A rift in the Fantasy timeline longer than your ordinary boring, boring fortnight feels like an absolute aeon. This year it’s been more dull than ever, not that interim cup results and managerial power rankings haven’t entertained, or events outside the dome haven’t been potentially apocalyptic. People went around the moon again; bananas went bonkers in Orkney. There was, forgive me, no lack of content to consume.
But this was one break where not doing anything yet was the best advice for most, until it was mostly over. Knowledge is power, quoth Scoop and your faithful scribe and Sir Francis Bacon, and waiting was certainly the received wisdom.
But it was boring. It might have been the river of comment BTL, hopeful for advice, that first signposted the ennui, when ‘we don’t know yet’ was the best (un)helpful reply, a sellotaped note on the shop window to shatter the hygge of the usual weekend-or-Tuesday turnaround. And spare a thought for our island of lost tinkers in search of the missing piece with which to repair the gap in our shared continuum, subsisting for weeks on nothing but yellow flags and rumour, each unanswered message in the Dead Zone a pin in my straw heart.
And yet I’ve managed to casually sabotage the end of the break for myself by mostly taking a break from FPL — if keeping an eye on results and permutations, making notes on chip strategy and checking the deadline 99 times if it was once counts as a break. I’ve no excuse for my pre-deadline panic, bar the ennui.
Whether you’ve gone full maverick with your XV or one of our pundits has solved a problem worthy of Monty Hall for your choice of fifth defender, and however you’ve set yourself up for the run-in, I hope it translates to points.
We’re due some excitement, aren’t we? For those fit (or not) to wear the shirt and their new or veteran minders about to pace the touchline to give us what we paid for, be it in pounds, emotion, or clicks. Whatever happens, next week is only a week away.
