Three and in – not just another football blog

Every year it’s the same. The man who organises the League of Friends and Friends of Friends sends an email.

“It’s on again! The Fantasy Football league returns. €20 a man, winner takes most. Second gets some. Who’s in?”

And every year for quite a long number of years I have responded in the affirmative, paid my €20 and gone, full of vim and fresh enthusiasm at the start of the season, to the team selection page. There I have carefully selected my squad, trying my best to ensure I have players who can get me points. Precious points. Wants them, we do.

And inevitably I have ended up about £10,000,000 over budget which means I have to go and examine the lower reaches of the lower reaches and try and guess at a player or two who might not be so heartbreakingly crap that he might actually keep me in the running.

The first few weeks are fine. There are the email exchanges full of witty banter, the glorious moment when the player you’ve just made captain scores twice and sets up a winner while your main rival’s captain is sent off after scoring an own goal, and perhaps, if you’re lucky, a brief flirtation with the top of the table.

The famous 0-0-0 formation

Then it starts. The first missed deadline. Then the player who is ruled out for 5 months but who remains your first choice because …well … you just can’t be arsed anymore. The slow descent to the relegation zone. And the boredom. Above all else the sheer, mind-numbing, smash your head off the wall for the sake of something to do boredom.

I know I’ve put twenty whole euros into this thing but the prize, which is doled out some time in May, becomes irrelevant. The couple of hundred quid just doesn’t seem worth it for all the effort it takes. The best part of a year, having to do it every week, to win that pittance? It’s a fool’s game.

As the season progresses and your arch-enemy’s striker scores a goal that gets most of others in the league dozens of points but you get nothing because you just can’t bring yourself to pick him. You know it’s a fantasy league, you know it’s not real, yet still you’d feel dirty choosing that player to represent you. The longer the season goes on the more old resentments kick in. That twenty goal a season midfielder is doing it again but his face is so annoying you can’t put him in your team. Monster striker, yes, he’s great, but his diving and cheating and feigning injury and stupid hair … argh. NO. NOT IN MY TEAM.

Conversely, you choose your favourites from the team you support. It doesn’t matter if their form is enough to create talk of a transfer to Halifax Town, if their record in front of goal could be bettered by a spastic kangaroo on acid, or if they’re tackling like a man whose legs are made from balsa wood, you hope they’ll come good because you deserve it for picking them and your team, in real life, deserves it too. What if by taking them out you jinx them? Of course that’s ludicrous. You’ve already jinxed them by putting them in and another trophyless season is all your fault.

So Christmas comes and goes and maybe you might have a quick peek to see if there’s anyone who has neglected their team more than you. Generally though, there isn’t. It’s just not possible. If your team was a child social services would have put it into foster care months ago having found it locked in the attic starving and covered in nits and weevils.

Then it’s May, you have to endure the crowing and the whooping from matey or mate of matey who has won the thing and you then you forget. It’s like the worst kind of hangover. “I’m never doing that again”, you say but the following July/August the email goes out and you pay your €20 and you might as well douse it in Tesco Value brady and set the thing alight for the all the good it does you.

So this year I’m saying no. No more wasting €20, no more side bets, no more trying to pick a team full of players I hate just because I think they might get me points, no more emails reminding me who’s injured, no more last minute captain changing, no more hopeless single figure Saturdays, no more giving up after about six weeks, if you even make it that far.

I know, it’s probably just me. I am to Fantasy Football what Rob Green is to goalkeeping, what the French are to team harmony, what Mark van Bommel is to tender, loving care and what Cristiano Ronaldo is to not being the biggest twat on earth. I’m rubbish but godammit this time I know it.

I wish I could say it’s been fun, Fantasy Football, but it never, ever has.