Himself is a Hooligan

Marian Keyes
Himself likes football. That’s because he’s a man. I don’t like football. That’s because I’m a
woman. Although I pretend I love it. That’s because I’m a modern woman.
When Himself declared his interest in the game, it came as a bit of a shock. He’s a mild-
mannered man with more than a passing fondness for classical music and jazz. And between
yourselves and myself, jazz was the thing that I saw as storing up trouble for the future.
I hate jazz and make no bones about it. I just don’t get it. I hate the unpredictability of it, all that
self-indulgent meandering. What I’d like to know is, where’s the chorus? What’s wrong with having a
rhythm? I want something I can tap my foot to without seeming as if I’m trying to send a message in
Morse code.
The football problem turned out to be more acute than I’d initially thought. It transpired that he
does more than just like football in the abstract. He has a team that he follows and has done since
he was a small boy. (Not one of your glamour teams, but a success-challenged crew called
Watford.) He goes to their matches, is joyous and ecstatic when they win; moody, sullen and
uncommunicative when they don’t. He has high hopes that our unconceived son will play for them.
He even buys the crappy merchandise. Their ground is in a place called Vicarage Road and I am
the unproud owner of a pair of alarmingly expensive red synthetic knickers with the words I
SCORED AT VICARAGE ROAD written across the front.
I didn’t want to be one of those cardigan-wearing, wifey types who click their tongue and throw
their eyes skyward every time football is mentioned. At least I wanted to pretend I wasn’t. With a
horrible sense of foreboding, I realized I’d have to make a bit of an effort.
Luckily, on account of football being the new rock ’n’ roll, I knew the basics when I met him.
(Although times have moved on, and now that comedy is the new football maybe the rest of you can
all stop faking interest in the sport soon. You lucky articles.) So I already knew that Man United
wear red shirts, that Ooh Ah Cantona was probably a worry to his mother, and that the one with his
eyes too close together, giving him the aspect of a village idiot, was Ryan Giggs. I understood that I
was supposed to fancy him. What I didn’t understand was why.
Unfortunately, when Himself talked about football it wasn’t the fancyability or otherwise of Ryan
Giggs that he wanted to discuss. It was all a lot more technical than that. So I forced myself to learn.
I asked questions and managed to listen to the answers without going into a boredom-triggered
coma. And now, God love me, I understand the rules. I can bandy about expressions like “ penalty
area” and “we was robbed” with the best of them. I have even been initiated into that innermost
sanctum, the holiest of holies, by knowing what the offside rule means.
The only problem is, despite my wealth of knowledge, I still don’t like football. The urge to click
my tongue and throw my eyes skyward every time it’s mentioned is still sore upon me.

1
 After we’d been going with each other awhile, he asked me to go to a match with him. “It’s not
every girl I’d bring to a match,” he said fondly. I smiled tightly. I agreed to go for three reasons and
three reasons only: (a) I loved him. (b) He promised to buy me chips on the walk from the pub to the
ground. (c) I was let off having to go and see a jazz saxophonist at Ronnie Scott’s, a musician
who’d been ominously described as “a purist.”
And what a revelation that match was. The atmosphere was disconcertingly tribal and primitive.
There was so much testosterone in the air that it was a wonder I didn’t grow a beard. But worst of all
was the change in me laddo—by day a mild-mannered computer analyst, but on Saturday
afternoons at football matches . . .
Who was this snarling animal beside me, his face contorted with hate, who bellowed tunelessly,
“You’re shit and you know you are” at the faceless supporters at the far end of the pitch? I was
horrified. And worse was to come. “Come on,” he said, elbowing me. “Why aren’t you singing? Join
in. You’re shiiiit and you know you . . .”
The unpalatable truth is that his team aren’t very good. They’re in the first division, which anyone
in the know knows is actually the second division. I went to a couple more matches and I was in an
agony of frustration because the eejits wouldn’t score. They’d get all the way to the net and then
they’d hang around shyly, like an adolescent boy trying to pluck up the courage to ask a girl to
dance. “After you,” they cordially invited their teammates with a flourish. “No, I insist, after you.” Fear
of success, I diagnosed.
I put a proposition to Himself. “Can we support someone else? Someone who wins occasionally?”
He was outraged. He spluttered and stuttered about loyalty and steadfastness, for better or
worse, in sickness and in health. “You can’t choose who to support,” he scolded. “It’s something
you’re born to, it’s thrust upon you, you have no say in the matter.”
“It’s only a football team,” I muttered. “Not your destiny.”
“And exactly who were you thinking of switching your allegiance to?” he sneered.
“Well, er . . .” I said, suddenly not so sure of myself. I hadn’t been expecting such a violent
response. “I was thinking maybe of Man United . . .”
“Man United!” His face was a picture of disgust. “That crowd of tossers.” It’s really quite
astonishing how many people despise Man United and all their works. “The only people who
support them know nothing about football,” he spat. Well, that suited me perfectly.
But the worst thing of all about football is that it gets under your skin. Even when you don’t want it
to. Even when you fight it. Because the last time I was at a match and “their” side matched “ ours” in
repeatedly failing to kick the ball into the back of the net, I was appalled to find that the person lustily
leading the singing, to the tune of One Packie Bonner, of “. . . Score in a brothel, you couldn’t score
in a brothel” was me.
First published in Irish Tatler, November 1997