My Leeds United: 'Without football, there is a sense of being lost'

Victoria Tidmarsh is a lifelong Leeds United fan and works as a PR Account Director for an agency in Leeds, specialising in sport.

“How are you going to cope without football?”

That’s the first thing I, and no doubt every other football fan, has been asked since the news cameof postponement.

It’s a funny thing, to think that football would be a priority during a situation like this – but quite frankly, it is for me.

Football shapes my week.

It decides my mood.

It dictates where I am and who I spend my time with.

Without it, there is a sense of being lost.

Like a kid on Christmas morning, that tingle of anticipation is still there on a matchday after all these years.

After all these ups and downs.

Now, in a season that has seen Leeds United dominate once again, and battle hard to keep ourselves ahead of the rest with the pain of last May still fresh in the mind, the thought of not being able to make it across the finish line through no fault of our own is nothing short of stomach churning.

How very Leeds United.

We’re less than a week in and I already miss the simple, mundane tendencies that make up what a matchday is for me.

The silly routines that I somehow think may impact our on-the-pitch performance – how is Luke Ayling going to bury a volley in the third minute if I don’t grab my pre-match McDonalds and pint of Dark Fruits?

I’d underestimated the routine’s power ahead of our home game against Blackburn Rovers in 2015.

Sat in the torrential rain and seeing us concede after just 17 seconds, I soon realised my

mistake...and never made it again.

Any losses since that time could not possibly be my fault –unless I sat in the Family Stand, but that’s another story.

My friend Laura and I have been going to the football together for 15 years, and it’s pretty much the only time we get to spend together these days.

On a personal level, it makes that time incredibly precious.

Of course, we’ll still find time to see each other (unless enforced isolation has other ideas), my point is that going to the football is often about more than the 90 minutes of sport. Football clubs are a community all of their own, but none more so than our Leeds United.

And I will miss the social media build-up, that first glimpse of Billy, the bellow of the programme seller who insists on wearing shorts regardless of the weather, and the goosebumps as the first round of Marching on Together echoes around the ground, until we walk down Elland Road again.