As York City's day of destiny approaches (what do you mean you don't know what I am talking about? It's the Conference Play-off final on Sunday) I am getting a bit nervous. I had a dream last night and York were 3-0 up by half-time, but then Luton came back in the second half and won 3-4 and I am pretty sure that I was playing for some of the time. Hopefully that wasn't a premonition of what will really occur. Though for someone who doesn't really like sport I have dreams where I play for York City with embarrassing regularity. I can't remember the last time I even kicked a football (I chucked one over a hedge to a Harpenden child the other week - he'd knocked it over the hedge first though, I'm not strange).

York's record against Luton is very good and I think they might go into the game as slight favourites, but it's a game of two halves (as my dream clearly demonstrated) and anything can happen in 90 minutes. In a way I just wish they would toss a coin and decide it now. The result will make a big difference both to the team's fortunes and my own happiness. Please let us back in the League, I just want to be in the League.

But thinking about this reminded me of a conversation I had in the boys' changing rooms at Fairlands Middle School in about 1977. A sporty boy, who unlike me was great at football and who was in all the school teams was making the same point, that in 90 minutes of football anything can happen and a bad team can beat a good one with a bit of luck. I didn't have a problem with that, that is borne out by many matches where that has occurred. But he went on to claim that if the Fairlands Under 10 football team was to take on Liverpool FC (then the most successful professional football team in the country) that "one out of a hundred times Fairlands would win." Even as a 10 year old I knew this was ridiculous. I told him that a team of Somerset school boys could never beat a team of professional and more importantly grown up men. He was insistent that I was wrong sticking to his thesis that football being what it is, Fairlands U10s would have a 1% success rate. I would love to have been able to put this to the test and invited Liverpool FC down to Cheddar and made them play some children at football, making it clear to the adult players that if they lost they would never be allowed to play professionally again. I am pretty confident that not only would Fairlands not win, they wouldn't score a single goal and would lose by a margin of at least 100-0 in every game. But I couldn't make my school chum see this. His belief in his own playing abilities was this high. If only I could remember who he was, I'd find out where he lived and go and tell him what an idiot he is.

The Liverpool team of 1977 could play the Fairlands U10s of the same year 1000 times and never lose, a million times and still thrash them. Perhaps if they played them a billion times then some kind of random Act of God might occur and the Liverpool players would all be hit by lightning or catch the plague and Fairlands could beat them. But other than that, Liverpool were winning all the way. I suppose if they did play a billion times then that would take quite a long time and there might be a point, if the competition was between the same players who were in both those squads in 1977 (rather than being constantly replaced by the players who came up the next year) then there might be a point where the Fairlands players were in their 40s and the Liverpool ones in their 60s and Fairlands might win. But to be honest, I find it highly unlikely that Liverpool FC would have taken on the challenge of even playing this side once, let alone a hundred or a billion times. It would really eat into their other more professional commitments.

So anyway, the point is that I was right in that argument, even though the bloke I was arguing with didn't acknowledge it at the time. I'll let it go, I am not one to bear grudges or to hold on to disputes like an angry dog, never letting go no matter how much time has passed.

Another argument I had around that time was with Phil Fry who was a slim lad, I was a little chubby at the time (obviously not any more). We had an argument about what would happen to us both if we were in a situation where Cheddar was hit by a famine or we got stranded ona desert island with no food. Phil said that he would live longer than me, because he was thin and thus did not to eat as much food, whilst I, used to eating more than him would not be able to cope and so would die first. The fucking idiot. I argued that in fact my storage of fat would keep me going long after he had starved, with no reserves to keep him going.

But I was right again, wasn't I? I think. I'm still not totally sure. But I think I would. So that's Richard Herring 2 Other Fairlands idiots 0. In fact it's 3-0 because Mark Restall wouldn't believe that it was possible for a man to fall in love with a man. Wrong, Restall! 3-0, unless Phil Fry was right in which case it's still 2-1.

Let no one say I can't let things go.

[ Email this edition of Warming Up to a friend ]