A price to pay chasing Euro dream
With the exponential increase in the costs of tickets, travel and the amount of time off work required to achieve an 100% attendance record, I doff my hat in all due reverence to the ultra-loyal band of Gooner-holics who manage to maintain the nigh-on monastic devotion necessary, to ensure that social, domestic and occupational responsibilities don’t ever impinge on their footballing pleasures.
Obviously the nature of the overblown corporate beast that has swallowed whole the previously unencumbered blue collar kingdom of the beautiful game, means that there were probably plenty present in Prague last week who are in the fortunate position to be able to write off the cost of their outing as a tax-deductible expense. Nevertheless, I often survey the vast majority of working stiffs like myself, whose faces I see every week, on terraces up and down the country, with ever increasing wonderment and incredulity. For while they remain ever-present on all the European trips, I’m beginning to feel like a lightweight part-timer by comparison.
