre they have a low table which sits all the sports drinks. However, in the visiting team’s changing area their table sits quite high such that when the players are sat down they can’t see one another across the table because it sits quite high and it’s pilled of sports drinks. This is an added psychology to wind the players up. Imagine, the opposing team are having an awful game. They come back and sit down but as someone opposite is talking, the player can’t see that person so they have to stand up – which affects the psychology of the players because they should be resting.

You look at buildings and you don’t tend to think about the psychology of how one feels being inside it. It’s quite amazing that a simple changing room can be designed to induce a psychological change in someone. Which takes me back to my story. I know this will be a about a father and son, or his daughter. But the question is why is it so important for this father to take his kid to the football? Is it because football games are actually rites of passages for sons and daughters to be better acquainted with their parents – something that has gone on for generations – or is it a case whereby the parents are handing the mantle of football supportership down to their children?

This is an interesting piece of psychology because had this been 15-20 years ago, no one in the right mind would take their children to a football game. I certainly never went to a game because of the violence and racist attitudes in those days. But today, we live in a different society that is more tolerant and open to the diverse Londoners that inhabit our city.

But to get back to the story, I am intrigued about this dynamic. And, instead of writing a rites of passage story I seem to want to dig deeper as to rationale why this father is taking their child to see a game? Now, the most obvious choices come to my mind such as: Parents are going through a divorce and the father is about to lose custody of his child so attends the last few games of the season before the mother moves town. Sounds interesting, but writing this kind of story doesn’t really set my mind on fire and becomes a piece of kitchen-sink / social drama – which is not bad but is not the angle I want to pursue to push my writing.

Sometimes the best stories are those which focus on the relationships. In this case, secrets are always so very interesting to explore. I had this fascinating idea that maybe the story is about a Father and Daughter, and the football games represent the connection between the two. – i.e. they are both battling to win.  I won’t go into detail about my proposed story because as a writer I don’t want to share too much with the outside world about the genesis of my ideas, but I do like the concept of a secret that needs to be extracted in order to understand some catastrophic event that occured. Most people would use a couch and a psychiatrist, but it would be interesting to set such a revelation about an incident at a football match. And that revelation would then bring the Father and daughter closer together. Maybe?

The Glorious Pitch

The tour started at 11am and we were ushered around the stadia by Eddie Kelly. A charming Scot in his late 50’s who played for Arsenal in the early 70’s. He scored the equalizer as a substitute against Liverpool in the 1971 FA Cup Final – the year I was born!

What I found fascinating about this chap, and the others ex-players who also chaperone the tours, is their love for this club. Arsenal has had quite a bashing over the last few years about the fact it’s an English club owned by different nationalities and our squad fields very little English players. Yet look around and the Stadium fascade tells a very different story and here’s Eddie giving us his impressive footballing career when he was with Arsenal.

I began thinking who is my character, is it an ex-footballer? Someone who yearns for their past? Someone who was in the public eye then, but is now nothing more than an ordinary person today. I don’t know. The more I kept thinking about this the more I realised that it was not fitting to have someone yearn about their past as the stadia is about today and now. It’s about glory. Maybe pain, maybe even suffering. But it’s about letting yourself go in the only safe environment in which you can vent your spleen (within reason) with anger, passion and hilarious insults.

We were taken to the Directors Box in which the first thing that hit my senses was the smell of freshly cut grass. It was so overwhelming that it reminded me when I was a kid and my Dad would cut the grass with one of those manual push lawn-mowers with rotating blades.

The pitch at Emirates is considered one of the best playing surfaces in the world and is constantly monitores on a 24/7 basis all year round. The grass seeds are imported from Holland, and they have a pitch drainage system that is totally automated – no expense is spared.

Sitting in the Director’s Box looking out at the centre pitch you are dumb-struck by the sheer size of this stadium.  But it was the smell of the grass that totally consumed my senses. To look at this manicured pitch, sweltering under the hot sun with automated sprinklers periscoping up and dispersing water and then retracting into the underground orrifices was almost science fiction like.

Sitting there taking pictures it dawned on me that football is about a rite of passage between a father and son. My dad never took me to a football match and it was only until 2008 when I saw my first ever game in France – of all places – between England and France. Even when I cast my memory back to Member’s Day it was incredible to see the number of families who had attended that. I must admit, there is something very compelling about a father and son dynamic set in the realm of a football club. I can’t intellectualise why, but for some reason I felt a strong reasonance that this father-son dynamic is the compelling centre-point of a story. The question is whether the stadia will be immortalised in the father, or the son?

Tour of Arsenal Football Club – Emirates Stadium

Last Wednesday was my birthday.  I never work on my birthday. So I took the day off (approved of course!) and decided to treat myself and my best friend (whose 40th is upcoming) to a tour of Arsenal Football Club. Now, some of you maybe thinking that I’m using this as some kind of lame excuse to do all things Arsenal related and somehow shoehorn this into my project. The way I look at it, is if you’re going to do something you might as well enjoy yourself doing it.

On a serious note though, in order to better understand the ground – which I had described as a gladiatorial stadia – I wanted to get into the fabric of my surroundings and see the stadia from its internal machinations – something which not that many people see.

Also, to round off my research I plan to see Arsenal vs Blackpool on Saturday, 21st August in which I hope to capture the mood and feeling of watching a game surrounded by 60k fans – which of course will be blogged.