It’s
only a game
19/03/04 |
by Neil Heath
Under Joe Kinnear things have certainly picked up and I’m sure we’ll be okay, but there’s always that nagging doubt, the worst case scenario. However, I’ve found the perfect remedy to make Forest’s season seem
insignificant - watch Roman Polanski’s The Pianist. This season’s woes of being a Reds fan should pale in comparison, I promise.
We’d all agree that supporting Forest has felt extremely distressing at times. After the Coventry City game I told my dad that I wanted the ground to swallow me up because I was so disappointed - the last time I felt like that was when I was told my mum was going to die. In this moment, I realised I’d laid too much importance to Nottingham Forest. Minutes later we saw a seemingly composed middle-aged man, with his wife on his arm, kick a moving car on Trent Bridge. It made us laugh and broke our pessimism. I’d like to thank that man for being so ridiculous.
It’s not been fun watching Forest this season but, forgive me for pointing out the bleeding obvious, it’s only football. I know most of us usually react angrily to this statement,
but it’s true. The worst that can happen is that we go down to Division Two. We’ll still watch them play, albeit in another division, and I’m certain we’d come straight back up. The point is, if all in our lives we only have Nottingham Forest to worry about we should feel extremely lucky.
Football is a welcome distraction in our lives, but that’s all it is - pure escapism. In an ideal world it would be fantastic if we could think about something else when we leave a football ground, especially if we
lose. We don’t, and that’s why we get so down.
I’m sure the people of Madrid would happily swap Real’s stack of trophies in return for the two hundred people that died in their city last week.