This is a time for family and feasting. A time to indulge those you love and the treats and temptations around us. For Fantasy managers, however, Christmas offers us a tortuous programme that clashes with such merriment and has us break etiquette and risk the wrath of loved ones. We embrace the fixture frenzy that Christmas brings – it’s all that family and friends nonsense that gets in the way.
Every year I’m amazed by the numbers. While I’m reliably informed that, by January, the typical Fantasy Football player base has dropped off by 50%, on our pages we see no such trend. The Christmas spell is a boom period.
It leads me to ponder that, if Fantasy Football is a drug for the enthusiastic “hardcore” player, then the Christmas period is a pure and relentless hit that renders us giddy with the possibilities and often exhausts us with its outcomes. This is no time to shelve our lineups and pursue the expected Christmas agenda – our time is dictated by deadlines, kick-off times and the live television schedule. We need our fix and it’s never been so plentiful.
And yet, I know full well I will have to make concessions. I know that, come Boxing Day, my excited expectations for my teams will have to be hushed amongst company, limited to a smuggled mobile phone under the dinner table and improbably frequent toilet breaks that will have loved ones concerned about the condition of my bladder.
It’s a painful experience (not the bladder) to maintain the threads of conversation over dinner when the mind is drifting to the chances of Marko Arnautovic notching for Stoke. It’s unnatural, unnecessary and against all that Christmas stands for. And yet, for myself and doubtless other Fantasy managers, it’s become the norm.
Hands up, then. The normal service will be interrupted. Pulls and responsibilities, the magic of seeing my near two-year-old experience all that Christmas brings will distract me and those who help me to fuel your own obsession at this time. But I’ll sneak and cajole, win brownie points and trade them for time to be amongst you. Enjoy the festivities.
