I'm not from football and I’ve written that many times in these pages, but one of my favourite things in life is creating metaphors from the things I see around me to help me deal with the things I encounter around me.
All of UK society and life is represented in modern football, at least it's represented in modern football at grassroots level and it doesn't look great.
Firstly, it is society sponsored bigotry at its best.
Think of the names that the Arsenal fans make up and shout at Tottenham fans because of their association with the Jewish community.
Think of Millwall and the football hooligans and the fact that every team in British football has an ultra-section which is, in effect, supported and sponsored violence.
Think of what Celtic and Rangers have been like since forever, which is an area that I can comment on quite clearly because my Dad is a Protestant Rangers supporter, and I was brought up a Catholic Celtic supporter because of my Mum.
It's all through football and we keep watching.
This was set starkly in contrast when Callum and I recently visited the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey to watch the New York Giants in their last home game of the season.
Don't get me wrong I completely appreciate that there is a considerable amount wrong with American society, probably far more than there is with British society but there's not a lot wrong with their American football based on that visit.
I've been a long-held fan of American sports, way back from the 1980’s, when American football started to appear on television and Channel4.
The experience in that stadium was better in so many ways than any experience in a British stadium, in terms of the togetherness and the safety and the overall culture of everyone involved.
The most recent sporting experience I had in the UK was having the privilege in the last few minutes of getting a ticket to see Nottingham Forest beat Liverpool 1-0 at the City Ground but the atmosphere in a stadium like that is entirely different and in no way better.
We celebrate controlled violence, we write about it and if it's associated with our team, we raise it up and we convince ourselves that because our heroes or our champions have perpetrated the violence, then it's acceptable.
In particular, I remember what Roy Keane did to Alf-Inge Haaland and how that was celebrated over and over in song by the Manchester United fans.
Sometimes in between all of this there are wonderful, beautiful and heart-warming stories like one of Alison's patients who is terminally ill being given the privilege of being the mascot at Forest and then the coach at Forest giving his family his jacket that night because they were cold and watching that on television and realising that in amongst all of this are fantastic people who are just caught up in the whole tribe mentality of a behaviour that seems to get worse and worse.
For me, I can't ever watch a full game of football.
For some reason, I get distracted or disenfranchised, and I leave or at least my attention does.
At home, when it's on the television for Callum to watch, I will never stay in the room for the entirety of the game, not even to watch my beloved Scotland.
But I find myself in a ridiculous situation, where even though I'm not really that bothered about football or much to do with football, I find my life completely interspersed with football to try to support my son and his love for it.
It goes to show that one of those things that I write about in the blog all the time “boys want to be pirates and girls want to be princesses, and there's nothing you can do to change it’ shows that Callum got involved with football and was desperate to be involved with football and as a kind and supportive parent (possibly) I helped him and encourage him in that.
Both Alison and I are involved with his football team. Alison as the administrative officer of the team and me as the reluctant football coach for the past seven years, much of which I've written about here.
I know nothing about football, but I do understand invasion games from my time in basketball so, I guess maybe I'm like a real-life Ted Lasso!!
And so, as part of my football coaching and then my association with Callum’s other team, his Saturday team, I find myself a linesman on many Saturdays.
The thing about being a linesman for Callum's games now is that you need 40 minutes of attention x2 with a five-minute break.
And so, in preparation for this little piece, I rummaged around on google to see what I could find about attention spans and if you go to www.brainbalancecentres.com, you'll find a study with over 10,000 people in attention span for different ages.
Someone of my age should have an attention span of 30 to 48 minutes.
Realistically that should do it for the whole of a half of football followed by a short break and then another 40 minutes, but I find myself unable to concentrate for the whole game and that can get me into some difficulty.
I never really make any huge errors, but the problem with football as it currently stands is that any mistake or difference of opinion can quickly escalate into abuse, anger and even threats of violence.
This has happened to me on several occasions in youth football now, either as a coach or a linesman where someone has said to me that I had made the wrong decision, or they disagreed with my opinion and it's then escalated into a situation out of control.
Twice last year, I was threatened with being punched by individuals once as a coach and once as a spectator/linesman.
And so, for any of you involved in youth football, here's a few things to help you through those processes that I've learned when you find yourself in a situation with someone who considers themselves not only to be an expert football pandit, but also to be a heavyweight champion.
1) Always useful to use the shame tactics to remind them that you’re a volunteer.
2) Always useful to use the shame tactics to remind them that you're here to help the boys (or girls).
All I want to do is to make our teams better individuals, none of them are going to make a living from football.
So, as soon as we get that nonsense out of the way, we can appreciate that they're here for a hobby and the definition of a hobby is an activity that you pursue for joy, which doesn't provide you money.
3) It's also reasonable to suggest to the individual in front of you that they could give up watching the game altogether if it was causing them so much distress but really, none of the people listen to this.
A final real doozy that I like to go in with is the following “are you a qualified referee?”.
That is, of course, a trap. If they say yes (which they invariably do regardless) you can explain to them that then they should realise that questioning the referee or an official on the pitch is unacceptable and against the law of the game.
If they say no, you can remind them that they're not qualified to disagree with your decision.
It's a win, win.
It then, though, usually escalates into shouting or threatened violence and at that stage you can use a trick which I learned from one of the players of the opposition one day who were being shouted at by parents from my own club.
We just went up to them as a 14-year-old and said, “Please Mr, will you stop shouting you're spoiling the game for the boy's”.
The long-term solution for this is to give these people a league of their own and to be relegated/promoted into that league.
At the end of the game that I was lining the other day, I looked over onto the opposite Astro turf pitch beside where we were playing to see a five-a-side game with Under8’s.
Some from the West Bridgford Colts playing against the team from Sherwood (I recognise their kit after all these years). The Sherwood coach who was coaching a group of seven-year-olds no higher than my waist, was screaming and shouting, his bobble hat waving in the wind.
Sherwood scored, which seems to put them into the lead, at which point he was apoplectic, trying to pass out instructions as to how to carry on the game, hold onto the lead, perhaps waste time, kick the ball out, make sure that they never lost.
He could be relegated/promoted to the new league, and I would suggest that within that league they're not given referees, no access to healthcare (generally, people in that league will punch each other and they can pay for that damage themselves and no access to policing or administration of any kind).
That would take them away from where we are and make all of grassroots football an awful lot better.
Blog Post Number - 3327