Max spends a night out with some Championship players and compares it to one with his own mates...
It's easy to criticise players, but I won't.
On Saturday I won the first cup final of my career. It rained. A lot. We wore a white away kit. The socks are now pink. I never separate whites and colours when I do laundry. This was a mistake. We won 6-2. Our 'keeper scored a penalty. We went out and ended up in a student club with plastic glasses playing Reef and Bon Jovi.
On Sunday I went out with some Championship footballers. I don't often do that. I'm not sure if they're meant to be out drinking, so I won't name them. We ended up in a very trendy bar with women not wearing a lot (but wearing enough for it not to be a strip club!) dancing on a stage, listening to R'n'B.
Yesterday, while I dealt with a two-day hangover, mainly curled up in a ball, I had plenty of time to think about the comparison between the two.
Differences
The differences are pretty easy to define. Most of my team had to go and buy the white socks on the morning of the game. I had to book a minibus. It cost us £10 to play. The changing room had eight showers between the two teams. We started the game with a 47-year-old accountant with a dodgy ankle at sweeper. We only had two fit substitutes. Martin (who runs a car dealership) broke his ribs two weeks ago. We each put £40 in the whip to pay for the evening.
The boys I was out with were staying in a hotel where a round of eight drinks cost £150. God knows how much a bottle of vodka in the club cost. Much to my shame, all I paid for was the cab to the club.
It's easy to criticise footballers for living it up and going to expensive places and that was my first conclusion. I'd much rather have a Guinness with my school mates in my local, than be somewhere where everyone's trying to be cool.
But whether that particular club plays the music I like, or isn't quite to my tastes, doesn't mean I, or anyone else, should just criticise footballers for their choice of evening establishment.
For every footballer who falls out of a nightclub after kissing the wrong girl, or has "an altercation" with a bouncer, there are hundreds who just have a good night out with their mates and then go home. Which - if you think about it - is the same as the rest of us.
Excessive
It's easy for newspapers to talk about excessive bar bills and the bad things that go with it, but it's all relative. If people are going to pay footballers lots, then they're going to spend it.
I guess my attitude to footballers has changed a lot in the past two years. Two years ago I'd met barely a handful. Now I've met lots. Two years ago, I tended to believe what I read in the papers. Or just looked at the headlines.
I don't hang around with footballers much, but when I do they're welcoming, generous, polite and pretty similar to the boys I play with on a Saturday. Just with a bit more money (apart from the 47-year-old accountant), a bit more footballing ability (apart from our centre mid, who could probably do a job for QPR), a few less A-levels, but a few more stories of women throwing themselves at them (more's the pity)....
Have a good week...
