City were on the Telly. It’s a rare thing that my lot get shown live on the box (it’s happened I think five times ever) and it’s not something most Exeter fans relish. We have a proud tradition of failing to impress when the live TV cameras are in attendance. Only the cruel would suggest that we have a tradition of failing to impress in general.
So for the home game versus Dagenham and Redbridge (D&R are a Tesco bag team – blue and white stripes ‘ and thus more or less automatically loathsome, but that’s another story), the Exeter Exiles chose to meet for the occasion in a moderately salubrious Westminster bar called Base One. How the assembled fifty of us cheered when City won, and scored, that early penalty, which also resulted in a D&R player being dismissed, and how the bar’s other clientele looked confused. All seemed set fair. And we blew it. We failed to capitalise. We didn’t have the imagination to break them down or for that matter to keep them out. The game dribbled to an uninteresting 1-1.
And as misplaced pass followed hopeless flick-on I realised that I didn’t know what to do. If I’d been watching a team I didn’t much care about I’d have drifted off into other conversations. If I’d been at the game I could have vented at the linesman or the other team or life in general but it seemed daft to be shouting at the screen in that way.
I suppose you TV footy enthusiasts, you armchair season ticket holders, have developed ways to deal with it when your team lets you down. What on earth do you do? Switch off the TV? Leave the pub and go and do something more entertaining? Rage against the big screen? I was left cracking the odd glum joke and feeling unable to tear myself away. Most uncomfortable.