Here We Go Again

The temperature may be 'hotter than Rio' (as one tabloid suggested, despite it being in the Southern Hemisphere) and the headlines may be more about Freddie Flintoff than Freddie Ljungberg, but the Dowie era truly began today in earnest.

Poetically, my new replica shirt also arrived this morning, a neat act of timing that aroused a prior lack of interest in the Millwall fixture. The shirt looks pretty good, and it seems I won the ordering-clothes-on-line lottery with regard to sizes. The printing of the Llanera logo looks a bit cheap however and the dull white/pink lettering clashes with the bright white epaulets. Still, what do you want for £39.99?

I've been guilty of attending more friendlies in my time than is healthy for an otherwise fairly balanced individual, with promises of 'never again' swiftly forgotten the following year after two months of watching cricket have taken their toll. Last season I managed to attend the QPR and Watford friendlies, and in the case of the latter I wrote that they were , "...a slightly sorry mix of youngsters, ageing pros, cheap foreign imports..." which proves just how pointless the whole exercise is.

For me, the concept of a 'friendly' is surely anathema to the whole raison d'etre of sport. Some club Chairmen may bemoan how much is at stake in today's modern game, but it certainly focuses the mind and provides the tension that all sports thrive upon.

It's perhaps a tribute to football's enduring appeal and the fanaticism it engenders that tens of thousands of people across the country turn up for these fixtures. Over here in the US, the baseball equivalent of pre-season friendlies is 'spring training', a cold-weather enduced series of training matches held at atmospheric minor league stadia from Florida to Arizona. The fact that there are just thirty major-league teams in such a vast country ensures (and explains why) there are always enough baseball-starved towns and cities to attract good crowds. What is notably different however in the UK is that teams never play their true rivals as they do in the US, but instead organise friendlies against opposition from different leagues or countries.

Having said all of that, if I was living in London, I suspect that, like the sad loser that I am, the thought of seeing Jimmy-Floyd in a Charlton shirt might have drawn me to the New Den yesterday too, and it was good to learn he wasted little time in endearing himself to the Addick faithful. It would have been nice to have witnessed the early promise of a Hasslebaink/Bent partnership, but equally I found it awfully sweet that in this modern footballing era of WAGs, celebrity weddings and hotel roastings, that Darren Bent still makes his own sandwiches.