Attending The Church Of Scholes...

now, that was a match. it had a little bit of everything. feisty-ness, cheating, performance art (see above), luck, and horror mistakes. for some reason, despite playing like a shadow of the team we were last year, the chips fell our way and we came out on top of the first big game this season.

as these big 4 matches tend to go at the pub, it was a full house. crowded. loud. stuffy. reeking of guinness-stained wood and jameson fumes from the night before, yet welcoming all the same. to me, at least. and also, for that matter, similarly welcoming to the three tatted-up liverpool fans from derry who were taking shots of jägermeister and there solely to talk shit to manchester united fans and root for arsenal. these gents had been out all night long and apparently went from the closing bars to a diner for 2 hrs and then to the pub— knocking on the window before the early game began. now it’s noon and these three slurring, close-talking troopers were in it to win it. luckily, so was the rest of the bar.

another double edged-sword of watching the big games at the pub is that seating disappears rather quickly. for example, i arrived 20 mins prior to kickoff and it was standing room only. no matter, 10 mins of standing by the bar talking to one of the aforementioned derry liverpudlian-inclined drunkards, one of his compatriots decided to leave. for what, i’ll never know. i sincerely hope, however, is that he went to take a shower and go to sleep. i sensed my chance and jumped on the empty seat in the bar. this quick switcheroo left the guy i was talking to perhaps confused since his friend didn’t really say goodbye. he looked at me, shrugged, and loudly exclaimed, “i was gonna buy him a jägermeister, but i gesh now i’m gonna buy you one, even though you’re a real man u cunt.” since it was around noon on a saturday this seemed like a rather bad idea. i graciously thanked him but said i can’t drink jägermeister and was fine. he then gave me a steely death glare that was seven parts ‘i’ve beat a man u fan up for much less than this in derry’ and three parts ‘i understand, i’m a drunk hooligan with crazy tattoo sleeves going on and on about steven gerrard’s clutch late goals who has been drinking for at least 15 hours straight and it makes absolutely perfect sense for you to turn down this shot of jägermeister at 1155am.’ i thought about this formula for a few seconds and came to the educated conclusion that it would prudent to meet him halfway and suggest a shot of jameson (for me) instead.

under these dangerous pretexts, the match began and further drinking commenced. in the first half we played fairly awful, again. this saw the gooners go up 1-0 at the break off a blast from a pint-sized sexist ruskie past a dumbfounded ben foster. fair enough, we were lucky to not be down by 3. second half we again got super lucky with goals via a contentious rooney penalty and then a gift-from-allah diaby own goal from an innocuous giggsy freekick.

this fortuitous scoreline and occurrence of luck led to a markedly raucous vibe in the pub: the most boisterous match of the season this far. somehow, more inebriated shit-talking liverpool fans showed up in the second half and this led to a nearly-violent-turning session of back-and-forth insults over every disputed call and turn o’ events the entire game. as the alcohol consumption increased and the voices got louder, more and more of the man u fans joined in and started hooting, hollering, yelping, and singing when the final whistle blew following an inordinate amount of injury time, collectively taunting the out-of their-element liverpool fans on our home turf. the icing on the cake was when wenger kicked a water bottle in injury time, got a red card, was sent to the stands, and just stood there with his arms out like some sort of cartoon villain, getting heckled by united’s home fans as time and victory seemed suspended in intoxicated folly.

my serial-killer looking liverpool derryman friend, despite his drunkenness, did turn out to be a bit of an oracle. between his various c-bombs and f-bombs effortlessly affixed to descriptions of man u players, he predicted, early on in the first half, that arsenal would go up 1-0 and be ‘fuckin’ shell-shocked by two old trafford bullshit goals.’ this turned out to be quite glaringly correct and at the end of it all, on the way out amongst the ‘glory glory manchester united’ chants, i purchased my oracle-drunkard frienemy a shot of jägermeister, myself a shot of jameson, polished them off, and headed out of the darkened lively pub into the unassuming mid-day sun and towards the unassuming mid-day neighborhood throngs who had little to no idea of all that just transpired through those magical doors and darkened windows.

scholes sighting: curiously did not feature at all, which in a sense, made way for man-o-the-match, darren fletcher. this young gangly scot has aged like fine highland single malt amongst an oak barrel of constant criticism.

most terrifying bottle noticed behind the bar: georgi gin, 1 liter for $8.79. scary.