Results tagged “pub” from Birmingham Post - Lifestyle Blog

Oh... wait... what happened to the last three months again?

Yes I'll admit that I've been terrible updating this blog. But in anticipation of something pub-related I'm working on (of which more later) I thought I'd go out for a celebratory pint this afternoon.

The thing that worries me most about Birmingham City getting relegated to the Championship is that I might have to go and watch them every week. Even an average Premier League team is on television enough to make it possible to see every goal and costly individual error without setting foot in the ground, but if we go down I might have to go down and that isn't going to be fun.

Up until a few years ago I had a season ticket in the main stand at St Andrews, and was in the habit of meeting the guys I went with around two hours before kick-off in The Sportsman on Garrison Lane. A few pints in a pub shorn of all its furniture to pack more people in, at least I assume that's what happened -- I never went in when there wasn't a game on so the pub could possibly just have had no chairs or tables at all.

A combination of Brady et al deciding to evict a section of the people that sat in the main stand, in favour of people who could pay for padded seats and access to a bar offering us much worse tickets as replacements, and the spiralling price of watching poor football meant that I stopped going to every game. Once out of the routine it's difficult to rouse yourself to go and watch on a cold Tuesday night, or a cold Sunday at four o'clock especially when the game is on TV. Much of my footballing budget was transferred in to watching England more regularly, and while I'm not sure the standard of play was any higher (and the frustration levels are much the same) at least I got to go to Frankfurt or Barcelona rather than Small Heath.

I still go to St Andrews and in truth it probably costs more to do it the way I do (£40 to watch us throw away a two goal lead against Liverpool, £40 to watch Agent Ridgewell put through his own net against the Villa), but this year I've seen almost every game home and away -- through a combination of pixelated internet feeds and darkened rooms in pubs.