Football’s coming home. Or, rather, football’s staying home. Hard working, hard drinking men are suddenly discovering an existence that doesn’t involve football.
Coronavirus has got football done. As a result, men are discovering exactly what their wives have been getting up to all these years.
Take diehard fan Homer Naway, for example. Homer, whose team Diss United got the red card due to infection fears, stayed home. He discovered that his wife, Getti Naway, had left him in 1973.
Homer rang his season ticket buddy, Sendy Noff. “Have you seen my wife?” he asked. “The house is full of empty cans and there are dirty underpants everywhere, she must have gone out.”
“What’s her name again?” said Sendy. “I just want to be sure.”
“Something unusual,” replied Homer. “Mendy, Messi, Vardy, something like that.”
“Getti?”
“Yes! That’s it!”
“I thought so, Homer,” replied Sendy. “She’s here with me. We’ve been married for almost fifty years!”
“So she’s Getti Noff now?”
“Maybe later, but it’s really none of your business!” retorted Sendy.
“But what do I do now?” wailed Homer. “I’m sober, I haven’t got my mates and all the football has stopped. I’m totally offside!”
“Find the video of Diss winning the semi in ’83,” said Sendy. “Watch it over and over. Wear your scarf. Then crack open a lager and Skype me! You’ll forget Getti all over again!”
“Back of the net!” cried Homer. “‘Ere we go, ‘ere we go, ‘ere we go!”
“Tell that waste of space that I changed team for a record transfer fee,” remarked Getti. “And that I’ve scored at least twenty times a season ever since!”
But Homer, transported magically back to the halcyon days of ’83, was no longer listening.
Diss may have suffered relegation. Homer may be Homer alone. But you can always draw comfort from wallowing in the past.