I have felt the unlikely zeal of the football convert

Quentin Willson goes to his first ever football match expecting to end up in A&E — and leaves a misty-eyed evangelist for a sport he now feels is grotesquely misrepresented

There’s no easy way to confess this. You are the first people I’ve told. Until very recently I’d never, ever, been to a football match. For an alpha male this is a fairly damning admission I know, but I just never fancied all that shouting, that atavistic male tribalism. For me, football’s worst advertisement, like Christianity’s, was always its devotees. Fans like a horde of Mongol storm-troopers on a three-day pass, TV commentators spouting flannel in lengthy widths, barely articulate managers, players in tabloid trouble with totty and constantly crashing impossibly expensive cars. Football and football people sounded as much fun as a sinus wash.

Mind you, that’s not to say I never felt the odd ache of envy. Years of Saturday afternoons spent watching normally sane friends punch the air or howl in disappointment made me wonder why I couldn’t too.