A trip to Wembley, life as a Derby or any football fan

On Monday I will visit Wembley for the fourth time as a Derby County fan, every time I’ve gone it was conjures up a different set of emotions of excitement and raw nervousness, always thinking could this season be our season?.

All Derby fans if they are honest, will have hoped for the play offs at the start of the season, albeit at the top end of expectations.

‘Put a decent run together, we could sneak in to the play offs and with a bit of momentum, you never know it could be our season’

Those immortal words ‘it could be our season’. These will have been words uttered by every Derby fan (and most other Championship fans) — most football seasons end well below expectations and yet hundreds of thousands of people will put themselves through it again and again on the hope that ‘this season, could be our season’.

And now, the ‘you never know’ is here, 5,000 minutes of football this season, over 200 games since we were last at Wembley and we get ready to ride the emotional rollercoaster for one final game with a staggering level of excitement or the feeling of plummeting desolation at the end. You can forget the aforementioned expectations at the start of the season. Monday is success or failure or black and white you might say.

So why do it season after season with so little chance of success?

Bill Shankly was once asked ‘is football a matter of life or death?’ He responded by saying, ‘no it’s far more important than that’.

Football becomes a way that we express life because it embodies everything we hold dear. It’s about identity, friends and family. All things more important than kicking a ball about. But football becomes something that deepens our identity and strengthens our bond with family and friends.

Following a football team becomes an anchor, representing where you grew up, where your family is from, where you have roots and made you who you are today.

One of the things, I’m most looking forward to on Monday, is seeing friends from all walks of life, there’ll be friends from primary school, secondary school, university, from the years I sat in the South East Corner and people that were on the Austria tour in 2015. People that you haven’t spoken to in a couple of years are now exchanging texts with the casual abandon of life long friendship.

Wembley? The Torch or the Crock of Gold? Pub names that could become rather symbolic

To coin an Inbetweeners phrase, Football fwends.

You’ll share old memories and anecdotes of home and away games and it won’t feel like you haven’t spoken in years.

There has been a bit of nonsense on Twitter about ‘plastic fans only turning up for Wembley’.

But for me that’s the beauty of it all, yes they’ll be a hardcore of several hundred fans that travel to Swansea on a Tuesday night. In fact the harder it is to get to a game it deeepns their resolve to go, pre season friendly on the outskirts of Graz on a Sunday at 5pm, flights to Vienna are £300 and there’s no return trains ‘no problem I’ll just go via Bratislava in Slovakia’.

However, there will be people going to their first game of the season and that demonstrates how an entire city coming together, in a sense of belonging, willing their home or adopted city to rise to the promised land again.

Frank Lampard with his enthusiasm has embodied this, the man has over 100 England caps and played at the very top level, he could have an easy life sitting in a Sky Sports studio probably earning more money and seeing more of his young family. Same again for Ashley Cole, he’s spent his career in three cities, London, Rome and Los Angeles, he’s finishing it in Derby with a final game at Wembley, you’d have to ask them why they do it — but I’d imagine camaraderie and being part of something are high up on the list.

What an inspirational decision it was by the Chairman and boyhood fan Mel Morris to persuade Lampard to join ten months ago. Being a Chairman of a football club is a thankless and expensive task. A local lad who has poured millions into the club, he could easily have his own box and enjoy just being a fan, but he wanted the opportunity to give back to the club and the city, hopefully he will see his dream come to fruition.

On Monday afternoon, an entire city will go quiet as a quarter of its inhabitants decamp to the Capital. Even those at home will be willing on Derby County, my mum who has never been to a Derby game in her life will be tuned into Radio Derby following all the twists and turns (she used to listen to the end of games to know whether Dad and I would return in a good or bad mood for Saturday’s evening meal).

If we score we’ll jump up and hug random strangers all around us, you don’t even do that weddings, and that’s because there’s something deeper binding you all — a club yes, but a city and a county too.

It’s for the day, it’s for the moment, the day that Derby County are the centre of football fandom across the UK and perhaps the world.

As for the result in 2007, I thought we’d lose to West Brom and we won, in 2015 I thought we’d beat QPR and we lost, so I’m optimistic because I think we will lose to Aston Villa, does any other walk of life inspire such twisted logic?

It may or may not be our season but let’s enjoy it for what it is, sing the songs with friends and family, do the bounce with the spying eyes and if we don’t win, look for the positives because that is what football fans do — Monday will become part of the fabric of who we are and something you will share with friends and family, sons and daughters who aren’t even born yet. And if things don’t go our way, who wants to go to Old Trafford, the Emirates and Anfield any way? (We all do really …)

And then we will look ahead … after all, next season, could be our season …