My lifetime total has not been challenged as a record in the two and a half weeks since I became a household name in parts of Africa, so I’m allowing myself to fantasise about it being a world record. Not a universal record, obviously, with that chap going to all those games on Mars. But who’d want to watch football there? There’s never any atmosphere! (Yes, the old jokes are the best.)
Here is a rundown of last week’s games:-
Philosophy Football 2 Abbey 4
Hanwell Town 0 Staines Town 3
Viacom Outdoor 1 Warrington 3
BNP Paribas 4 Athletico Chips 3
Eastbourne Town Reserves 4 Whitehawk Reserves 0
Eastbourne Town U18s 3 Haywards Heath Town U18s 2
Eastbourne Town Ladies 0 Crawley Wasps Ladies Reserves 0.
At two of the games I was the only person watching. The biggest crowd was the 35 at the U18s game. All in all it was quite a cheap week for "The Barber" – seven games cost me a total of five quid.
Paddington Rec is eerily quiet at this time of year. In the summer you couldn’t move for mothers with prams, dogs chasing after balls or frisbees, immodestly dressed young women walking around in packs. Now it’s cold and dark – with a hint of floodlit football action in the distance.
The evenings at the Rec last week – I tend to favour 6 o’clock kick-offs – were dry in the sense that there wasn’t any rain. But there was a kind of dew, a sheen of dampness on the seats in the little uncovered stand – and, of course, on the Astroturf pitch.
Near the end of games I noticed that a lot of players were being afflicted by a condition that I believe is known medically as "rectum supra mammarium". It made for some comical defending, with 17 goals conceded in the three games.
Every game I attended last week started late. At the scheduled kick-off time for Philosophy Football v Abbey, i.e. 6.00 p.m., there were just two players and two assistant referees on the pitch. That one was delayed for 22 minutes. Whitehawk Reserves were looking around for their goalie at kick-off time on Saturday, with their manager talking urgently into his mobile and asking: "Well, how long are you going to be?"
When the ref whistled for the captains to come together for the toss-up at another game, one manager was just starting to put down the little cones for another of his pre-match drills.
Despite being goalless, the girls’ game was full of good attacking play and Eastbourne’s ‘keeper made some great saves to keep her side in contention. What I remember particularly, though, is one of Crawley’s team doing a very loud "burp" when they were about to start the second half and everyone laughing.