My Leeds United: Whites reporters are biggest threat to my marriage

Jack Rich is a former LeedsLeedsLeeds contributor who works for a bank in corporate communications

He doesn’t know it yet, but the biggest threat to my marriage is Phil Hay.

Every Saturday, and on the occasional weekday, I’ll be accused of being absent in my own home.

“Is it that bloody Phil Hay again?”, the wife will say, accusingly, as my eyes grow wider and my feet start to jig as a “GOALLLL” tweet hits my notifications. (I haven’t told her about Graham yet – you can never have enough live commentaries).

She’s never cared for football, even after I dragged her as my plus one to Gillingham away and the Elland Road press box, in a former guise as an match reporter for LeedsLeedsLeeds.

It was my dad who introduced me to Leeds, through a copy of The Glory Years on VHS and out-of-tune renditions of Marching on Together.

He took me to Elland Road once – a birthday treat in January 1994 – a thoroughly drab 0-0 draw against Ipswich.

Later that year he became ill and was diagnosed with viral encephalitis, an infection which left him severely brain damaged.

Needless to say, that drab 0-0 draw was the only game we ever saw together.

The year we got relegated from the Premier League was also the year I took my A Levels and left school.

I was relieved, in a way: the lone Leeds fan in a Home Counties school filled with Arsenal and Spurs fans, I was never on the receiving end of much mockery (although the previous year had its fair share as our disintegration picked up pace).

Funnily enough, our seasons in League One were my favourite as a Leeds fan.

I was studying in Sheffield, as close as I’d ever come to living in Leeds, and was never going to miss the opportunity of being a Revie End regular, meeting up with others from a now defunct internet forum.

The football was dire, the crowds were small, but it was easy to get a ticket and we won our fair share of games.

That, and the away grounds we visited were ‘proper grounds’, too.

Since our last Premier League appearance I’ve got married and had three kids.

And despite meeting a few Leeds fans at university, I’m back to being the lone Leeds fan, although in a different corner of the south.

Various family commitments and an eight hour round-trip mean that on the rare occasion that I am able to make a game – and I plan these when the fixtures are released – I’ll go on my own.

But with the kids growing up fast, I’ll be making sure that changes soon enough.

I’m surprised at how little I’ve missed football in the current situation. It is, after all, futile.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d have loved to be there when the league title was clinched and promotion secured, but we’ve been through it all together, and this period of time will come to be part of the ‘all’.

In the meantime, me and Phil (and Graham) are taking a break.