Like many people from Ireland I support an English football team.
As I brace myself for sneers of contempt curried by hollow words of patronizing pity, okay, I admit it – I’m a Man U guy. I wasn’t always so self-effacing.
We used to be the best, like a mix between Jeter’s Yankees and the recently deposed Chiefs.
Now my Red Devils are famous for two things: being overpaid and unable to score goals.
Still, as much as I abhor their style of play, I can’t stop supporting them. Why, I ask myself? I’ve never even set foot in Manchester. I do love the city of Liverpool and even have a sneaking fondness for Liverpool FC.
For this treason, I could be gelded in any self-respecting Man U supporters saloon.
So I guess I’m hooked, and stuck with a team of overpaid losers. My weekend mornings are ruined by their failures. I can no longer even watch them, I just sneak glances at the BBC text of their games, and am often forced to take to the streets in solitary, freezing walks while they meander aimlessly around a near collapsing Old Trafford.
What happened to the glory days of Roy Keane and David Beckham, you might ask? Gone, alas, with my youth too soon.
There are times I think of my departed friend, Phil Chevron of The Pogues – not that he would have given me the least sympathy.
His eyes gleamed in disdain, and his lip curled upwards when the subject of Man U arose. He had a succinct Dublin way of dismissing my team with two or three unprintable adjectives. He should talk!
He was a life-long supporter of Nottingham Forest, so addicted he quit London and bought a house in Nottingham to be close to his team.
That would be akin to me deserting Manhattan for Scranton - an awful thing to say, for Black 47 was beloved in Molly Maguires country.
I never even questioned Phil about his own team addiction and in general we steered clear of football issues in the backstage hullaballoo of music festivals. We became friends through our shared love of theatre.
His father had been an actor/producer, and Phil was “steeped in the stage,” as he once put it.
We had met in London in 1990 when Black 47 opened for The Pogues, then arguably the best live band in the world. But we didn’t really click until a mutual friend, Johnny Byrne, brought us together at Joe Allen’s restaurant on 47th Street in the thick of Broadway.
Talk about an addictive personality! Phil liked to fly from London to New York on a Friday morning, attend a Broadway show after an early dinner.
Have lunch with Johnny and me in Joe Allen’s on Saturday, catch a matinee, then sneak in a nap before seeing a show that night. On Sunday he’d enjoy another matinee, then hop a cab to Kennedy and be back in London on Monday morning.
He was the gay Pogue, and he was proud as punch about it. He was working on a musical about an Irish-American boxer. It was well written, there was interest, and why not?
Phil was a master songwriter – listen to "Thousands Are Sailing" or "Faithful Departed." The images he conjures come sailing past you larger than life and to the point – like the man himself.
He was honest to a fault and never saw a reason to hide the truth. You always knew where you stood with Phil, even when you didn’t want to. I keep an eye on Nottingham Forest for him.
They’re going gangbusters this year, and there’s an excellent chance they’ll make the Champion’s League. It’s one of life’s ironies that Phil won’t be in his usual season-ticket seat at City Ground, finally vindicated, while reveling in Man U’s ongoing banality.
But I don’t have the least doubt that he’s driving all the straight saints crazy up in heaven with his “constructive” criticisms, and his constant weekend demands to change the channel to “the only team that matters.”
Maybe I should just dump Man. U and support Nottingham Forest. It’s not quite as bad as converting to Liverpool. But it doesn’t work like that. You know what I’m talking about,
Phil, up there in Valhalla arm-in-arm with the immortal Brian Clough, beaming down on your beloved and finally triumphant Forest.
