A few weeks ago I started to write a piece about football
clubs and family dynamics. It wasn’t as
serious a piece as the description may indicate. In any event, it never got written. Such are the demands for my services,
sometimes I just don’t have the time to finish all my unpaid works. I’ve also spent much of the past 2 weeks
looking at the Championship table where my beloved Crystal Palace sit perched
at the summit.
The intention of the article was to compare a football club
– Palace being the marker of course – and the modern family. The premise was fairly simple. The club (plus owners if you like) is the
mother. Like all Mums they can be pretty
frustrating at times but we love them all the same. The maternal bond means that wherever we are
in the World we’re always drawn back into her arms. A clubs manager is the father figure – the
head of the household. Decisions they
make affect the whole family. Often
admired but, on occasion, like dancing at a wedding I suppose, also excruciatingly
embarrassing at times. Finally, and most
importantly, are the supporters – the children of this clan. Sometimes badly behaved, sometimes back
chatting Mum and Dad but still the ones who keep the family together to a
certain extent. As years go on it is
they who support Mum and Dad through their old age and bring money to the table
to pay the bills but also bring fresh blood into the gene pool.
The more sharp witted among you may have seen through the
analogy and the timing of this original piece.
Dad had just walked out on us. A
modern family, it seesm, can end up with a number of father figures over the
years. Some we like. Some we end up
despising because of the way they have treated our mother. An attractive mother will always attract plenty
of suitors though. Perhaps painting
Crystal Palace as a MILF is a step too far but hopefully you’ll know what I
mean. After a couple of unlikely
candidates, Mum had, it seemed, found a keeper.
A bit of a Steady Eddie maybe but ‘Uncle Dougie’ had what it took for us
and we started to call him “Dad”. The
trouble is that Dad had his head turned by some Northern strumpet. Yes she has a shiny new house and a bit more
money but we knew that she got all that on the never-never and will never be
free of debt. Plus, surely he could see
that he would be happier in the long term with us. Wouldn’t he?
We just couldn’t understand why he’d do that to Mum or us kids. His new ‘tart’ as Mum would call her had kids
of her own - kids who are a lot more demanding than us. We may be satisfied with a Wii at
Christmas. They’d want a PS3 with the
latest Call of Duty and Fifa games.
As it turns out the piece didn’t need writing because some
other Dad left his family to join us.
Uncle Ian (who I already like enough to call Dad) is the type of bloke
who will probably get us a 3D TV and iPads and all sorts. He’d even pick us up from school on a wet
afternoon in his nice shiny car (newer and more expensive than Dougies I’d
bet). Yes, I think we came out pretty
well from the Daddy-Go-Round this time.
The reason for reigniting the piece now is because I’ve
realised that I had forgotten one important aspect – the next generation I
suppose. The players. We encourage them, we watch them develop, we
see them in times of trouble and watch as they surpass the expectations we have
for them. Sometimes they
disappoint. Maybe they’re not trying
hard enough. Sometimes we’re just
bursting with pride. They don’t want to let us down and can’t suppress their
delight when we’re happy with them. They’ve
given us sleepless nights and often we shout at them. We then spend so much time gushing about them
to our work colleagues they must feel that they’ve been there with us every
step of the way. All of those traits are
those of a child-parent relationship.
They are our children, adding a further generation into our modern
family. For those of you not yet 40, or
a parent yourself the analogy may seem complete nonsense but it all seems right
to me.
This week – fingers crossed – one of our kids will make his
England debut. As a parent you’re not
allowed to have favourite children but I think secretly most do. This kid is one who we’ve watched as he grew
into a man, learn his trade and become successful just as we wish for all our
children. We watched him take his first
tentative steps and become a massive talent, sought after by clubs all over the
land. All kids fly the nest at some
stage and knowing that he’ll always be ‘our boy’ should fill our hearts with
joy. As a result of the caring
environment that our family has created for him he is a well grounded and level
headed boy. ,
I rarely watch England friendly matches. Generally they’re as pointless and irrelevant
as a Gus Poyet press conference. I’ll be
watching this week though. Chomping at
the bit for Wilf to play his part.
Knowing the country will be watching our pride and joy and being
impressed at how he’s turned out. I’m
not really an emotional person but I’ll have a lump in my throat and may even
just about burst with pride when I watch our boy fulfil his dreams. I know you will be watching too. It’ll be one of our proudest days and when he
comes back home later in the week the virtual hug we’ll give him will just
about blow his socks off.
God bless to all in our family. The CPFC family. We have been together through some rough
patches. Now we can enjoy the ups for a
little while. At least we know – as
Robbie and Kylie have told us, “The Kids are Alright!”
