Fragments of Unpopular Culture 3: Gambling

At the end of August I won £50 in the Percy Main Cricket Club weekly draw. Five years ago, I had this to say about gambling in the October 2006 edition of "Northern Wisdom," the Northern League Club monthly bulletin.

I am not a Puritan; the closest I ever get to that is a hearty bowl of Quaker Oats every morning (no sugar as it causes diabetes, no salt as it causes high blood pressure and no full fat milk as it causes obesity). I am not moralistic; indeed the characters of Trainspotting, fictional devotees of my Scottish team Hibernian, would take me to task in the bars surrounding Easter Road for my shiftless ambivalence to contemporary questions of social import.

I am, however, unashamedly judgemental and I defy any football fan not to be; especially bearing in mind what we put up with. On any given Saturday and many midweeks as well, the scenario I’m about to depict could well happen to all of us; the team you support is playing like a collection of incompetent mercenaries on tranquilisers, the pies are replete with botulism, the beer in the clubhouse appears to be the contents of a latrine shot through with copious amounts of carbon dioxide and the opposition’s programme is full of the sort of hysterical, biased ranting that would make a Paisleyite sermon on ecumenism seemed positively enlightened. Naturally, all of this is played out in force 10 gales, in driving rain on a bumpy pitch.

Naturally enough, your one possible avenue of hope is the bottle of Scotch in the half-time draw. It goes without saying that it ends up being won by someone who has the set of numbers immediately before you and just happens to be the ticket seller’s nephew and son-in-law of the chairman. And you wonder why, without exception, I respond to every single inquiry as to whether I’d like any raffle tickets with the stock response “I don’t gamble?”

Actually, the truth is I don’t gamble. I’ve never set foot in a betting shop, I’ve never been to greyhounds and my only trip to the horses was to Hexham in May 1987, when I spent the whole meeting quality testing various brews with former Newcastle and Everton full-back John Bailey, a bibulous gentleman of some repute.

I realise that to deny a club 50p or £1 in revenue because of a seemingly spurious and anachronistic moral objection may seem petty, but my conscience is clear when it comes to supporting this league. Not only am I a member of this august society, buy a programme from every game I go to, have an archive of almost all Northern League fanzines from 1991 to the present day and possess about a dozen lapel badges and various other items of memorabilia. I also imbibe a fair bit and allow my lad, who accompanies me to 90% of the Northern League games I attend, to have his choice of the snack bar.

There is often as assumption that those who don’t buy raffle tickets are simply mean in money or spirit, but this is not always the case. Of far worse concern is the abuse of club passes that is almost Mandelsonesque in its proportions. My contention is this; give me something to spend my money on in your ground and I will spend it. Just don’t expect me to indulge in a practice I find abhorrent.