A game?’ Rob spluttered. ‘A bloody game?’

He turned to face his father. ‘This is your bloody fault! I’m living your bloody karma!

When you lived on the wrong side of the law, information, however vague or apparently meaningless, was everything. It gave you leverage. And leverage was power.

Billy has a soccer background and he's applying it to football. He's worked with John Carney (of the NFL) and went to some camps. I like our odds with extra points this year.

As I get older, the tyranny that football exerts over my life, and therefore over the lives of people around me, is less reasonable and less attractive. Family and friends know, after long years of wearying experience, that the fixture list always has the last word in any arrangement; they understand, or at least accept, that christenings or weddings or any gatherings, which in other families would take unquestioned precedence, can only be plotted after consultation. So football is regarded as a given disability that has to be worked around. If I were wheelchair-bound, nobody close to me would organise anything in a top-floor flat, so why would they plan anything for a winter Saturday afternoon.

Football is the ballet of the masses.

It's not really even looked at as violent or shooting, it's more about teamwork, like soccer or football.