TSBW blog

New kit purchased, season ticket renewed, fixtures released and some new faces lining up in the royal blue. Exciting, isn't it? .  . . What do you mean, “it’s September, County haven’t played a competitive game since March and we don't know whether the season will start or whether there will be more than 1000 fans at Edgeley Park!?”  Sadly, at the time of writing, we don’t know whether we’ll have a season to watch come the first weekend in October or whether we’ll be returning to EP for the first time in seven months the following Tuesday when we host FC Halifax Town. However, this is a debate for another time. We’re in a strange limbo at the moment; we can’t have fans in the ground, but we can’t start without them either (the release of the fixtures have merely added an air of surrealism to it). Whether we’re only allowed 1000 or 2700 at Edgeley Park remains to be seen and the question of just how County intend to ‘choose’ 1000 of the 2000+ season ticket holders to attend hom...

The life of a footballer, or indeed any professional athlete, is one fans envy; the glory, the money, the fact they’re being paid to do a job an ordinary fan would probably do for free. It makes them seem superhuman to us mortals. But what about the person behind the fame and Luis Vuitton washbag? What about when the dream turns into a nightmare and we see the real human behind the veneer? As males we’re told from an early age to “man up”, we're told that “boys shouldn’t cry” and all the usual “stiff upper lip” macho nonsense. Depression is an unseen illness, there are no outward physical symptoms, and even in 2020 people who claim to be living with the symptoms of depression are sometimes thought of as weak-minded or are merely making it up. The real shame in all of this is that some young boys and adolescents actually believe this and by the time they move into adulthood they’re a lot less likely to discuss their feelings (something which is seen as a feminine trait), especially ...