CELEBRITY FANS:Roddy Doyle, writer, describes his love of Chelsea and of soccer
Is soccer your favourite sport? It is, yeah, to the extent that I refuse to call it soccer. It's football.
Who do you support? Chelsea, going back to the 1967 FA Cup final. I was watching it with my father. It was one of the days where you could get the reception so you could actually see what was on telly. Chelsea were playing Spurs and during the match I just decided I was up for Chelsea. They lost. What can I say? It's like a congenital disorder – you can never get rid of it. I've been a Chelsea fan ever since.
You endured some harrowing times so? They won the Cup Winners' Cup in 1971 and then nothing until 1997 with the FA Cup, which I was at, which was a wonderful experience. But between that, twentysomething years . . . We were on the verge of being relegated to the old Third Division at one point, which probably would have meant oblivion and there'd be a shopping centre on Stamford Bridge now, but then things gradually changed.
Having spent most of my life listening into results on a Saturday to see how Chelsea did against Scunthorpe, things like that, when the good times arrive, you don’t take them for granted. That’s the one objectionable thing about Manchester United supporters – they really take success for granted.
Who's your favourite Chelsea player? When I was a kid – Charlie Cooke, a Scottish winger. He was electrifying, a good old-fashioned winger. I wrote an article about him which ended up at the back of his ghost-written memoir. I've never met him but I love the idea that something I wrote is in his book.
When did you visit Stamford Bridge for the first time? 1978. I was working in London when I was a student so when the season started I went along to Stamford Bridge. It was ugly. It was terrible. It was the late 70s. There was a lot of violence. The atmosphere when you got off the Tube was just awful. I went to quite a few games in '78 and '79 and stayed away then. I didn't like what was going on.
There was one game in particular that I went to; we were being beaten by Leeds. I left before the end. It wasn’t so much that we were losing. It was the fact there was so much fighting going on. There was so much abuse. It wasn’t racism because it was basically 22 men from the British Isles playing; that came in the 80s and that was ugly as well so I stayed away. It was the early 90s when I started going back again.
Do you have a favourite chant? The one that always made me laugh – and the few times that I brought my children made them laugh – was always half-time when a fat guy was going back to his seat, having bought a couple of pies, people started singing, "Who ate all the pies? You fat bastard. You fat bastard."
What class of footballer were you?I was hopeless. I would not claim to be anything other than shite. I was a really, really bad footballer.
Do you play five-a-side? No, I don't. I haven't really played since I was a kid. I played the occasional game and usually suffered for it. You don't have the luxury of knocking a ball out so you can have a breather until somebody goes and gets the ball. It's hell – the ball keeps bouncing off a wall and coming back (laughs).
What frustrates you about football? Losing (laughs). The notion that Adebayor is the best paid player in the Premiership really annoys me because it seems to me to be completely and utterly skewed. That notion of professionalism, players that really try, every time they play, we know who they are – the Richard Dunnes and people like that, people who we really admire. Then there's the media creations . . . like Beckham – he wasn't a bad player; isn't a bad player – was injured so he wont be playing for England. He was gonna be a peripheral person anyway but it grabs all the headlines. That annoys me.
What do you love about it?It's the passing. It's the breaking down of a movement. I find it endlessly fascinating looking at the body language of players, looking at how good players can shine on a bad team; Steven Gerrard being a case in point.
The distribution of the ball, particularly when you’re there; on telly, you don’t get a sense of how fast the players have to be, how really quick. Not just the good players, but the average players – how little time they have. It’s an instinctive thing partly – where to put the ball and when it’s well done it’s absolutely fantastic. A good game just rattles away.
In conversation with Richard Fitzpatrick
