AMWAT: My bin stinks

It really does. But I have to go out now so I'm just gonna put it outside and hope that does the trick. I already cleared the standing water in the sink. It happens that I've not washed up since Sunday, due to, well. Being lazy really. It's amazing how quickly a stench builds up isn't it.

Won't take much to clean again though. Some attention, a spot of bleach, and bosh-a-losh we're groovy-nosed again. Until the next time I forget to get it done.

All of which is a pretty tortured little metaphor for the fact that it really does look like things are finally falling to pieces at poor old Nantporth. Electricity cut off. Players leaving, unpaid. Pitch fucked where once it was awesome. Groundsman not paid, see.

Attention. Money. Whatever.

Some of my comrades have been going to the games. I understand it. I miss it. They want to watch football, not play politics. Most understand the regime is toxic, but some still see things through blue-tinted goggles. I understand that, too. It's hard not to.

Some have stayed away. I've stayed away, though it's easier given I don't currently live in the city. But still, there's something powerful missing in me now. It's kind of stinky instead.

Time to bleach away the pain, and to bleach away the foulness of the last year particularly.

Of course, we could have pre-empted this. But we were all sideswiped I think. The team, the club, was struggling. But we'd have found a way to battle through it, because we always had. More bad times than good always as a football supporter. Particularly at our level.

Because it's about community. First and foremost: communal hopes, dreams, working toward a common cause. Doing the best we can with what we have. Being ingenious and creative and walking to away games to raise money for a shelter behind a goal. (That same cash went to pay off a tax bill after - rumour again - someone shopped the club to HMRC about tax not being deductible on travel to work. That meant travel to training and games. That put a huge hole in the budget.) We were taken in by promises that new owners would, as priority, build that stand. Instead, Nantporth literally has a hole in the fence which hasn't, and probably won't, quickly be fixed.

So community = friends = players, fans, officials having a pint together after the game. This isn't fucking Real Madrid is it. And that's what saddens me the most, I think. The fact that there are people who believe that it is all about winning. Winning, winning, winning. A generation brought up on the disembodied head of Ray Winstone ghosting into view at half time, exhorting us to win, win, win, cause it's 7/4 on next goalscorer being Rio or Badgerino or Zlatford von Carpark. That football is about the games.

At the risk of sounding like Graham Taylor, a lovely man nearly ground down completely by it all, football really isn't about winning. A community is more than that. And a community club - a football club - is a facility for all. For those who want to watch games, sure, but also for the youngsters wanting to play sport, for the disabled and abled alike. A centre for health, physical and mental. Somewhere that non-financial concepts like belonging and having a go and learning and social skills are as important - more important - than Winning A Game Against Those Bastards.

A club does not belong to the people that have the most money. It doesn't rise and fall dependent on finance in any other way except for, probably, the league table. You can buy your way to on-field success, and you can spend money and get relegated. So be it. If you want to support a financial institution, how about we start a league of the richest people in our respective cities and towns, and have weekly get-togethers where bank statements and assets are exchanged. The one with the most wins.

That's the natural reduction of the financialisation of football.

But a club, a proper club, is about many other things. Inclusion, not delusion. Smiling, not necessarily winning. Sharing experiences. Sharing love. Sharing the intangible human condition, which cannot ever be bought, no matter how many people try and no matter how many times.

And therefore, when people talk of the current boycott by some of us, of a club that's long-left us, they are mistaken to couch it in terms like: yeah your six quid loss per week is hardly going to hurt the regime lad. It costs £400,000 a year to run a club, it's a drop in the ocean.

or: If you think you can do better, why don't you step up and pay for it all? Where's your money in all this?

When they talk like that, they miss a fundamental point about what football, and community, and I would venture life too, is about.

Res Ipsa Loquitur, as Hunter S. Thompson was fond of saying: the thing speaks for itself.