Do any of you fellow Vital Manchester City members suffer from M.C.C.S.S – ‘Manchester City Close Season Syndrome?’
VMC member, Wswilly3 sent us the following…
It’s a very debilitating condition and typical symptoms include kicking ones heels, kicking the cat or in very bad cases, persistently kicking the garage door. On that occasion my wife had to lead me back inside the house as the neighbours were clearly getting anxious. Rather like arthritis it also gets worse the older one gets, especially as years ago, it only used to afflict me on a summer Saturday afternoon about 3pm but then I started getting attacks at odd times on Sundays and even at 7-45pm on a Monday evening… I blamed the telly.
However friends, I can now reveal,‘ my name is Wilbo and I am cured’. This is the time, if you are in the mood, to stand up and to clap wildly, maybe even shake a tambourine and say things like ‘praise be and ‘alleluia’. What’s more, ‘I am prepared to share my cure with you fellow members of Vital Manchester City’…’praise be’ etc, etc.
The source of my cure was in fact a Norwegian playwright called Henrik Ibsen and his play called the ‘Wild Duck’ which I happened to go and see a couple of years ago, when I was suffering badly from the condition.
Now the plot of this play is about an old man who had gone a bit stir crazy because he could no longer go into the forest and shoot for wild duck. His son, being the caring sort, persuaded him to go into his attic and pretend it was the forest and the old codger did this and was soon as happy as I was a few weeks ago when the Rags lost in Rome. You can obviously tell from this that the Norwegians really know how to write a good play, although I have to admit the night I went to see it the theatre was deserted…strange really!
So that was the solution; no, not to go in the attic with a football and kick it against the water tank..come on, I’m not that daft. What I did was to hang up some of my Manchester City memorabilia on the walls of the downstairs loo…much more sensible, as I’m sure you’ll agree.
Up went the picture of the 1968 team… Joe, Malcolm, Colin, Mike and Francis, which always would bring a smile to my face. Then came the picture of Paul Dickov’s equaliser against Gillingham, after our year of famine and pestilence. I still recall the trips to York and Oxford, (both now gracing the Conference) before the Prophet Joe led us out of the Wilderness…you know it still brings me out in a cold sweat thinking what would have happened if Mark Halsey had not added five minutes stoppage time at Wembley.
Finally up went a picture, that my son bought me, which measures about four foot by one foot and was a full length photograph of the last game played at Maine Road and round the edges were individual pictures of all the then first team squad. That was in 2003 and there are still two members of that squad playing for City and two playing for other Premier sides (answers on a postcard) but the rest have become football pundits or hospitality people or whatever ex-footballers do with themselves. Years ago they all used to become pub landlords in some back street boozer but those days are sadly long gone.
Anyway I digress, for now when I feel some M.C.C.S.S. coming on I just go and lock myself in the downstairs loo and I am cured. Hello – there are two men in white coats coming down the garden path…they must be for the wife (wibble)!
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