debunking objectivity

One of the prime motives of creating this haven for sporadic and arbitrary comments on football was, of course, to keep it out of everywhere else. For a long time we have heard that people aren't really interested in the aesthetics of the game. We understand. We don't want to pile on people with our squeeful perving on pretty boys in shorts. We put ourselves down, in our guileful feminine manner. We were given to understand that we were the carpetbaggers. The dilettantes. The ingenues.

A typical day spent mulling over football, we have come to discover, goes something like this. You sit down to a cup of tea and a couple of technical match reports that cover the basic points of a game. You read, on a lucky Monday, a new piece in a stuffed-shirt newspaper by someone who is forced into using exclamation points on a quota basis. You read transfer rumours.

You read the demented ravings of club presidents.

You read the bemused semi-literate fumblings of professionals.

You read retractions.

You read the debunking of transfer rumours.

You read more transfer rumours.

You don't complain, of course. This is enjoyable. You are non-judgmental in extremis. This is what you are unpaid to do. Besides, you're only about to perv. Men in shorts, you think, men in shorts. Be brave for the boys with uncovered knees.

But all we have seen has pained us into admitting that we do not see what sets us apart from the pillars of football fandom in the virtual world. We would never dream od mentioning it, were we not struck - very struck - by the prevalence, and dare we say? dominance, of the fanboy, in the world of football commentary. Go here, for example, or here. Seek not the unofficial comments nailed to the mast by other fanboys. We direct you to these to marvel at the institutionalised fanboyism on display here. Naturally the genteel good humour with which our wiser, older friends have, over the weeks and months, patted our little heads and told us to get off the glory hunting is not lost on us, but our eyes do widen at odd moments.

We would hate to make an impression of disgruntlement. Equanimity is ever our aim, as our past catalogue of football blogs should hopefully demonstrate.

We'd just like to state for the record, that the yearning for ye olde cricket journalism does strike a note upon our fluttering hearts from time to time. If only those cricketers were a little fitter.

"Objectivity? Right now? I wonder if you'll take a back rub instead."