Why I hope Pompey are humiliated | Simon Carter

I live in Portsmouth, work in Portsmouth, drink in Portsmouth pubs and like thousands of fellow Portsea Islanders I will be at one of English football’s sporting cathedrals tomorrow night to see if Pompey can reach Wembley again.

But there will be one crucial difference between you and me when we rack up at (Fortress) Fratton Park ahead of the EFL Trophy semi-final with lower division Exeter City: I will be in the Milton End, with the visiting fans, desperately hoping Pompey suffer humiliation.

Someone at The News actually asked me the other day who I wanted to win, as if I was somehow emotionally torn between the club I have supported through thin and thinner for 42 years, or the one that happens to play in the city I now reside in only because the local newspaper offered me a job?

My partner is a Pompey fan; she used to go fairly regularly, before the financial implosion that someone like me – a lower division football fan of a club forever trying to make ends meet – could never, and still can’t, get my head around.

‘We’ll beat you,’ she said to me. ‘Perhaps you will,’ I shot back, ‘but, then again, perhaps you won’t. Perhaps WE will beat YOU’. Sue looked aghast, as if I’d told her I’d just shot Bambi.

Seriously, why not? In the same way you could beat Arsenal in the FA Cup, we could beat you. That’s why football is the greatest game in the world bar none, a game so wonderful it forces people to do weird things.

Like I did many years ago, catching a train from Exeter to Maidstone in Kent to watch an evening game in the same competition when it was known as the Leyland Daf Trophy. This I did knowing there were no trains back to Devon, unless I wanted to leave 10 minutes after kick-off.

I don’t know really why I went, I just did. Actually, I do know – I went so I could sing ‘we’ll really have a laugh when we win the Leyland Daf’. But we didn’t win it, we lost 2-0. All these years on, we’ve never won the EFL Trophy.

But, hey, guess what? Perhaps we will this season.

Hope. Whether we support Pompey or Exeter, it has to forever spring eternal. Without it, there is nothing left.

Rumble in crazy golf jungle brought out the animal in me

Having recently turned 51, I have to (sadly) accept my best sporting days are firmly behind me.

This is hard to take, and waves of nostalgia wash over me when I see kids playing football. In an instant, I wish I was 12 again. However, there is one ‘sporting’ activity I can still enjoy, that still gets my competitive juices flowing.Crazy golf.Last week I was delighted to play the Jungle Paradise course south of Chichester for the first time. I won as well, which delighted me even more.Last summer I lost to my girlfriend on both courses on Clarence Pier. Another loss would have been soul-destroying. Anyone who has ever played sport competitively will agree.

Oxymoronic state of death metal is clearly confused…

Ever heard of German metal band Thulcandra? Well, you have now.

A press release arrived at The News HQ last week promoting a new video for single Spirit Of The Night. The song is, I quote, ‘a melodic, yet charmingly aggressive, mixture of death and black metal, directly inspired by the iconic sound of the ’90s. It’s an almost hypnotising experience, tempting the audience to focus on the dark spectacle, its diversity and complexity on both a musical and textual level.’ Wow!

I’m a big fan of the oxymoronic ‘charmingly aggressive’ phrase.

And if ‘oxymoronic’ is not the best word you’ll read in this paper this week, I’ll buy a hat and scoff it...