For most of my life, football was something I never quite understood.
It was always there in the background, though. My grandfather loved it, and my great-grandparents did too. At Preston North End F.C., they even have a plaque, a quiet but rigid reminder of how deeply football clubs are rooted in family and community.
Over the past year, I have started going to matches with my grandad. I am learning the history and asking a lot of questions.
What I am beginning to realise, though, is that football is not just about the game itself. It is about community, continuity, and a kind of shared language that develops over time. It’s about celebrating, grieving together and finding closure in those big moments.
It is also about small moments. Sitting in the cold wearing my grandad’s winter gloves because I forgot mine. It’s becoming friendly with the orderlies and watching the crowd rise and fall with the rhythm of the match. Learning, slowly, how much meaning people attach to ninety minutes on a pitch.
Recently, I came across an article from the Arts Council England exploring what happens when poetry meets football. It stayed with me longer than I expected.
At first glance, poetry and football seem worlds apart. One belongs to bookshelves and quiet study; the other to stadiums and roaring crowds. Yet both are forms of storytelling. Both rely on emotion, rhythm, and collective experience. Both create spaces where people feel connected to something larger than themselves.
Perhaps that is why the two sit more comfortably together than we might expect.
Learning football has reminded me that stepping into something unfamiliar can open new ways of thinking. Sometimes it also opens new ways of understanding the people and places that shaped us.
From the stands, the game begins to look a little different.