All seems possible
Middlesbrough vs Swansea City, EFL Championship, Riverside Stadium, 10th August 2024.
It’s finally here! The first day of the new season. Since Boro’s last match we’ve somehow made it through the closed season with only women’s football, the end of the Premier League, the playoffs, the Euros, the Olympics, pre-season friendlies and a couple of games of Scottish football to keep us going.
But now we’re back in Boro and are parked in our usual spot - beside North East Costumes and Theatrical Hire Services, which is also a coal merchant, apparently. The building quite clearly has a long and interesting history. Or just a long history. Having watched too many films over the years, Ben is adamant that it’s actually a front for some criminal enterprise. A marijuana factory. An illegal chop shop. A…counterfeit Beanie Babies manufacturer. But whatever it is or isn’t, we’re not going to try and peek through the cracks around the door. Though Liz has a half-baked hope that if she did, she’ll see rows and rows of old theatre costumes, fading romantically into (coal) dust… Instead, we’re going to make our way to the ground, past the Transporter Bridge which, thankfully, is still here and hasn’t collapsed into the Tees in the three months since our last game.1
The sun is shining, the sky is blue. We’re wearing shorts and bright new football shirts. It’s hard, sometimes, to remember that the sun ever shines during the football season, but today it’s August 9th, the weather is glorious and we’re baking in our seats at the Riverside. We may be baking, but at least we’ve got a free cup of tea, as Liz cannot function without a cup of tea. One of the benefits of being a longstanding season ticket holder is getting a free drink at every home league game. At £3 a cup to purchase, it’s not a bad little perk to have, even if the tea is…average - even after soaking the tea bag for about ten times longer than normal, in an attempt to make it taste of something other than cardboard. Admittedly, the taste of cardboard may well be down to the fact that the little dangly label attached to the teabag frequently ends up in the cup, comes loose of its little thread and dissolves. Mmmm, a tasty cup of label.
Anyway, THE FOOTBALL. And more specifically, THE BORO: We’ve made a few new signings over the summer, but only one of them, Aidan Morris, is playing today. He’s taken Johnny Howson’s place in midfield, and in Howson’s absence Luke Ayling is wearing the Captain’s armband. Cool, calm and collected before the game, Liz speculates about whether team cohesion and communication will be negatively impacted by the captain playing at right-back rather than in the middle of the pitch. Ben opines that it’s a sensible decision from Carrick to start the season with what looks, on paper, like our strongest team.
Pre-match calm is swept away by a surge of anticipation, the whistle blows and we’re off! We sit back, grit our teeth, and prepare for a dose of what is known around these parts as ‘typical Boro’. It’s been ten years since Boro won on the opening day of the season, home or away, and with last season’s disastrous start ultimately destroying our hopes of promotion before the season was even a quarter gone, lets just say that we are trying to keep expectations to a minimum for the first match of 24-25.
Swansea City are today’s opponents. The Boro settle quite quickly and it’s an encouraging start. There’s a fluidity and togetherness that reflect the good pre-season Boro have had, and that suggests that Ben (and Michael Carrick) are correct about the starting line up. Boro’s reward for a positive start comes in the form of a penalty when Isiah Jones is brought down in the box. Up steps Emmanuel Latte-Lath and BOOM, we’re in the lead. The stadium resounds to a chorus of ‘... he’s f*ckin rapid2 and he loves to attack, and he goes by the name of Latte Laaath.’
After continuing to have the upper hand, Boro should really have scored again before half time, but they can’t turn dominance into a 2nd goal. Still, we don’t complain about going in at half time one goal to the good. And we’re delighted to see Tony Mowbray, Boro legend and all round good guy, presented with his legacy number [542] at half time. He’s much loved on Teesside and hasn’t been well recently. There are some suspiciously emotional sniffs from some of the big blokes sitting near us as the ground erupts with ‘Tony Mowbray, he’s one of our own.’3
The second half begins, and with it comes a certain inevitability. On several occasions over the last couple of seasons, Middlesbrough have dominated early stages of games, only to let their opponents back into the game.
‘You know what’s going to happen next, don’t you?’ Liz says.
But, dear reader, her worst fears are not justified. We don’t immediately concede a stupid goal to a newly rejuvenated Swansea side. They are playing better, but they don’t score. Despite having several breakaway chances, we don’t grab a second goal either, thus ensuring we spend quite a lot of the second half with our hearts in our mouths. Swansea stage an inevitable last-minute push and the three minutes of injury time feels like thirty-three, but eventually the referee blows the whistle and Liz looks out from behind her hands. The unthinkable has occurred. Boro have won their opening game. HMS Piss The League has set sail.4 All of a sudden, we’re jubilant and all seems possible. This is a game Middlesbrough would probably have conspired to not win last year. Perhaps we’ve turned a small but significant corner…?
It’ll be interesting to see how we get on at Leeds in the Carabao Cup on Wednesday. Liz regrets the fact that we’d decided not to go, but Ben has some good news for her …5
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Sadly we’re not joking this time. It’s on the point of collapse, apparently, unless something expensive is done rather quickly.
Not, as Liz believed for a ridiculously large part of last season, ‘he’s f*ckin massive …’
One of those ‘big blokes’ may have been Ben. And Liz.
For the uninitiated, this refers to a meme which is a constant source of amusement for Ben - a battleship adorned with the Boro badge (or indeed, the badge of any football team whose fans are in optimistic mood) and named, as you may have gathered, HMS Piss The League as a comically-arrogant, metaphorical statement of intent.
Keep the romance alive and inject excitement in your long-term relationship with the occasional surprise midweek trip to Leeds. Ben.