I’m reading a fascinating book at the moment – yeh I know, that’s a sure-fire way of losing anyone who might have stumbled across this piece expecting a good read. Personally I hate reading: “I’m reading a fascinating book at the moment . . .” because frankly, who cares? It smacks of bloggism and me talking about what I had for my breakfast and how I’m just about to catch the bus for work and how the number 24 is currently being re-routed round the ring road and isn’t the credit crunch awful. BUT . . .for the purposes of what I’m about to say, it’s factually correct and it says what I mean.
Providing you’re still with me, the book which is a fascinating read is Christopher Booker’s Seven Basic Plots.
Happily, it’s not on Richard and Judy’s list nor part of Waterstones’ 3 for 2 offer. It’s a weighty tome of some 700 pages and it’s the kind of academic work you might find recommended on creative writing courses or as part of an English degree. It failed my first two criteria for a good book in that it cost more than £10 and I couldn’t read it with one hand while holding a bacon buttie in the other (I’ve worked out anything over 250 pages plays havoc with my eat/read philosophy and causes the brown sauce to dribble down my left wrist while I’m engrossed in the paperback in my right).
Nevertheless, and yes, I will come to the point in a minute, the premise of Christopher’s well researched work, which has taken him a lifetime to write, is that despite the wealth of literature produced by the world over centuries there really are only seven basic plots. All our stories, from old English folk tales, opera, screenplays, television and fiction – all of them, or nearly all of them, can be boiled down to just seven basic plots, says the author.
These plots are:
Overcoming the Monster
Rags to Riches
The Quest
Voyage and Return
Comedy
Tragedy
Rebirth.
It’s not a new idea and writers have argued the toss about the credibility of this assertion for years but we don’t want to get bogged down in an academic quagmire. Suffice to say that storytellers tend to re-work basic ideas in order to achieve a number of things like scare people, make them laugh or cry, reinforce good over evil or embark on an epic struggle against an old foe – sound familiar?
The thing is that half way through this book I realised the emotions teased out of us by these seven plots are evident at every football ground every Saturday, every season. Certain football matches rise above the ordinary and do actually appear to be more important than life itself, at least if only for 90 minutes. Ask Halifax fans what they feel about their plight (Tragedy) or Wimbledon (voyage and return and rebirth) or Stoke (the Quest). Then there are the real life events of stadium fires and accidents which do again inject a sense of drama to a sporting event.
Bob Champion and Aldaniti’s win at the Grand National made the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end only because you knew the context, you knew what the pair had come through – the ultimate quest to achieve their ultimate goal.
And then on the field of play itself is the most common plotline of all. Surely it’s no coincidence that our collective joy as a nation at winning the World Cup Final was imbued with a layer of symbolism because we overcame a nation which once threatened to invade and conquer our island. Perceived good triumphed over what we once perceived as pure evil. We overcame the ‘monster’ and won the greatest prize of all – we were the Lords of the Ring.
It was an epic journey with Pickles the dog at our side and with a toothless Nobby Stiles (Gollum – on looks alone?), Alan Ball (Frodo), Bobby Moore (Aragorn), Bobby Charlton (Boromir) and Geoff Hurst (Legolas) we overcame the Argentineans (the siege of Mina Tirith) and marched on to the Two Twin Towers to commence battle with the dark forces of evil where the ring was returned to its rightful place. All under the watchful eye of Gandalf Ramsey.
Football is a story and football matches are a new chapter every week. We don’t ever know quite what the ending is going to be but we keep reading in the expectation that the end will be different, that the heroes – our heroes – will endeavour to overcome the dark forces (mostly Leeds and Sheffield Wednesday) and win on our behalf.
I’ve seen enough matches in my lifetime to suspect now that they fall into seven basic plots just like the plotlines they so often mirror. These are:
The Stalemate
The Stalemate sneak
The Comeback
The thriller
The shock win
The safe win
The rout
The stalemate: speaks for itself. A 0-0 or 1-1 draw is the often the most easily predicted result. It’s the most boring plotline and one which, if pre-advertised as such, would make us contemplate DIY. The purists might argue that the Stalemate is a fine game of tactical chess where two superpowers pit their wits against each other and yes it’s true, the stalemate may well include some dramatic moments involving the woodwork, but let’s be honest: more often than not they’re rarely entertaining and they’re about two teams who are happy with their first point out of a possible nine.
The Stalemate Sneak: Despite some of you thinking this is merely a subplot of the previous category, I’ve controversially given this a plotline of its own because the very act of sneaking a late win or shipping a late goal (1-0 or 2-1) produces a monumental joy or grief which is hard to match. You didn’t expect it so it’s all the more pleasing or you feel well and truly robbed of a precious point and you’re about to talk about that fact well into the next week. The top teams often have a reputation of achieving Stalemate Sneaks even when they’re playing badly and it’s said to be the mark of a Championship-winning season.
The Comeback: Perhaps the most thrilling, value-for-money version of all the plotlines because it snatches victory from the jaws etc (3-2, 4-3). Fickle fans have left the ground, ribbons are tied on trophy handles, the headline writers prepare the pages but wait . . . (Man Utd v Bayern Munich Nou Camp 1999) More often than not you’ve also been out-sung for half an hour by witless rival fans as they conga down the isles before suddenly looking horrified over their shoulders. It also shows your own side has spirit and courage and elevates specific heroes in the shape of a striker or super sub who nets the winning goal. Such players often achieve legendary club status among fans even if they were hapless idiots for the rest of their careers.
The Thriller: It may sound the most exciting but only because, quite frankly, you’re leaking as many goals as you’re scoring and, with your current precarious league position, you could do without a Thriller plot (2-2, 3-3 or 4-4). Nevertheless, the topsy-turvy nature of feeling smug and despondent in the space of three or four minutes when you daren’t go for a pee or a pie makes this a highly entertaining spectacle. It also ensures you a good slot on Match of the Day or The Championship and does your entertainment rating a power of good. Your keeper’s not happy, but then, is he ever?
The Safe Win: Getting more boring now (2-0, 3-0, 4-0) though many of us would like these plots to be so commonplace as to become boring. It’s a straight forward win and your opponents never look likely to score even if the match finishes sometime after Match of the Day. You can often start up a pleasant conversation with the bloke next to you while this one’s in progress, safe in the knowledge that you won’t miss anything. It’s only half-time but the points are in the bag and you’re already wondering how next week’s opponents are doing today.
The Shock Win: high entertainment value but this one’s more unusual and tends to rely on inept opponents rather than anything your team has done. It’s often a 1-0 or a 2-1 result. It’s a wet Saturday afternoon, there’s nothing riding on the fixture and you’re playing atrociously. You should be three or four down but they’re as bad as you, if not worse, so it’s still 0-0. Five mins from time you’re praying you can still salvage a point from a wasted afternoon and you get a dodgy free kick on the edge of their area – the referee clearly wasn’t paying attention. You laugh hysterically when the ball takes a wicked deflection and ricochets off the far post and into the back of the net off the back of the keeper’s hand to give you a 1-0. The opposite end is silent but 50 people stand up as one man to head for the exit. You’re shamefaced on the way home and so you should be.
The Rout: the opposite end of the spectrum from the Stalemate, the seventh great footballing plot is the Rout – pure comedy and tragedy, death or glory, humiliating and exhilarating. You’re either wishing you were at Meadowhall picking out matching bath towels or watching your own left back do cart wheels because he’s scored his first career goal as he miscued a cross. The Rout is anything from 4-0 upwards. Seven is the ideal number for the Rout – it just sounds right and it’s the number at which the opposition players get looks from their manager which suggest disembowelment and the end of pre-season friendlies in the West Indies. Eight, nine and 10 are an embarrassment and likely to secure the headlines on back pages and a slot on the evening news. Anything over this number is almost unheard of and, one imagines, would probably set off an FA inquiry.
So there’s my seven football plots. Of course, critics of the book by Christopher Booker say it’s all too neat and that life doesn’t work like that. True, there may be many so-called sub-plots within my overarching titles but, broadly speaking football matches rarely stray too far from pre-existing storylines unless they’re called off by unusual weather conditions, faulty floodlights etc.
So we’ve read the stories already but still we go, we warriors of Middle Earth, driving from the Shire through the Misty Mountain, on our own quest towards the Two Towers, always unsure of the final result but tirelessly seeking truth, justice, honour, courage and a damn good pie. What a story!
