Meeting new people, that thing we all used to do from time to time, conversation would often turn to football with the obvious line of questioning starting with ‘who do you support’?
For me, that was always a difficult one to answer, I’d go with a genre rather than a particular team and attempt to describe my lifelong love for non-league and grassroots football.
The look of incredulity would quickly be followed by ‘but you must support a pro club?’
If pressed enough, often the word ‘Spurs’ might creep out, but as the years have gone on I’ve felt more and more at ease with sticking hard and fast to my first response of non-league football.
And I think, after the last three weeks and the range of emotions Binfield have put us through, from last gasp goals and penalty shoot out angst in the semi-final to the basic pride of seeing them walk out at Wembley, people will now get it when they ask me.
The way that the village and the wider area, including this publication, got behind the team was simply incredible. Seeing the videos of the streets lined with people as the bus carrying the players to Wembley will never be forgotten either side of the coach window.
The kids at the local school’s will, I hope, be Moles for life and in the wider area I think people will be looking forward to the new season, perhaps thinking about visiting their local club a couple of times instead of trekking to Stamford Bridge or The Emirates.
It’s not a case at all of tearing up your Premier League season ticket, this isn’t an anti-professional football rant, it’s perfectly possible to do both – obviously one requires significantly less expense and will generally mean you’ll be home in time for tea – but I think the one thing we can all say coming out of a pandemic is how important a sense of community is going to be to us going forward.
It’s something I guarantee that, if you give local sport a chance, will come to you.
What Binfield achieved has put their club firmly on the map, but it’s done more than that, it’s put grassroots football on the map and I hope that means, when it comes to that first Saturday in August, you’ll think about heading down to the Moles, or Wokingham, or Bracknell, or Ascot, or wherever the nearest ground to you is.
By Tom Canning
