So...You think you know football?
Dreaming of winning the (Fantasy) Premier League? Dreaming is easy. But dreaming is for Tottenham. Dreaming is for Newcastle. Dreaming is Everton. Dreaming means nothing here.
It was a warm Monday morning, March 31st, 1903, and an aeroplane was pushed 800m up a gravel road to an intersection crowded by two dozen onlookers, watching, anticipating, most doubting.
After a few false starts and the engine roared into life. The plane — held back initially by boulders placed carefully under each wheel, and restrained by local farmers at the rear — was soon off. It taxied for what seemed like an age, holding the middle of the road, before rising into the air.
135m later the plane took a sharp left, crashing, coming to a halt atop a dry gorse bush.
The pilot’s name was Richard Pearse, New Zealander, first man to fly a plane in the world.
Sometimes, though, even when you think you win, you lose. For, eight months after Richard’s gravity defying moment, it was the Wright brothers in the look-at-us-USA and not in little old Aotearoa, who “won” the title of first to fly a plane.
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Rumour has it Pearce was an Arsenal fan — a club that was, at the time, based in their spiritual home south of the Thames and playing in the London League of Division Two, and sporting their original name, Woolwich Arsenal.
It certainly brings a tear to the eye to know that up there in the sky, far higher than he ever flew on the monumental Monday morning, Richard enjoyed a front row seat, a bird’s-eye view, of the Premier League last season as his beloved Woolwich Arsenal — having lead the league for 93% of the season — duly swerving off course and landed in a bush.
History may be written by the victors. But football is covered by The Tactical Yellow.
Welcome to the 2024/25 Fantasy Premier League season, for the next 38 Gameweeks you’ll be treated, some may say subjected, to a running commentary of all things football — mostly it will be nonsense, but, much like when facing a Mourinho low-block, the ability to see space through bodies, to obtain peace despite the noise, is a skill to separate the winners from the dreamers.
Game on.