Musings from the Shitter - Volume Twelve 

Where We Leave the Week

Football clears my head.
Of the week. Of the weeks. Of the goddamn grind.

It’s not the game, not really.
It’s the battle.
The blood and the mud and the silent war inside.
A purge. Alone in the thought, but not alone in the fight.

Sometimes it comes out as aggression. Ugly, misdirected.
I’m no Roy Keane. Christ, I’m not even close. But I get it.
I get the snarl in his jaw. The way he needed the scrap to feel alive.
Win the battle, win the game.
Or at least, win something. Anything.

I’ve regretted battles. More than a few.
But not all. And if I’m honest, I’d take some of them again.
Maybe even hit harder this time.

Because football isn't just football. Not for people like us.
It’s a goddamn pressure valve.
A place to empty out the week.
To be someone else for 90 minutes—or no one at all.

And I know I’m not the only one. I see it.
In the warm-up stares. The short tempers. The quiet nods.
We’re all carrying something.
Work. Family. Breakups. Bills. Ghosts.
It all comes with us to the pitch.

Saturday isn’t just for the match.
It’s therapy.
We just don’t talk about it like that.

And maybe we should.

I’m sure the decision was made with heads in the game.
Win first. Sort the rest later.
And we did win.
Roy Keane would've been happy. I was too.
For a while.

But I think about Roy more than I should.
Not the snarling headline Roy.
The one beneath all that.
The captain.
The one who barked because he gave a shit.
Because he believed in the team.
In standards.
In no one getting left behind.
No one walking alone into a long, cold week without the ball at their feet.

And I reckon even he, in all his storm and steel,
would’ve clocked what we missed.

That the lad on the bench needed that game
just as much as we did.
Not for glory.
Not for minutes logged.
But for the medicine.
For the fucking purge.

Maybe it wasn’t selfishness.
Maybe the game just sucked us in.
The battle blinkered us. Tunnel vision.
We took our medicine—hard tackles, last-ditch headers, breathless sprints—
and forgot that someone else needed it too.
Forgot he was carrying something just like we were.
That the purge wasn’t ours alone to take.

And that’s not what this is about.

Everyone deserves time with the ball.
Even just five minutes.
To exorcise the week.
To let it out in a slide tackle or a half-chance from the edge of the box.
To leave something behind in the grass.

This game—we think it’s about goals, stats, three points.
But sometimes, it’s just about surviving the week.
And the ball is the only thing that listens.


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