The Neverending Season

The football season never really ends. This has taken some adjusting to in my second year as a football supporter. Growing up as a sports fan in America meant changing sports every few months as one season ended and another one began. Oh sure, they sometimes overlap, but no season lasts more than seven months. Baseball begins in Spring and finishes in Autumn, (American) Football begins in early Autumn and finishes in late Winter, and Basketball begins in late Autumn and finishes in early Summer. Die hard baseball fans will still follow football and basketball, even if their level of interest does not match that of their favourite sport. What else are they going to do for five months of the year? As a result, most sports fans are just that: sports fans. They might have one sport they prefer over others, they might follow college basketball but not really take much interest in the NBA. It is rare, though, to meet someone who only watches one sport. I'm sure there are some people out there like that, but to spurn one of the major sports entirely would come across as peculiar, and perhaps anti-social. [Please note: I cannot speak for hockey. I would not be surprised if most hockey fans only follow hockey as in order to follow hockey you need to be either a bit strange, Canadian, or perhaps, both.]

Not so in Britain! It took eight years of living in Britain before I finally got the football bug. A lot of things put me off, which I will discuss another time, but once you have it you can gorge yourself virtually without a break year round. My team, Bath City, finished its season in late April. Bath City play in the lower English leagues (six levels down from the top) and the season finishes earlier than for the top leagues. The Premiership season finished a month later, with the FA Cup, the traditional end of season fixture, taking place on 30 May. A mere 39 days later, Bath City had their first pre-season friendly against Cirencester Town (they lost - but pre-season friendlies don't really matter).

39 days without football?! You might wonder how a dedicated football fan can survive such sensory deprivation for so long, but if you wonder that then you really have never experienced the English 'closed' season. Nothing closes for real. First of all, the player transfer market gets as much or more coverage as the regular season of most other sports. Unless something really remarkable is happening (like England beating Australia in a cricket test) the back page of your favourite newspaper is more likely to feature an article about whether John Terry will move to Manchester City or who will be shoring up the defence at Spurs. And wait! There is still a lot of football played in this supposedly 'closed' season. South Africa has hosted a two-week tournament called the 'Confederations Cup' (the USA made the finals) and England have played two World Cup qualifiers. And speaking of the World Cup, next year the entire 'closed' season will be taken up with that, so there really will be no stop to football at all. If anything the excitement and coverage will be at its peak after this year's season finishes. Two years after that there will be the European championships (almost as big as the World Cup) that will also fill the gap that summer, so in actual fact there is only a 39 day gap every other year. And that 39 day gap, when it does come, is full of football anyway.

Football never stops. In fact, if FIFA had any control over the matter, I'm sure they would like to add an extra month or two to the twelve standard calandar months we have now just to fit in a few more fixtures.

This creates a real dichotomy in the world of British sports fans. There are football fans, who have very little time for anything else, and then there are the people at the margins who follow other sports. Oh sure, there are a very few people who follow all sports. I know some Bath City fans who stroll down to the Rec when City are away to watch Bath Rugby, and who can speak intelligently about cricket and Formula 1, but these are rare beasts. You would not feel comfortable in a conversation switching subjects from Bath City football to Somerset cricket without checking first to see if the person you were speaking to followed cricket. In America, if you were discussing the merits of the Dodgers starting pitching rotation with someone, you would not inquire if they knew much about basketball before talking about the Lakers. It would be insulting. It would be like asking someone if they could read before you discussed a book you had recently enjoyed.

Speaking of reading, if you have read thus far then maybe you might want to look out for further posts. I will be talking about my experiences as a Bath City fan in the upcoming season and explaining the differences between British and American sports. Stick around!