How do you get through a day like today, waiting for 8 o’clock tonight, for FC Groningen – Roda JC? | column Herman Sandman

How do you get through a day like today? Because we have to wait for 8 o’clock tonight, when FC Groningen – Roda JC starts, the most important match in a long time. With a win, the Pride of the North will return to the Premier League.

I wake up at 6:30 am and have to be at the physio early, which means I think about just one thing for 13.5 hours. But how do you think about something that is yet to come? You can expect, hope, pray and philosophize whatever you want. The outcome is: you don’t know.

It will be discussed in the editorial office, many colleagues have season tickets. Just like in shops, offices, the gym, on construction sites, at the pump. The tenor is the same everywhere. We think, we are sure, that the FC will win. How the season went, all in all it was the prelude to 8 o’clock tonight. But that’s what they think at Roda too.

It will be even worse for the players. They will have to do it later, we will just watch. Sitting in the stands is also a kind of waiting.

After physio I will take the mountain bike to the maker and will be at work around half past nine. Then it is still 10.5 hours. Meeting, tagging, 12 hours of fishing: eight more hours. Work, tea at 3: five more hours. Pick up the bike, go home, eat at 6 o’clock. Then things start to get better, but by then we’re half crazy.

In a waiting room you know what you are waiting for. Not today. Waiting for FC Groningen – Roda JC is waiting for what we think will happen. But I hardly dare to do that, having grown up with the idea that things will come as they will, but usually not as you think they will.

What Ernest Hemingway says: “We are always waiting for something that doesn’t come.”

Waiting for 8 o’clock tonight is actually a die a little.