A lot has been written about mental health in players and hopefully things are improving. Playing sport is undoubtedly good for your mental as well as physical health but it can too easily lead to destructive behaviours and expectations, especially at performance levels of the game. I write this on the anniversary of Gary Speed's death (there are too many others); however, there is a lot less said about the relationship between the game and mental health amongst us fans.
Being a football fan – I mean a fan, not just a Sky Sports subscriber – is a strange thing. It really doesn't make much sense if you think about it too much. I have a standard quip when people: neighbours and non-fan friends say: "Enjoy the game!" it is: "I don't go to enjoy myself.” It leaves them rather bemused and, without a subsequent half-hour conversation, wondering why someone they didn't have down as dim-witted would waste so much time and money to go to a branch of the entertainment industry if not to enjoy themselves. After all, they go to the theatre, cinema or whatever with that one aim.
None of that is to say that I don't sometimes, incidentally, enjoy myself at football – in fact there has been a much higher than average amount of enjoyment recently – so much that I've been wondering if recent bouts of good humour and optimism are normal in a human being. When life around you is shit, to be able to escape and think: "well at least the Blades are riding high" is such a good thing for us all, isn't it? And how refreshing. Going into work on a Monday after a weekend defeat at home to MK Dons with only a trip to Fleetwood to look forward to cannot have have been great for our mental health. But I suppose in football there is always hope, even when you're languishing in the third tier: that next match at the weekend could just be the turning point, it could just start to click, couldn't it? – when a Sammonesque player rediscovers early season promise?
I wonder if anyone has ever done a study on mental health in relation to team success. Don't they say that national productivity increases after England successes, and that Harold Wilson got to Downing Street on the crest of a post-World Cup wave of optimism? I have also read that domestic violence is a linked to football results. All a bit weird isn't it? Why does it assume such an importance? Would I even the say disproportionate importance? And I'm going to risk courting controversy by saying: particularly for men. I think it meets some very innate need; that the way it went from nothing to a huge phenomenon in the late 19th century shows it filled a void in people's lives created by migration from the countryside to industrial towns, and has become even more important since. Human beings have a need for affirmation, to feel part of a tribe, and football provides all that. And what better release after hours of graft and rule-following during the week than to shout, to sing, to rant, and abuse authority (the referee) without getting sacked? For men particularly it provides an outlet for emotion that society still doesn't normally allow. It provides a justification for friendship and bond between fathers and sons. When I left home and lived away I'd phone home and if my dad answered it was invariably the football we discussed; when that ran out it was: "I'll get your mum." But at least we had that. As I say, I think for men the importance of their team in their minds is greater than for most women fans, who are more likely to get fulfilment of basic needs of belonging and affirmation from elsewhere: from a different sort of friend relationship and from family. That Bramall Lane is family friendly is a good thing, that fan diversity is on the increase is a good thing, but I can see the arguments against too much sanitisation and gentrification of the game – I can see why some fans feel it as a threat. Long may football fans avoid being choreographed and having their behaviour restricted and patrolled (other than for reasons of safety) for the sake of us all.
So, Wilder has affected my mental health. Put an Arsenal fan in front of me that one time and I'd start one of my favourite rants about how crap Fever Pitch was and how pathetic Arsenal fans are with their self-pity, moaning about their lack of success – try a spell in League One, or supporting a club that's the most underperforming in the country I'd say (when you plot a graph of attendance as against trophies), where the last fan who remembered winning a major trophy died quite a few years back etc. Now I'm not sure I could be bothered – my mood has changed, see? I suppose there is a counter-argument that being a Blade has made us resilient over the years. That you're better off being a pessimist because you're constantly surprised when things go right, whereas the eternal optimist can only feel let down all the time. I wrote in Dem Blades Issue 1 about taking my son to his first match at 12 weeks old. As I climbed the stand with him dangling from my front, I remember someone shaking their head at me and saying: "Subjecting him to a lifetime of misery." Well, who knows? And which is more fun: a rollercoaster or a train, a cycle ride through rolling countryside with ups and downs or along a flat road in the Fens? I can't start to imagine what it must be like being a Bury fan right now. To have all that taken away from you – with just the prospect of a trip to the retail park on a Saturday afternoon: a milky coffee at Costa after walking around Boundary Mills.
As I write this I keep thinking about the weekend's game and thinking we could get something out of it. Thank you Wilder, Knill, McCabe, the players and everyone else at the Lane. You should be on prescription.
