The 1am Club

At 1am on Monday morning, I’ll be awake watching England play Mexico in the World Cup.

I can’t remember the last time I was voluntarily awake at 1am on a Monday.

Actually, that’s not true.

There've been a few bad nights over the years. Children ill. Work deadlines. A flight delay. Some pointless middle-of-the-night stress session where I suddenly find myself writing emails in my head I'm never going to send.

But staying up because England are playing football?

That’s a very specific kind of madness.

I already know how it'll go. I’ll make a coffee too late. I’ll tell myself this is stupid. I’ll sit down full of hope, despite knowing better. Then, within six minutes, Rice will pass the ball backwards four times and I’ll start shouting at the TV.

Why are we so slow? Why is nobody moving? Why aren't we at least trying to score?

Despite knowing this, I’ll be there. With millions of others.

In living rooms. In pubs. In kitchens. On sofas. Wrapped in blankets. Whisper-shouting because someone else in the house is asleep. Texting friends. Checking group chats. Swearing at the referee. Believing. Regretting. Believing again.

All at the same time.

That’s the bit I love. It's not about the football. Not really. It's the togetherness.

The fact that, at 1am on a Monday morning, millions of people around the country will voluntarily put themselves through the same emotional torture for the same reason.

That’s insane.

And also, somehow, beautiful.

Why Do We Do This To Ourselves?

You don’t need to be a football fan to understand it. You don’t even need to like sport.

There's something amazing about a collective experience. A gig in a tiny club where everyone knows the words. A last-minute winner. A packed cinema where the whole room laughs at once. A national moment where you know that other people are feeling exactly what you’re feeling at exactly the same time.

That is rare.

Most of modern life pushes us in the opposite direction.

We curate our own feeds. Watch our own shows. Listen to our own podcasts. Build our own little digital worlds. Even when we’re technically connected, we’re often alone together, staring into separate rectangles, each of us being fed a different version of reality.

Then football comes along and does something old-fashioned. It gathers us together.

For 90 minutes, maybe 120, maybe penalties if the universe has decided we haven’t suffered enough, we stop being quite so individual. We become part of something bigger.

A stupid, hopeful, anxious, deluded, magnificent “we”.

And I think we need more of that.

The Myth Of Being Unique

We spend so much of our lives believing we’re unique. But we're more alike than we like to think.

We like to think that our experience is ours alone. That our panic at watching England defend a one-goal lead with 20 minutes to go is uniquely ours.

But then something collective happens and you realise, oh, everyone else feels this too.

Everyone else is nervous.
Everyone else is hoping.
Everyone else is pretending not to care because caring is too dangerous.

And this doesn’t just apply to football.

It’s applies everything.

Getting married.
Having children.
Watching them grow up.
Watching them pull away.
Watching them become independent.

Standing in your own kitchen one day and realising the small person who used to need you for everything now barely tells you where he's going.

That can feel intensely personal. Almost private. Like some new emotional territory only you have discovered.

But of course, millions of parents have stood in that same kitchen before.

Millions have felt the same mixture of pride and sadness.

That same strange ache.

Watching With My Son, Even If I’m Not

I’ll be watching the game with my son.

Sort of.

He may not be in the same room. Now that pubs are allowed to be open, he'll be out somewhere with his mates, doing exactly what he should be doing. Living his life. Making his memories. Being young. Being independent. Spending money he doesn’t have on beer he doesn’t need.

And that’s right.

That’s good.

That’s the whole point of parenting, isn’t it?

You spend years helping them become independent, then feel slightly wounded when they actually achieve it.

We’ve done a good job, my wife and I. I think so, anyway. He’s capable. Confident. Increasingly absent. We hardly know where he is half the time.

That’s not a complaint.

Well, maybe it is.

But mostly it’s pride.

Because this is what children are supposed to do. They leave the room. Then the house. Then, eventually, they leave properly. They build lives that don’t require constant reference back to yours.

And that is both wonderful and brutal.

Soon, living away from home for months at a time will become real. Not just a few nights out. Not just disappearing for the day. A proper shift. A new chapter for him, and for us.

It feels huge.

And yet, again, it isn’t unique.

Parents have been doing this forever. Standing at stations. Packing cars. Carrying boxes into university halls. Pretending to be cheerful. Saying things like “text us when you get there”.

That’s the deal.

You raise them to go.

Then they go.

And you’re proud.

And you’re gutted.

And both things are true.

Football As A Shared Language

Football has always been one of our shared languages.

Watching Man United. Watching Fulham. Watching England.

The rhythm of it has been part of our family life. The build-up. The complaints. The ridiculous hope. The instant analysis from people who, let’s be honest, would not last 12 seconds in professional football management.

We’ve sat through dull games together.

Brilliant games.

Games that ruined entire weekends.

And now, even if he’s not in the same room, we’ll still be watching together. I know how it will go. Somewhere, probably in a pub, he’ll text me:

“God, England are shit.”

Then:

“Why aren’t we trying to score?”

Then, maybe:

“OMG!!!!!!!!!!”

And I’ll know exactly what he means.

That’s the magic of a shared experience. You don’t need to explain every feeling because the other person is already feeling it too.

That connection doesn’t disappear just because someone grows up.

Maybe he isn’t curled up on the sofa next to me anymore. Maybe he isn’t asking why the referee hates us or whether extra time means he can stay up later. Maybe he’s out there, in the world, watching with his own people.

But the thread is still there.

Thin, maybe.

Invisible sometimes.

But still there.

The Whole Of Life In 90 Minutes

That’s why football gets us. Not because it matters. Of course it doesn’t matter.

But it also matters completely.

That's kinda the point.

For 90 minutes, football gives us a compressed version of life.

Hope. Fear. Boredom. Injustice. Joy. Regret. Blame. Community. Delusion. Despair. A brief moment where everything seems possible. Then someone gives the ball away on the edge of the box and you remember life is mostly pain.

It’s all there.

The emotional roller coaster we spend decades riding gets squeezed into one match.

You start with optimism.

You negotiate with reality.

You get frustrated.

You look for someone to blame.

You swear you won’t care next time.

Then, if we win, you forget every lesson you've ever learned and fall in love with the whole stupid thing all over again.

That’s life, isn’t it?

We know it will hurt. We know things won’t go the way we want. We know there is disappointment ahead.

And still, we show up.

For football.
For our children.
For love.
For friendship.
For the next chapter.

For the faint possibility that this time, somehow, it might be different.

We Are Not Alone In This

Maybe that’s what I’m really trying to say:

We're not as alone as we think.

So many of the moments that feel intensely personal to us are shared by millions of people who've gone through the same thing before us.

We are not inventing these feelings. We are stepping into them and I think there's comfort in that.

It means your private little heartbreak is part of a larger human pattern. Your ridiculous hope that England might not let you down this time, actually connects you to other people.

People you know.

People you will never meet.

People sitting awake at 1am on Monday, asking the same question:

Why are we doing this?

And maybe the answer is simple.

Because being human is easier when we do some of it together.

So yes, I’ll be awake.

I’ll probably regret it by half-time.

I’ll definitely regret it if it goes to extra time.

And I may spend much of Monday feeling like a man who's made poor life choices.

But I’ll also know this: for a couple of hours, I was part of something.

A tired, anxious, emotionally unstable nation of fools.

The 1am club.

And somewhere out there, my son will be part of it too.

Not beside me. Not even in the same house.

But connected by the same game, the same frustration, the same hope, the same inherited madness.

That feels like something worth staying up for.

Because children grow up.

It won't be like it was before. Not quite.

But close enough.

Coda

And if you’re awake at 1am on Monday, remember this:

You’re not just watching football. I'm there with you.

You’re taking part in one of those strange little rituals that reminds us we’re not alone in this big crazy world.

Come on England!

Until next time,

Jon “extra-time emotional support needed” Kaye

Choosing to live more deliberately

P.S.

If you’re watching the game too, send me your best 1am text. The more dramatic, the better. Bonus points if it involves questioning the entire tactical philosophy of English football.