Captain Sensible – Gameweek 13

Here we are then, the final frontier. Now the end is near, and so I face the final curtain. I will still be Doolittle on Monday, I will still bleed the same blood and breathe the same air, but we would be deceiving only ourselves to pretend that it will be the same. It is hard to recall a life without Fantasy Football Scout, a weekday that wasn’t punctuated by conversations about Sergio Aguero, debates about Eden Hazard, attempts to answer quiz questions, frantic quests to discover a new post, rants about “essential” and “coverage”. Was the sky still blue? Did the light still shimmer against the Earth. Did the heat of the sun still reach my frosty heart? Was it the sun at all? That huge ball of magnetised gas suddenly doesn’t seem so radiant. Was it, in fact, the warmth of an online community?

It is perhaps no coincidence that this weekend is set to be one of the coldest on record. Certainly, scientists will deem it the product of Arctic air sweeping in from the North Pole, but we perhaps knows the real reason, the reason that London will feel that extra bit frostier, that extra bit more hostile, that extra bit sadder this weekend. At 9am tomorrow morning, one of my company directors will arrive at the office to open the doors, to open them for a storm more violent than any other to rampage through my heart. Two men, forming a double act more reprehensible than Hitler and Stalin, than Mao and Mussolini, than Tyldesley and Townsend, will enter to savage everything that I hold dear, to fix the cables and rearrange the desks with brutal nonchalance. They will be unaware that their actions spell the end of my life as I know it. In a way they are absolved of blame, knowing not what they do, but such destruction cannot be ignored.

In his 1861 work ‘Great Expectations’, Charles Dickens wrote: “Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day”. It is through this lens that I am escorted back to the summer of 2012, the immediate days following the conclusion of my degree. Three years of partying, of hedonism, of reading and writing and drinking and laughing and things too numerous (and post-watershed) to mention, were suddenly, in the blink of an eye one May afternoon, over. One day you are a carefree student, able to party for days on end, to sleep until 2pm, to play Football Manager until 5am, to eat cold beans straight out of a tin, to put Lidl’s own brand vodka on your 2 month old Cornflakes, and the next you are a person. You are a person, and now you have to move back home, you have to find a job, you have to start to pay back loans, you have to survive. I always hoped that, once my English degree ended, I would have a Road to Damascus realisation of what it was that I wanted to do, of what it was that I was good at, and I did. The answer, much to my surprise, and much to the detriment of my career prospects, that thing was Fantasy Football.

I was suddenly spending all of my time online, desperately seeking menial office jobs that would require someone who could recite William Blake’s poetry or posit theories about Existentialism referring to the criticism of Walter Kaufmann, and this slog needed to be broken up. I found just the thing. I had dabbled in FPL before, and had actually won my mini-league the previous year, but I knew my rivals were improving and I needed to up my game. It had always been casual before, it was just a game, but now I needed help. Fumbling around blindly, searching for answers, I stumbled across a link to a site. Fantasy. Football. Scout. What was this beast? I clicked. Evs, Wild Rover, Bedknobs & Boomsticks, Beric, Doosra, Forca – what were these names? And the garbled lexicon: “coverage”, “bench fodder”, “essential”, “differential”, “enabler”. It was alien. I lurked briefly, tried to find my bearings, tried to work out just what the hell this strange place was. I knew a bit about FPL, but what was this? Complex strategies to buy Clint Dempsey, detailed statistics comparing Alan Hutton to Emmerson Boyce, what was this mysterious world?

I summoned some courage, collected my thoughts, and formed a post. The topic escapes me now, but after hitting post I instantly noticed a clique forming. The old timers were huddling together, they were wary of these new strangers, the “gravless masses” as they were named. It dawned on me that I, the first timer poster, was one of these unwanted newcomers. I had even mentioned my FFS virginity in my post. I felt a fool. I bowed my head, wiped my brow, and prepared to close the site.

But wait…a reply. It couldn’t be, could it? Who was it? Doosra. “Welcome to the site”…and what was that? A smiley face. A smile that could not compete with the broad one that beamed across my face. Another reply followed, then another, all welcoming to this place. The reticence ebbed away, the blinders were removed from my eyes, and my screen glowed. I followed the advice to get a grav, and settled in. I was now part of this community. The rest, as they say, is history.

I have never looked back, and it is with a heavy heart that I have to say goodbye to the luxury of visiting FFS whenever I please through the day. I will still return whenever the opportunity arises, and I hope that the frequent meetings of my seniors will be a saving grace, but it will not be the same. When my day gets tough, I am able to seek sanctuary in FFS, to be instantly welcomed just like I was 3 and a half years ago, to chat about everything from Arsenal captaincy options to great British sitcoms.

That will be snatched away from me now, but I will live on. For, you see, that first link about which Dickens wrote cannot be withdrawn. That memorable day has happened, it has been cemented, and what follows are pure adornments. That root, that cast iron first step into the world of FFS, can never be taken away. We are bound within the FFS community already, regardless of future you will always be a part of this group. They can take our corner desks, but they cannot take our freedom.