Alas, poor Hamlet. Dulwich failed to score with me

If big football captured my heart but medium-sized football failed to keep me interested, could little football be the one for me? That’s what I asked myself as I bought a ticket for an Isthmian League Premier Division game, representing England’s seventh tier of football.

Dulwich Hamlet is, I’d been warned, quite heavy on the hipsters. Indeed, it is true that on the way from the station I found myself walking through what felt like a convention for men I snogged while living in east London in the early 2010s.

I was also tickled by the team’s merch, which included a bastardised version of Sonic Youth’s infamous Goo album cover. Beating the “too cool for school” allegations, they are not. Still, I should add that, overall, the crowd was entirely normal looking, with my fellow annoying thirtysomethings merely representing one part of the Dulwich ecosystem.

I took my seat and noted, again with appreciation, that you can drink beer in the stands here. There was also a conspicuous lack of coked-up men looking like they would enjoy punching me for sport, when they were legion at the Wembley games I’d attended. Things were off to a good start.

The first hiccup occurred when I tried to entertain myself by coming up with anti-Dartford chants – one of my favourite pastimes during international games. What did I know about Dartford, though? Well, for a start, I suppose they can shove their tunnel up their, er, tunnel. Oh, and does anything rhyme with estuary? Hmm.

Sadly, this proved to be an early symptom of what was to come. I used to believe I enjoyed football as a game but, like a true plastic fan, it turns out that I love everything else. I enjoy the overarching narrative of the competition, especially when nations are involved and have history with each other.

I like seeing cameras zoom in on managers in the midst of a panic attack, and I love shouting obscenities at the TV screen. I enjoy developing likes and dislikes over the course of a tournament, and get to learn a lot about a team in a short amount of time.

Over on the pitch, I prefer it when – no offence to any of the players I watched – the game is of the highest possible quality. OnlyFans became popular because people wanted to watch real people doing believably naughty things but, when it comes to sport, I’m the exact opposite. I’m only interested if everyone involved is better at it than you or I could ever hope to be, even with some professional training.

What this means in practice is that I just didn’t really have a good time, and that made me feel pretty guilty. I wanted to have fun, I really did, but sometimes an afternoon simply is less than the sum of its parts.

The Hamlet did their best to keep me entertained and I would wholeheartedly recommend them to anyone wishing to have a local, jolly afternoon at the football. Ultimately, it just isn’t their fault that I’m more of a big city girl.

Photograph by Sam Mellish/Getty Images