‘Shouldn’t you be at work?’
I’ve never written about football. As someone who had largely fallen out with the game over the past two decades, nostalgia about a more ‘simple’, less polished version of the sport was all I really had left to talk about.
In 2017, ‘Quickly Kevin, Will He Score?’ turned sad pub-talk into something with new life, purpose and credibility. Gone were the days of hoping for the right company to discuss David Platt’s surprising goal record. Nostalgia for 90s football became weirdly current again – at least for us.
There’s a temptation here to be far too self-indulgent and paraphrase Rob’s prior, adept review of the whole series, so I’ll try to hone in on just one aspect of the final show, ‘The End’. Community. As touched upon in the final episode, the sense of community, hope and joy that sprang from this pod seems to have eclipsed that of division and tribalism.
The hosts, Chris Scull, Josh Widdecombe and producer Michael Marden talked beautifully about how watch-alongs and interviews led to them liking teams they’d previously hated. Maybe that’s something that comes with time for most, but QK certainly gave me and my friendship group a renewed love of football but, more importantly, reignited our enthusiasm for sport and togetherness at a time when we probably needed it most.
Starting with IF – read by Des Lynam – really is the way to start an emotional end for slightly aged football fans and the sombre tones created here were both expected and fitting. Although the final episode acted as an almost Greatest Hits episode, what could be more fitting than QK reminiscing about reminiscing, like I am now, in a sort of reminisce-ception?
It’s what we wanted; it’s what they wanted.
We discovered how Steve Froggart met his wife, that Mark Bosnich enjoyed a low-fat pizza at the weekends and Chris Bart-Williams has tiny feet – we didn’t even know we cared.
What we really found out was that we just wanted to reconnect. And we did.
90s relics and trivia gave rise to more current coverage and the recordings that followed England’s performances at the Euros built a hype that I didn’t know could still exist (I still haven’t listened to the whole Italy episode). This remains. And this is the point…it still remains. The community built through the general thoughts of all involved did THIS to us.
We’re glad it happened. We’re glad they happened to remind us that it happened. If it’s not Barry Fry with a picture of himself eating a sandwich in his office, or John Sitton advising players to eat well before he fought them for their poor performance, QK has touched all that were part of it and finishing with Nessun Dorma was what we expected. We didn’t need to listen to it, but we did, to give the whole show the reverence it deserved.
It’s done. Robbie Slater…
Liam Barlow