TRIAL BLAZING

Our writers’ competition was established with a legacy left by contributor David Wangerin, who died in 2012. This year’s winner, James Klonowski, considers the strange psychology of attending pre-season friendlies

There is a distinct, dark period in the middle of summer when the human spirit is tested to its absolute limits. I am not talking about the humidity, or the horrifying sight of your neighbours wearing three-quarter-length cargo shorts while tending to a disposable barbecue. I am talking about that particular brand of emotional flatlining known as the early-season away friendly.

Normal people, when presented with a warm Tuesday evening in mid-July, might choose to sit in a beer garden or perhaps talk to their families. Football fans, however, possess a unique genetic defect that compels them to drive 70 miles down a single-lane A-road to watch 11 men who have never met before try to pass a ball to each other on a pitch that looks like it has recently been used for an agricultural trade show.

I found myself at one of these events recently. I won’t name the stadium, but it had the distinct architectural charm of an agricultural distribution centre that had failed an inspection. The air smelled faintly of damp sheep and old chip fat. Why was I there? Because the addiction is real, and the close season is a long, barren desert where the mind begins to play tricks on you. You start convinced that you miss the drama. You forget the reality.

The pre-season friendly is a masterclass in low-stakes disappointment. The matches are designed specifically to ensure that absolutely nothing of consequence happens for 90 minutes. It is football stripped of everything that makes it bearable: tension, anger, meaning, and competence.

First, there is the squad configuration. You settle into your plastic seat – which is covered in a fine layer of grey grit that immediately ruins your trousers – only to look at the teamsheet and realise you recognise exactly two names. One is a 38-year-old defender whose knees have the structural integrity of wet cardboard, and the other is a teenage winger who looks like he should be at home studying for his GCSEs. The rest of the lineup consists entirely of individuals identified simply as “Trialist A” and “Trialist B”. There is an inherent indignity to being a Trialist. You are essentially a man turning up for a job interview in your underwear, in front of 1,200 critical strangers who are already annoyed that the club shop ran out of the new away shirt. Trialist A spends the first half sprinting around with the frantic energy of a dog that has slipped its lead, trying to impress a manager who is currently staring at his phone checking the cricket scores. Trialist B, meanwhile, appears to have been recruited from a local five-a-side league roughly 20 minutes off. He spends most of his time apologising to the left-back for running into his path. The football itself is played at the majestic tempo of an elderly supermarket queue. Nobody wants to get hurt, which is fair enough, but nobody seems particularly keen on moving either. Both sets of players amble about, gesturing vaguely at open spaces, executing three-yard passes with the agonising deliberation of chess grandmasters. Every ten minutes, a central midfielder will attempt a dynamic, 40-yard diagonal ball that flies straight out of play and into a nettle patch behind the uncovered terrace, requiring a small boy to go on a rescue mission. before kick-

There is an inherent indignity to being a Trialist – you are essentially a man turning up for a job interview in your underwear

And then come the substitutions. In a proper football match, a substitution is a tactical gambit. It involves a tense conversation on the touchline, a tactical board and a bit of drama. In the mid-July friendly, the second half is an administrative nightmare. Around the 60th minute, the referee blows his whistle, and 22 men casually swap places with 22 other men who have been sitting on upturned plastic crates by the dugouts. The game completely loses whatever microscopic rhythm it had. You are left trying to figure out if the new No 17 is a promising youth product or just the assistant manager’s nephew who fancied a run-out.

The crowd at these games is a specific sub-species of fan. There are no casuals here. The people who attend July friendlies are the hardcore, the unwavering and the deeply strange. To my left sat a man who spent the entire match shouting incredibly specific tactical advice to a full-back who was clearly on loan from a club three divisions lower. “Tuck in, Gary! He’s showing you the line!” he bellowed into the empty evening air. Gary did not tuck in. Gary was currently looking at a pigeon that had landed near the corner flag.

Behind me were two men who didn’t look at the pitch once. They spent the entire two hours arguing about whether a backup goalkeeper from the 1994-95 season had moved to Scarborough or Torquay. That is what this level of football does to the brain. It reduces you to a state of pedantic nostalgia just to keep the existential dread from setting in.

By the time the referee mercifully blew the final whistle on a staggering 0-0 draw, the temperature had dropped by ten degrees. The floodlights – one of which was flickering with the rhythmic malice of a horror film prop – cast long, miserable shadows across the yellowing turf. We all shuffled out through the rusty turnstiles in total silence, like people leaving a particularly uninspired parish council meeting.

No one was angry. You can’t be angry at a pre-season friendly; that would require energy, and the match had systematically drained every drop of it from our bodies. We simply accepted our punishment, walked back to our cars in the darkening car park, and quietly acknowledged the grim truth: in three days’ time, we’d probably drive to Telford to do it all over again.