Football, cameraphones and the importance of enjoying the moment as well as sharing it.
Something unique struck me after 10 minutes of QPR against Coventry City last night. I’d gone with a friend Alan, standing in the rail seating section of The Loft, and spotted something increasingly rare in football, certainly to my eyes. Everyone was watching the game. Nobody was on their phones. Nobody filmed the celebrations of Kieran Morgan’s second-half equaliser yards in front of us, the teenager’s first for the club. QPR fans were too busy leaping around, hugging friends and strangers, climbing up on the mental frame of the railings and punching the air. The guy in front of me had his head in his hands, almost in shock that QPR had located the net. “We’ve scored a goal,” inevitably rang out after a run of only two goals in 473 minutes.
I go to plenty of EFL and non-League games, as well as the phone-fest of Premier League, Champions League and England matches, and had rarely seen as few phones as at Loftus Road. I looked to the Stanley Bowles Stand on my left and nobody was recording the moment to post online #scenes or keep for posterity #qprcov. It was a throwback. Of course, the absence of VAR meant there was no artificial hold on the emotional release. Everyone was in the moment. I mentioned it to Alan, a season ticket holder and fan of 40+ years standing, rarely sitting, and he was surprised that I was surprised. He’d never noticed that he or his fellow Rs fans weren’t on their phones.
Why would they? They were too engaged in the game, extolling the reflexes of keeper Paul Nardi and praising the work-rate and adventure of winger Koki Saito. They were too busy singing about paella and Estrella and in support of Marti Cifuentes, a miracle-worker last season currently having a few struggles but clearly still very popular. They were too occupied deliberating on exactly how match-fit Ilias Chair was. They were too involved lamenting a lack of pressing and quality, and bemoaning a lack of action from the referee for not clamping down on some Coventry time-wasting.