NB: Reviewing Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch, first published in 1992. For those who have not read it, skip this review.
I fell in love with football as I was later to fall in love with women: sudden, inexplicably, uncritically, giving no thought to the pain or disruption it would bring with it.
Hands up for those who felt the same way? Maybe not exactly in that manner but, there are times when one just could not explain how he/she got into something which he/she found it hard to get out of. In Nick Hornby’s case, it was how he came to support Arsenal. The sentence which I quoted began with the match which made him an Arsenal fan.
Not to be confused with the film of the same name starring Colin Firth, Fever Pitch as according to the Arsenal-supporting Nick Hornby, it is ‘an attempt to gain some kind of an angle on my obsession. Why has the relationship that began as a school-boy crush endured for nearly a quarter of a century, longer than any other relationship I have made of my own free will?’. But most importantly, it is ‘about being a fan’.
A book which speaks for the football fan, the man (or woman, like me) on the street. Nick Hornby had wrote it from the viewpoint of how he came to support Arsenal and the trials and tribulations he had came across from childhood to being an adult, putting it all together in a collection of short essays intertwining it with each match from 1968 to 1992. A refreshing look on football, given how often is there a book out there which speaks to the reader who could be supporting any football club and it need not be Arsenal? As Hornby wrote – ‘So this is for the rest of us, and for anyone who has wondered what it might be like to be this way.’
In the book, Hornby let us in on his own life, beginning from the time when his parents were about to get divorced when he was 11. That also came at a time where he discovered the club he would come to support amidst difficult times in his family – Arsenal. The Arsenal he first came to be in love with may be a far cry to the Arsenal of today, but it is an intriguing insight as to despite what the club have always stood for since the days of Herbert Chapman, he has stand by them through thick and thin. The Wembley trips which he came to dread whenever his club is in a cup final, what he encountered during his trips to Highbury and at away matches, how he view the managers who has come and gone and the same with the players as well. The players who had failed at Highbury and those who shone with Nick Hornby telling it like how a fan will feel towards any player playing for the club he/she supports.
But at the same time with what is happening at the club, Nick Hornby has also intertwined the various matches and incidents involving his club with the various stages of his own life and the issues of the day. For me personally, what struck me was how he feels towards one of his favourite players Liam Brady. While it was known that when Arsenal faced Juventus in the Cup Winners’ Cup (which Arsenal beat the Turin giants) and Brady did well to the extent he impressed his future employers and went to Italy, Brady’s eventual departure and his time in Italy mirror with Hornby’s own life. Seven months after Brady left Arsenal for Juventus, Hornby had lost the girlfriend he thought he would be able to spend the rest of his life with. The various rumours of Brady possibly returning to Arsenal each time before he extended his stay in Italy (he eventually spent eight years there and with four different clubs) also parallels with Hornby’s subsequent relationships.
Even if this is a book speaking from the viewpoint of an Arsenal fan, author Nick Hornby also shares his thoughts on the issues of the day. On what he thinks of the after-effects of Heysel and Hillsborough which both incidents also happened during the course of the book.
Like the author himself, I have no idea when I began to be a football fan even if my father is one. I might had grown up listening to him talking about the club he supports since his teens in Manchester United, but it took me some time before I found myself where I am now and it does drive my parents mad some times. In fact not only that, even I myself is guilty on trying to intertwine my football life with my personal life.
Fever Pitch has made me rediscover everything on what it means to be a football fan. There are times I thought the book seemed to be talking about me as well, even as a Manchester United supporter myself. But then, it can also be referring to how I feel as an England supporter.
