The screenwriter and novelist Frank Cottrell-Boyce texted me this week with an idea: “You need to write a piece about the dilemma of trying to create a bubble of prayer around the days of the Triduum while having tickets for the semi-final in London with no direct trains, so no chance of getting back for the Easter vigil.” And when a writer of Frank’s calibre suggests I write something, write that something I will.
As Frank knows, he’s pushing at an open door here. Like him, I’m both a devotee of a football club and an enthusiastic Roman Catholic. Where we differ is that his team, Liverpool, are wildly successful; my team, West Brom, aren’t. Also, his learning in matters of the church surpasses mine by a distance. I had to look up Triduum, for a start. My dictionary says it is: “A period of prayer or religious celebration lasting three days.” It’s also defined, secularly, as merely “a space of three days”. And here lies the problem: in this particular space of three – OK, four – days, many critical football matches will be played. Over the Easter weekend, the secular and the devotional clash like clanging bells.
While Liverpool and Manchester City do battle in their FA Cup semi-final, football fans of all stripes up and down the country will be going through the mill. With the end of the season imminent, their prospects of promotion or relegation will be clearer after not one but two matches over the long weekend. If you’re into football, there’s arguably no worse weekend on which to seek peace and reflection.
Easter services, from Good Friday to Easter Sunday, lack for nothing in beauty and drama. But neither, let’s be honest, do they lack for length. In football parlance, they go on well into injury time, extra time and even penalties. That’s a lot of time in which a footballing mind can wander. I confess to you, my brothers and sisters, that during Easter services, this sinner’s mind has on occasion drifted away from the sacred. While I swear I’ve never resorted to actual prayer in the hope of influencing results, my thoughts have gone there. I ask for forgiveness and understanding in those difficult times.
For the truly devout, these anxieties are not just for Easter; they nag away all season. It was once my privilege on a train from Manchester to sit next to Bernard Halford, Manchester City’s long-serving club secretary and life president, who died in 2019. I already knew about his long service to the club, but on this journey, he also shared with me his enthusiasm for the Catholic church. When I asked him what he did when there were fixture clashes in his football and faith calendars, he looked pained. I may be doing him a disservice here, but the impression I got was that football tended to win out. Importantly, though, it was clear he was tortured about this, as every good Catholic tends to be about one thing or another. Bless him, a very nice man.
This Easter will be different for me. Hitherto, over all 16 Easters I’ve had since I became a Catholic, West Brom have been heading either for promotion or just missing out on it, or for relegation or a narrow escape from it. Not this year. We have nothing to play for, so a dismayed kind of peace can finally envelope me this Easter. I will be able to focus properly on matters spiritual at last. Perhaps it’s not cleanliness but mediocrity that is second to godliness; I am blessed, unlike poor Frank Cottrell-Boyce, to support a team going nowhere.
Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist
