A New Hope

And…. It’s back again. Those with no inclination towards the game will say “it’s never been away!” but the new English football season is now underway.

The days before kick off are truly the golden time for all fans. No matter that the previous season finished with relegation, getting knocked out of the cup by the local pub team and the entire back four being sold to your local rivals for a box of pies, there’s always a spark of optimism that new season equals new hope.

Because while the Olympics were great, it’s all a bit too nice, isn’t it? Media pundits may bleat on about how recent months have shown us such concepts as “honour” and “respect”, there’s not too much fun in that. When Jessica Ennis was working her socks off, the crowd weren’t questioning the parentage of her rivals, which is all good and well, but it doesn’t provide much in the way of cheap laughs . In a football ground, you can quite happily get away with singing about how you all hate an entire team's fanbase and it's kind of acceptable, nay encouraged.

Heading to the ground in the sun, buying the match programme to read the manager giving it the “if we all pull together in the same direction, put in the hard work and have the backing of the fans, there’s no reason we can’t succeed”. Perhaps a profile of the hot-shot new striker with the stupid haircut and shite tattoos stating his ambition of “becoming a legend”.

It’s good to feel the old routines again. Going to the pub beforehand, meeting with people you haven’t seen since May, speculating on who’ll get in the team. Make libellous comments about the club owners for not coughing up some money. Then there's the old familiar buzz of walking up the road and seeing the ground emerge from amongst the houses. Well, unless you have to go to one of those wretched lego-kit stadiums miles outside the town that the likes of Stoke play in. Yuck.

It doesn’t matter if you’re following Man United or Macclesfield, that sense of possibility is there. For a little while, at least, as all it takes is a dodgy back-pass in the first minute that’s cut out by the other team’s swarthy number nine to score for the sense of "here we go again" to sink in. Then again, there’s always next year, right?