Another Bloody Saturday

Football is not just a game of 11 vs 11 bodies of flesh exhausting themselves physically and mentally for straight ninety minutes after a ball. There is the football we watch on television, alone or with known ones, watching a nineteen year old whose market value is almost equivalent to the eleven players of opposition who are trying to get the ball off from his feet. At front of that television set we all are football pundits for ninety minutes. There is no denying in that.

If you are football fanatic, in ninety minutes you are going to feel each and every emotion inside you- anger, ecstasy, astonishment, aversion, admiration, vigilance and yet one game is not enough. Similarly, Mat Guy in the title Another Bloody Saturday expresses himself through the beautiful game in various anecdotes collected over his famous blog Dreams Victoria Park.

Football isn’t about the Premier League or the El Classico. Though that’s all we can watch on television but the world of football is much more vast than that. It’s a whole universe in itself. There are teams which are part of the sport for the passionate people who love it. Such teams and green fields are explored by Mat Guy in his book. He tells us about his experiences and match telecasts of teams such as Welsh Bangor City and Icelandic UMF Stjarnan.

From Glasgow to Northern Cyprus, Bhutan to the Faroe Islands, Mat discovered the same hope, sense of community, and love of the game that first led him to a life in the stands at Salisbury FC’s Victoria Park, where his own passion for football was formed.

The most amazing thing about Mat’s journey is that he finds a football club that he can enjoy as a football club, for his love of the sport, regardless of the money the club spend on its players. Mat’s love for Accrington Stanely which he himself likes to call a ‘spiritual’ attachment, is more like finding a true essence, something very abstract but one feels attached to it.

I always believed that, in game of football, a passionate lover of this sport, is tend to follow two clubs. One he follows, and one he is spiritually attached. With latter one might end up enjoying more. Mat Guy’s book is a well written prose for the fans of the game.

It is doubtful if many of those who sit in their armchairs on a Sunday afternoon for their televised fix of Premier League football are aware of the world which Mat Guy has so beautifully encapsulated in this entertaining and well-crafted book.

This is a diary of “proper football” played in “proper grounds” and almost every page stimulated memories of my own life and journey through football from childhood to middle age. He describes the joy and purpose of travelling long journeys, to see the team that you have supported all your life do battle, sometimes in a meaningless encounter, often on a bitterly cold Tuesday night in the depths of winter.

The huge, intricate and colourful tapestry of the pyramid of football which sits below the upper echelons of the Premier League is vividly brought to life. This is a simple world of ramshackle grounds where the fan’s priorities are affordable ticket prices, the quality of the tea bar, the souvenir shop and the beer in local hostelries. Endless silver trophies, multi million pound signings with unpronounceable names, season tickets which require a bank loan, television deals and enormous anodyne stadia are an alien world. The ultimate for the teams in this book is to achieve a national audience by being the televised game in the early rounds of the F.A Cup.

This is about the beautiful game in its truest sense. The story takes in non-league football in the author’s native Hampshire, a new found love affair with Accrington Stanley, women’s football and the game as played in the footballing outposts of Tibet, Bhutan and the Faroe's Islands.

After a number of personal tragedies Mat Guy shows how football can be cathartic experience. It's a theme he handles with care and and sensitivity and which helps him underpin the central message of the book. Football is about family, friends and most importantly a comradeship with strangers which provides a sense of belonging. In hard times it offers a form of escapism producing an almost strange and indescribable magic which can both protect and heal wounds.

As a self-confessed football romantic (Birmingham City, Coleshill Town, Barnet, Slough Town, Falkirk, Arbroath, Henley Town and Maidenhead United) I was enthralled from first to last page. Mat Guy has an easy going, yet thoughtful style and hie has touched upon themes which I feel will appeal to an audience beyond the football anorak.