Another respectful silence was held at Rockingham Road this afternoon for Keith Alexander (is it just me getting old, or are we having minute silences more and more often?)
I know we are supposed to think about the recently departed recipient of the silence during those 60 seconds, but I tend to spend this quiet period thinking how loud the traffic is on Rockingham Road, or how noisy people coming through the turnstiles have suddenly become, as well as hoping my phone doesn't start ringing.
Earlier today there was a minutes applause for Keith at the FA Cup game down in Portsmouth. I couldn't decide whether the silence or the applause was the more fitting as a mark of remembrance. I suppose it depends on the context. Obviously the anniversary of Armistice Day would be unseemly with people vigorously applauding, but you can see how a popular footballer could be given an appropriate send off with one last round burst of cheering and clapping.
I knew, deep down, that we would go the silent route at Rockingham Road - this clapping malarkey is so Premiership! There is also the issue here that there are large swathes of our support who have never applauded for a whole minute in their entire lives! Some of our more miserable brethren (I'm looking at you, top of Britannia Road terrace), haven't applauded that long IN TOTAL during their Poppies supporting careers! The shock of applauding for so long may be too much for them, and they might expire.
And then we would be back where we started!
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