I’ve been listening to Radio Roland Garros this week, as per usual, and really loving the descriptive commentary of matches. I’ve opted not to got access to watch this year so am relying solely on the radio for coverage.

I had never heard of this film and had no expectations going into it, so it was a revelation. It’s a quiet, simple film that follows a group of school kids going about their day - playing sports, falling in love, figuring things out. It looked quite cheap and really felt like an extended kid’s television programme, but I really got invested in these characters. They were so engaging! And in some ways a bit ahead of their time, what with the girl playing football and the boy cooking up a storm. I was honestly a bit disappointed when we got to the end, I could have followed them around all day.

Obviously, I had to read this, coming from one of the founders of Mischief Theatre, but as I’ve said many times, football isn’t my favourite sport - all recent evidence and excessive blogging to the contrary. This is different though, yes, it’s a bit about football, but what it’s really about is throwing yourself into a project that is all about passion regardless of results. It’s brilliant, honest and open and funny - right from the start, when everyone bought lots of kit and then the grant came through that could only be used on kit. It’s just a really fun, albeit stressful, ride and therefore a highly recommended read.

I know it doesn’t seem like it because I’ve spent quite a lot of time talking about Wrexham AFC, but I’m not a big football fan. It’s not a sport that particularly grabs me and although I can admire the set pieces that deliver incredible goals, they are so few and far between that it’s not always an entertaining ninety minutes for me.

There’s always an odd feeling as you head towards the end of a Welcome to Wrexham series. You know what the result is going to be, and yet somehow, are still drawn along for the ride. The editing is extremely good to ratchet up the tension even when the events have long since taken place and everyone’s moving on to the next objective.

Loved this! It was so different to what I was expecting - I thought it would be a mildly amusing comedy about a sporting underdog overcoming the odds, and there was that but it was also so much more. It was completely oddball from start to finish but also absolutely adorable and a great way to learn a bit more about American Samoa. A sporting story I had no idea about and definitely want to know more about Jaiyah and her journey. Plus you can’t help but love ‘Who’s on the Plane?’, I think we could have a film length version of that next.

Obviously, I’ve picked this up because of how good the documentary is, I don’t suppose I would normally read a footballer’s autobiography. This one is okay, it’s written well, it feels like you’re just sitting down opposite Paul and having a chat. It has plenty of humility and common sense in there, almost repeating that a bit too often really - we get it, Paul, you’re a normal guy! But fascinating to see behind the scenes of how the success of the documentary and the day to day workings of the team affected the players doing the actual business of playing the beautiful game.

I wrote about Welcome to Wrexham after the first few episodes, gushing with love and admiration at a great series - particularly one about football. That all stands up now that the series has completed, it only served to get better and better. The stakes got higher, the emotional rollercoaster more incredible, and we cheered and cried along with everyone involved. Fantastic. It’s coming back for a series two and I couldn’t be happier about it.

I am so in love with Welcome to Wrexham, currently airing in the slightly odd pattern of two episodes a week on Disney+. I usually try and wait to the end of a series before writing about it but there’s been so much good stuff packed into the first six episodes, we’re going to have to do a part one, at least.

The struggle of this book is that’s trying to be two things at once - a memoir, and then a manifesto about solving climate change. Both were interesting but I’m not 100% sure how well they fit together. However, it’s well written, full of the arrogance that helps someone get this kind of success in business, but equally humble enough to not alienate you. The climate stuff towards the end was where I really got interested - the vegan football team is absolutely fascinating.

The second season of supremely popular comedy Ted Lasso came to a close yesterday with the final episode wrapping up lots of open threads but also derailing everything for a cliffhanger to lead us into season three. I loved this series just as much as I loved the first one, but it can’t be denied that they are two very different beasts. As I mentioned when I wrote about the first series, I still have a desire to write about each episode individually, but for now I’ll focus on the main things that jumped out at me over the last twelve weeks.

Such a fun film, I can’t believe we haven’t watched this one before - it’s a cult classic and everything! It contained a few surprises, like when a random All Saints member popped up, but ultimately was that coming-of-age, choosing your passion over your parents, story that you can’t help but root for. Great soundtrack, great drama, and plenty of football too.

I, like many many people, thought that the Ted Lasso series wasn’t going to be anything special. I was vaguely aware of the character, designed for a one-off sketch, and yea, that fish-out-of-water trope can be funny. But to bring the Southern American football coach to the UK to manage a Premier League team seemed ripe for sub-par comedy. I was expecting there to be a lot of jokes at the expense of the British way of life, lots of men bouncing off each other in the locker room, and a bit of a boorish ten episodes.

Not really very good at all. There weren’t many particularly sympathetic characters, and I was aghast at how all the soccer mom’s were portrayed. I know that’s a stereotype but it wasn’t handled well at all! The pace of the film was odd, it was predictable and had a very abrupt ending. I wasn’t really expecting it to be good, and even so it was disappointing.

Football is still mostly a mystery to me, but I occasionally find matches on TV and leave them on so I can soak it up via osmosis. This weekend, the Champions League final was on TV, and we watched Bayern Munich - the only German team I have heard of - play another German team. At one point I recognised the name Schweinsteiger but that’s about as far as it went.

Back in August, I wrote about my new enthusiasm for being a football fan, after my first visit to a match earlier in the year. At the end of summer, I was all excited about following along at home - checking in with the app, catching up with Match of the Day, and trying to keep up with the scores. I figured now was as good a time as any to update how it’s going being an Aston Villa fan.

You’ll remember that earlier in the year I went to my first (and probably only) football match, and somehow became an Aston Villa fan. I vaguely followed what they were doing for a few weeks, and then sort of lost touch until the season ended. Mr C and I watched the occasional Match of the Day update, but even then only if we happened to be in the right place at the right time - it’s not allowed on the iPlayer.

A couple of weekends ago, Premier League football had one of it’s best weekends. Record-breaking numbers of goals were scored, matches with eight goals altogether, penalties, men sent off, that kind of thing. Mr C and I figured that although our taste for football is still vague, we didn’t want to miss the highlights of an epic day. So, we sat and we watched Match of the Day, and it was good.

As with most of my Life List items, if you’d told me I would be doing them a year ago, I would have thought you were crazy. On Saturday evening, I found myself in a stadium with more than 37,000 other people, cheering on Aston Villa as they scored the winning goal. Well, they might not all have been cheering for Villa, but you get what I’m saying.

Ah, so that’s it, it’s all over. Done and dusted. The World Cup 2010 is complete. Wait a minute… that was it? I am left feeling slightly confused and bemused by the whole World Cup thing. The first two weeks were brilliant. Football overload. Matches starting all over the place, lots of great teams and fun player names to laugh over. There were barely any tactics, because a draw was okay. None of that hanging around near the goal to make sure you didn’t lose the lead, or bringing your goalie out to strike because you have nothing left to lose.

Credit: jikatu/Flickr I was skeptical about watching the 2010 World Cup There was no doubt that England would mess the whole thing up For five long weeks, flags everywhere. Football’s all that matters Inevitably our heroes left the nation’s hopes in tatters The countries kept on playing though, while our boys were sent packing The quality of game increased, goals no longer lacking And there he was, a shining light, a fabulous right foot

Considering the premise - watching one man jog about a football field for 90 minutes - this was surprisingly watchable. I have to admit that I was multi-tasking, I couldn’t have simply stared at the screen for that long, but even so, I did enjoy it. It was certainly an added insight into football that you wouldn’t really get any other way.

This is terribly self-indulgent, and really just an excuse to post a graph, but I wanted to share the Wordpress stats for the last couple of weeks: The big spike at the beginning was my World Cup post, and the second spike in the centre was all about Wimbledon. The two medium spikes on the 19th and the 27th are for the first and second parts of the Doctor Who series finale.

The most read item on the BBC as I type this is stunning. TV star Declan Donnelly was amongst hundreds of football fans in London who missed England’s all-important World Cup goal after a power cut. “We were watching the game in a pub in Kew,” Donnelly told the BBC news website. “One minute before the goal, the power went.” Hey, you know what? I didn’t get to see any of the match. Where’s my news item?

I tried to avoid it for as long as possible, but eventually I had to write today’s World Cup post over on Sidepodcast. I have watched more of the games than I imagined I would, and enjoyed even more of them. A lot of that has to do with the live comments, as it’s fair to say I have a lot to learn! On that subject, I wanted to note down some of the things I have picked up after just a few days of international football. I will be an absolute expert by the end of this, you mark my words.

I’m afraid I’m going to be one of those rather annoying people who only pays attention to football when the World Cup is on. Come on England and all that. Thankfully, I wouldn’t dream of being one of those annoying people that puts flags on their cars, so I think the two balance each other out quite nicely. I know very little about football. Really, really little. I used to “support” Manchester United when I was too young to know any better. I have never lived anywhere near Manchester, so I must have only picked them because they were doing quite well. When I say support, of course, it really means caring enough to know who Ryan Giggs was, and maybe collect stickers because stickers were fun.

I was watching the football last night - Argentina vs Holland was promising to be a fantastic game and yet there were no goals whatsoever, how disappointing - and I suddenly realised how much sport I watch these days. When I was a kid, and I was a little bit plump, and PE was hell, and they turned my school into a sports college which was my worst nightmare and I am not bitter about at all, I hated sports. The only sports I could stand to watch was Wimbledon because hey, Tim Henman was going to win one day!!

A few days ago Wayne Rooney kicked a football. Yesterday, David Beckham got on a plane. Today, Frank Lampard drank some water. This is what constitues news at the moment? World Cup fever has seriously gripped everyone. There is no escaping from it. It’s in the news. It’s on the television. It’s in every single advert ever. An advert break on television now may contain only one advert that doesn’t mention football. Even the National Lottery are cashing in on the craziness, by saying “Buy a ticket and it might take your mind off the football.” Yea, right. I’m not that stupid.

We went to the pub to the watch the footie - something I have never done before. I’d always been a bit nervous of the idea of hundreds of people yelling at the television. But where we went was surprisingly empty, a group came in at half time with their faces painted, and we sampled lots of nice beer, so I learnt that it can be fun. Of course, I’m regretting it a bit today, I don’t usually get a hangover, maybe a bit of a headache from the dehydration, but nothing major. Today however, faced with getting up early for work, my stomach wasn’t happy - and my head still isn’t!

Although it is simultaneously amusing and heart-warming to emerge from a shop and find a sea of England Flags filling the car park, please could everyone make sure they are attached properly. I was driving behind someone who’s flag fell off (I’m still not sure how that can happen - aren’t they attached to the windows or something?) and as it flew up and over my roof, it gave me a heart attack. And I imagine the driver was none too happy to get out and find his car flagless. Thank you.