Amazing super smashing great. And all that jazz.
I’m talking about yesterday’s end to the Premier League season of course. So enthralling, so exciting…and that’s despite the fact I can’t stand City OR Utd.
Of course, we all expected City to clinch the title and Bolton to get relegated at the other end, so really everything went to form. But who would have thought it would take two goals in injury time for it to happen? It must have been all the more galling for Man Utd – or delightful depending how you look at it – that their game had finished and they were stood about for a full minute as “champions”….. before it was all snatched away thanks to the heroics of Twitter’s bravest poet Joey Barton. Wp.gg. ty.lol. you total MUG.
What a cruel game it can be.
Hilariously, some disgruntled City fans left the stadium when they were losing 2-1. And serve you right – I have sub-zero sympathy for you. I bet they’ll never make that mistake again. Then again there’ll probably never be a comparable situation in their lives to make a mistake like it.
Here was the Premier League actually living up to the hype. So exciting it could have stirred up emotions you didn’t even know you had – or just rekindled old ones, like how much you want to spank Noel Gallagher in the face with a brick. But after the national outpouring of amazement and wide eyed joy that this is as good as it can possibly ever get in the whole world EVER, today I felt a little shrug and a feeling of “big deal” come over me.
Because for those of us who like the occasional bet…. we get this excitement in our lives all the time! Seriously, yesterday was just average, not even a 7 on the Punters’ Richter scale.
Don’t get me wrong. There are downs as well as ups and it’s not always good financially. I’m just saying that the people raving about yesterday should step into our world once in a while. Every other week we’ll have some coupon flushed down the shitter because of a last second equaliser or some horrific penalty decision. But then there are the heroic fight backs where some great score is landed, judgement is vindicated and you’ve got the bookie’s money to prove it. Then there’s the bitter losing streaks followed by serious introspection. The ecstasy, the agony.
You think football can be a cruel game? You should try punting. Punting is the hardest game in the whole world and the easiest money you ever made all at the same time.
Watching goal of the season last night with a mate who has been known to have the odd flutter shall we say, some stunning goal would fly in and he’d wince and say “oooh, that one cost us an absolute fortune”. The hard core punter will remember all these occasions exactly as if he were back there on that day. He has perfect recall. He is reliving the moment. The two Alans on Match of the Day - Shearer and Hansen, were watching the same goals flying in barely registering a flicker on their emotional radars (if they possess such a thing).
I suppose my point is this. For all it’s risks punting makes you feel ALIVE. Just like you did yesterday. We run the gamut of emotion all the time. To those wide eyed commentators who are saying yesterday’s Premiership was “the best Premiership ever” I agree with them – it was. Just that we get that excitment every other week.
To the discerning punter, what went down yesterday was a solitary stitch in one single thread of life’s rich tapestry.
Are our lives enriched for all this excitement? Or are we poorer for not being able to identify true sporting excitement when it smacks us in the face?
Well that depends on your point of view I suppose. Me? I tell you categorically it is the former.
