The weekly ritual of the Pools coupon has been supplanted by
games such as Sky’s Super Six. Instead of sweating buckets at 4.40pm every
Saturday hoping for our predictions of eight score draws coming true, we now
get all clammy in anticipation of six correct scores and the ultimate
million-pound jackpot. More realistically, it’s about accumulating more points
than anyone else in our little league of friends and family over the course of
a season, but it sure sharpens the competitive edge without the need to fork
out on weekly stakes.
The increasingly realistic video games like the FIFA XX
series sell millions around the world, too. As if we can’t get enough of
football reality, we’re also embracing the virtual world. I’m too old to
understand the digital malarkey – if only they’d invented it forty years ago –
but Angie and I while away hours every week fretting over our Fantasy Premier
League squads.
I first became hooked in 1994 when BBC2 first broadcast a
live late Friday evening half-hour show, Fantasy Football League, starring comedian David Baddiel and the
then little-known Frank Skinner. Dad and I both loved the
irreverent humour, with skits and banter bound by a shared love of football,
the closing credits accompanied by some atrocious karaoke singing by Skinner’s
West Brom hero Jeff Astle.
However an even greater epiphany came one Boxing Day. Uncle
David had the Daily Telegraph and, in the dull post-presents lull I happened
across a page headed Telegraph Fantasy Football. I was invited to compile a team of
individual Premier League players, each accorded different values according to
their likelihoods of achieving goals, assists (then an unfamiliar concept!) or
clean sheets, subject to a maximum team amount. I couldn’t fill my side with
Shearers, Cantonas or Seamans (Seamen?) so I had to apply my knowledge of
lesser-known players, making intelligent guesses about who might deliver a
deluge of surprise points. I recall Chris Sutton being my first inspired
selection.
In the coming several seasons, Dad and I indulged in
friendly competition with the acceptably outlay of about a fiver a year. We
never bought a Telegraph – we were after all committed Guardian readers – so
the town library came into its own. If the Wednesday printed edition wasn’t
available, the online version would require investigating. Indeed, Dad probably
owed his entire tentative computer literacy to the search for the week’s list
of player points. There was no realistic
chance of financial gain but it was immense fun.
That combination of intelligence-based guesswork, simultaneously
daft yet deadly serious, continues through my participation in the Fantasy Premier
League competition. Angie, Pete and I expend an unfeasible amount of emotional
energy tinkering with transfers, substitutions and captaincy changes just for
the love of it. Love, and a determination to wrench an advantage. Supporting a
club was never this urgent – and I am just one of well over 5 million playing
this single game.
To have a chance it helps to get to know every flaming
player in the League, and perpetually asking myself questions. Who’s suspended?
Who’s injured, and for how long? Who will Pep leave out when De Bruyne returns?
Is it worth taking a punt on a cheap Burnley striker? Could I possibly have
done this before I took early retirement? The list goes on.
I sometimes wonder whether this would have caught on when I
first became ensnared by football’s inescapable net. Instead of swapping cards
we’d be indulging in the less sociable pastime of how to afford Best and Osgood
without breaking the bank. Football’s a sport you can’t ignore, reality or
fantasy, and I look forward to many more years captivated by its spell.
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