About

During the 2006 World Cup, I was living in Portsmouth, NH, where anyone who loves soccer knows the place to watch in the The Coat of Arms, an English-style pub complete with bangers and mash, fish and chips, hand-drawn real ale and as much spotted dick as a person can handle. (Relax: it’s a kind of pudding.) Also, there was usually some form of proper football on the tele.

Throughout the World Cup, the Coat would open earlier than normal. And if the US or England was playing, the place would be standing-room only. A nice greasy breakfast and a couple of fresh pints were the perfect accompaniment to an 8am kickoff. My favorite matches at the Coat were when England played, not because I knew anything significant about the team or the players, but because the environment in the pub took me to another place. I was no longer in America, but in a pub in London, Liverpool or Manchester. You never knew so many Brits lived in New Hampshire’s seacoast until you watched England play at the Coat of Arms. Shouts of Wanker! and Bullocks! rose from the packed room. Jibes like: Ouch, me girdle! when an opposition player dived and clutched his sides, feigning injury. Or Earn ya money! when an England player wasn’t deemed to be playing as well as he should. This was the energy and passion that brought association football alive for me. I went very quickly from vaguely enjoying soccer, to wanting to watch as much of it as possible, preferably in a pub full of raucous supporters.

When the World Cup ended, I needed more. So I turned to the English Premier League. And a year later, when some friends asked me to move to Boston and find an apartment with them, my first concern was not where are we going to live? or what am I going to do for work?, but the all important: where am I going to watch my football? Soon I found the Phoenix Landing in Cambridge. If the game is on, there are always people watching at the Landing, and for the big matches, the place is packed full with enough singing, chanting, cursing and cheering for me to have my fix of football electricity.

I know the ideal way to watch English football is live, in the stadium, embedded in a terrace full of passionate fans. But for those of us who must watch our matches from afar, the pub becomes our distant terrace. We congregate with fellow supporters (and opposing ones) and the noise and emotion provide a kind of substitute for the experience of actually being there.

So this blog is the view from the distant terrace. The writer watches in pubs and at home, scours the internet for replays and statistics, giving his thoughts after watching through a long telescope across the Atlantic. Someday, I’ll make it over to catch it all in the flesh. But for now this will have to do. Thanks for reading. The writer lifts his pint glass:

Cheers,

Ethan Armstrong

Addendum, added 28 February:

When I began this blog my intent was to subdue my bias and write about English Football in general. But ultimately my passion for Liverpool FC coupled with  my day job prevents me from watching as much football as I would like and writing about as many different topics as I would like. I will continue to write about many things that interest me in the world of the EPL, but as Liverpool are at the forefront of my mind and the side I watch the most, they will inevitably dominate my blog as well. I hope this does not turn off supporters of other clubs to my writing. My intent is to use the craft of writing to capture the beauty of intensity of the sport and my ambition is to write about Liverpool and the EPL in such a way that supporters of football as a whole can tune in and appreciate the pieces. I am eager to discuss football with all supporters so please keep reading and commenting. Hopefully, someday when I’m doing this full-time, I’ll get to broaden my subject matter once again, watching more matches closely and writing about them in detail.

Thanks for following.

Sincerely,
Ethan Armstrong