A title for this fiasco totally escapes me. Any suggestions?

This is not about football before I scare off my non-football fan friends. It is about me, but will of necessity include some references to the match I was at on Saturday.

First off – we had to win. We are in a battle to avoid relegation and were playing an already relegated side. On paper, an easy game, but in practice, they could relax and play, whilst we were really tense and nervous.

With some 12 minutes remaining the score at 2-1 to us, they attacked and to my absolute horror following some Keystone Cop type defending, the ball ended up in the back of our net, and the last thing I registered before texting Reidski with the dreadful news, was 10 Hereford United players running off to celebrate with their fans. I was so frustrated and anxious as that meant we simply had to get another goal in the short time remaining, that I made a mess of the text and had to start again. When I looked up they were bloody well attacking again.

When one is watching a game and one needs a goal, time of course flies by, but when one is in the lead of course it drags. I was simply willing us to score again, but we could hardly get the ball out of our own half, let alone look like getting a goal. It began to look like the best thing we could hope for was to avoid defeat, especially given the score lines we were hearing from other games that mattered to our survival. My friend who sits in front of me was moaning to me about our defender who was responsible for both of their goals. When the final whistle blew lots of people around us were cheering so I assumed Carlisle must have lost which would have meant we were safe (sorry Karen) but then I heard that actually they had drawn and we still weren’t safe. I was very despondent.

As I walked back to my car Reidski sent me a text which read ‘Sky say you won 2-1.’ ‘We didn’t’ I texted back, thinking how crap Sky Sports were. I got in the car and switched on the local radio, to be told the Cobblers had won 2-1. ‘Will someone please tell me what the fuck is going on?’ I ask, and my son obliged by asking me what the fuck I was on about?

The upshot of this bizarre episode is that I, who have been attending football matches for 40 years, and my friend who has been attending them for even longer than that both completely failed to notice that their second ‘goal’ had been disallowed. How on earth that could possibly have happened I have simply no answer. I looked at the clock every thirty seconds after their so called second goal, and the score is recorded directly above the clock – and still I never spotted that it did in fact read 2-1, which was indeed the score. I am a complete and utter idiot.

Today’s essay title is ‘Women should be banned from football’ – discuss.

I would like to say my friend is male....but she isn’t.