Losing my safety net - Football by Kelly Somers

I’ve done it, I’ve survived over a week of self-isolation, I’m staying home and I’ve got through another weekend without football,. Go me – I’m alive, I’ve not killed my other half (yet), and I’ve been vaguely productive.

It’s a strange situation, isn’t it? To be cheering myself for something that for so long I’ve craved – time off, calm, and my home. It’s true what they say though, the grass isn’t always greener. I’m actually missing grass, that special type that covers a football pitch.

I’ve officially not worked for 10 days – as someone pointed out the other day, that’s the longest I’ve had ‘off’ in years. I’ve not left my home, other than a couple of trips to the shops and dropping a Mother’s Day cake in my Mum’s porch, and it feels weirdly unnerving. 

People keep messaging and asking what I’m up to. I’ve done plenty to keep busy, in a bid to try and focus on the things I can do, rather than those I can’t. I’ve been sorting our new house out (this is timely for us, if nothing else), taken up yoga and home exercise, started Spanish – and look at this, I’m even writing for the first time in years. 

But that doesn’t mean I didn’t feel a big empty void when, at 3.04pm on Saturday I looked at my watch and realised at this time I’m always in a studio, or at a game. I put down my disinfectant (the glamour) and felt a pang of emptiness as I looked out at my (fortunately) quiet road, and had a flashback to the last live game I’d been at. It was, incidentally the last live professional game in the country- Liverpool v Atletico Madrid. 

I remembered the incredible atmosphere that the Anfield crowd conjured up before kick-off , turning to my pundit Mark Schwarzer and saying it was the loudest I could recall. It was like everyone was collectively trying to shout as loud as they could, in the hope that maybe this nasty virus would go away. 

Multiple goals, twists and turns – it really had everything, even extra time. It felt as if the Gods had already decided that if this was going to be the last football match in a while, it may as well be a good one.

Whilst I can recall vividly Liverpool’s breakthrough - Georginio Wijnaldum heading Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain’s cross home - instead of soaking up the multiple angles of replays as I usually would, I found myself fixated on the fans around me. The sheer ecstasy on their faces that their Champions League dream was still (then at least) alive, the way that goal was bringing people together from all walks of life, the way we as a collective share these highs, and the lows.

That single moment, those scenes, are is ultimately why we all treasure football, but that was also when it hit me. Those celebrations were why football had to stop. There were 52,267 people inside Anfield that night, and now as we’re shown endless, harrowing diagrams and explanations of how this deadly virus spreads, in those celebrations, the smile I initially had on my face for the Liverpool fans was replaced by the fear that for all the good did in that moment in time, it could also do something far, far worse.

Jurgen Klopp had told fans around the tunnel to stop putting their hands out before the game, in no uncertain terms. This too felt like a metaphor – it was football’s way of saying ‘don’t reach out to us anymore, we can be your saviour when you’re going through so much, but we can’t save you from this.’

I will remember that game for a long time – because that was also my last proper day at work.  

I am someone that is a self-confessed workaholic. I fail to strike the balance regularly, I prioritise the wrong things, I miss countless social occasions. This is why everything feels so unnatural, and why throughout these hours, days, weeks, and maybe (likely) months, I will daydream in and out of my working world, into football and I will replay those scenes at Anfield. The drama, the sense of occasion and ultimately the despair (sorry Liverpool fans), and look back on the photo I took as I walked out of that ground, with a lump in my throat, knowing it would be the last I would see for a while.

For me, as it is for so many, football is more than a job. It has got me through so much. It’s been the perfect tonic for heartbreak, illness, grief.

It’s been the one constant – from the age of eight when I watched my beloved Watford beat Bolton to go into the (then) Premiership. I’ve been hooked ever since, and even on the streaks of work when I’ve not had a day off for 20 odd days, I still go to games when I finally get a rest. Some may say, it’s an addiction.

Right now this virus is teaching me that it’s ok to feel like this. It’s ok to miss something. It’s ok to long for something. And most of all, it’s more than ok if that thing in this moment is football, because it means my family and friends are healthy. 

Football will return one day – maybe in two months, maybe in three, four or five, who knows, and just imagine how good it will feel. Waking up on the morning of that first game.

I’ll be there before the press room doors open, with the neatest, most comprehensive notes I’ve ever written. Maybe I’ll be a little rusty, maybe even a little nervous, but it will be one of the best working days I’ll ever have – even if it ends 0-0. 

Football is the most important of the least important things, as social media keeps telling me, and quite frankly, I can’t wait for my biggest concern in life to be whether Watford can stay up. 

Until then though, it’s all about us staying at home, keeping our heads above water and getting through this together. 

For now football, you can wait. 

Find out more about Kelly here