The Footballers’ Inn

Makes you think, doesn’t it? The name could be good or bad. And I say that as a football supporter. Could be grim. Could be very very grim. I didn’t know what to expect when I first set foot in what is now my local (though I’ve only managed to get there twice). An all-​male sawdust stacked armpit serving watery lager on electric taps perhaps? Flanks of thick armed fellas cracking the plaster with unblinking eyes and sandpaper hair?
Instead I discovered the good football. The football that actually keeps punters returning to the game, in its live version season after season.
The bar staff smile. They make eye-​contact. They step back momentarily and acknowledge that choosing between TT’s Landlord, Black Sheep and a number of well appointed guests takes time. They recognise that such things arewell, pretty crucial. They wipe your table down and visit the tables of the better known patrons to take their orders. They stumble over your dog, apologise, wake it up, stroke it and offer it food. They produce said food, dangle it appropriately and then your dog spits out and you feel embarrassed. Immediately they gain the upper hand and everything changes — er, no: I digress. You feed it to your dog and frankly insist, telling him you intend to return, be nice to the kind lady who gives you treats.
You sit down, if you can find a free table and immediately you are surrounded. Ensconced by people who are inevitably merry, but merry in that almost mystical way you can rarely achieve, because as soon as you begin to reflect on it you’ve had another drink and now you’ve gone and exceeded your good drunken limit yet again. Once more it’s just a memory, a fleeting alcohol based nirvana sailing by in and out of the mist like the Marie Celeste of real ale. But these people, around you are the crew of said vessel and they are floating, blissfully (on a school night too!) in the horse latitudes of The Footballers’ Inn. They smile, and even you can’t fail to become enthralled by their conversational snares — subtle at first, tentative, but ultimately all-​pervasive. Yet again, like the Lord Raglan, there’s none of that don’t stray from the path attitude here if they don’t recognise your fiz.
It’s beamed, probably authentically, it’s cramped, it’s slightly claustrophobic and the temperature rises as your drink goes down. Every ounce of wall space is given over to football memorabilia, but in a very curious way that — honestly — would be easy to overlook. Even the heavily Man U weighted main lounge doesn’t quite reach shrine proportions — like that tiny pub on Manchester’s Portland Street (is it The Grey Horse or The Circus Tavern?) and the appealing factor of the pub is it’s highly various clientele, from middle aged women out together, to older men, younger men, teenagers and of course me! On both occasions I’ve noticed it contains at least one dog. Maybe it operates within the Quantity Theory of Dogs — as in the pub always houses one dog whose form merely changes depending on the clientel. And the humidity. Returning to the theme of said pub, the smaller lounge which also serves as a part-​time vault, contains some quite historical footballing memorabilia of an apparently random nature. These are nice touches for the discerning observer. I find myself looking at all the penants from all the different British clubs and foreign teams and imagining the stories behind how they go there — were they from fans of those clubs or perhaps from away supporters, mementos of travels far and wide?
A nice place. I know I’ll return. And definitely the last place for a kick-​off.