WITH THE RUGBY WORLD CUP now over, Calverton drinkers need a new and at least theoretically plausible excuse to go to the pub.
‘I despise rugby but I make out I love it,’ said an anonymous Geordie Club patron.
‘I’m there for the booze and the bants, but mainly the booze. My mates are the same but they won’t admit it. None of us have a clue about rugby.
‘I first became a pretend rugby fan back in 2003 when Jimmy Watkinson dropped that kick-goal against I think it was Nigeria to win a nine-dart leg with a maximum break of 147 to beat his personal best of eight wickets.
‘We were all hammered. Happy days.’
‘Being a fake rugby fan usually disguises a dependency on alcohol,’ said local pub know-it-all Mick Winkler.
‘It starts with football and escalates into harder sports. But then the sports become more obscure. They’re just a crutch, really. And then one day you’re sat there alone at The Gleaners, staring at the bottom of a glass, reflecting on your shattered dreams and the relationships you’ve destroyed. And on the telly? Olympic figure skating. Or gymnastics. Some sport which is so rubbish not even Boris Johnson would shamelessly and opportunistically send a good luck message to the competitors beforehand.
‘I know I’m speaking quite lucidly at the moment. The pub’s not open yet.
‘But it’s when you’re not watching sport at all that you realise you’re just another lost cause desperately trying to legitimise being at the pub.’
‘Mick’s an extreme case,’ said a local landlord.
‘We always encourage our customers to drink responsibly and, ideally, pay in cash and not fight.
‘It’s not true that we’ll just screen literally anything to make money.
‘Anyhow. Doors open at six tonight for this week’s Strictly.’
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