Bad boys and badge taps
Needle thrives when you're fighting over the same toys.
I'm scrolling through reaction to Katie McCabe's transfer to Chelsea on the bus home when I spot a child riding an LNER Beryl bike the wrong way down the road. It's dark on a school night in June so definitely past his bedtime. But soon it becomes clear that a scheme is afoot.
There's a strange energy at my stop when I get off, a further two children loitering by the doors as they open. Glancing back inside from the pavement, I spy a wee scamp lying down on the floor by the back seats on the lower deck. Then comes the clatter of the fire exit opening as he tumbles out of the back of the bus and into the road. The emergency door is still flapping as the bus pulls away and the kids sprint away in the direction of the road I live on.
I didn't get into many such scrapes as a kid. One of my bigger pranks came in year three or four, when my friend Joe and I repeatedly knocked on the window of the headteacher's office then hid so she couldn't see us. The thrill doubled each time though she likely had us sussed from the first. For Mrs Wright, an inconvenience - for us, mugging off the most powerful adult in school, over and over again? Our classmates were never going to believe this.
I yearn for such innocence. A disciplinary matter, forgotten by Mrs Wright by lunchtime amid a sea of SATs score spreadsheets and parents' emails, was probably among the most memorable things that happened to me in 2005.
Back in June 2026, the kids make off like they've narrowly escaped arrest, no clue that they are about to become a fun anecdote for the bus driver to share with his wife when he returns home from his shift. I am also inclined to dismiss the larks of youths without much thought, silly asides amid a host of now very grown-up preoccupations.
But since the pranksters are headed the same way as me, I inadvertently fall into step with them. And - as well as the usual and not-insignificant fear of getting done over by a bunch of teenagers - I feel the thrill of conspiracy, as though I too am marching triumphantly away from the scene of an epic dare, masterfully executed. The electricity in the air, the breathless relief of the almost-capture makes me nostalgic for a time when the threat of detention was my gravest concern and belly laughs were always close at hand.
Ireland captain Katie McCabe, now 30 years old, seems to have found a way to hold onto that feeling - which is partly why Arsenal fans are so sad to lose her after over a decade at the club. Remember her? Yes, she bonked Man City winger and future Arsenal teammate Chloe Kelly on the head with the ball from a throw-in amid a heated WSL battle.
She also ditched her ex-girlfriend and Ireland teammate Ruesha Littlejohn for Aussie Arsenal colleague Caitlin Foord, then watched the two butt heads when Australia played Ireland at the Women's World Cup in 2023. Then last season, she pulled Chelsea forward Alyssa Thompson's hair in a bid to stop her breaking away with the ball - then claimed she was trying to go for her shirt. To name but a few highlights of her lengthy career as a shithousing pioneer of the women's game.
As well as a pain to opponents, McCabe is a tidy football player with strong leadership qualities and, having stayed loyal to Arsenal for eleven years, she is much celebrated by fans as a cult figure who has come to represent the team's identity. In many ways, McCabe 'is' Arsenal.
Until she isn't. Next season, McCabe will play for Chelsea, strong rivals to a Gunners WSL title charge. Rumours about McCabe leaving have been swirling for a while - but few could have predicted that she would depart for their London rivals.
Even fewer fans might have guessed how little she'd hesitate when the Blues' club media invited her to rub it in their faces. Frankly, Chelsea's social media admin had no choice but to share news of the signing with a post that read 'we've got McCabe, Katie McCabe', the lyrics to a chant honouring the full-back oft-sung by Gooners. But there was more.
"Took her eight years to do this for our club," one fan complained on Twitter, attaching an image of McCabe tapping the badge of her Chelsea shirt before having kicked a ball, even, for the club that some of her family have apparently supported since childhood.
"Oh, she's going to hell," another Twitter user said, in general agreement with the majority that McCabe's reputation as an Arsenal great is in tatters.
'Don't dish out what you can't take,' comes to mind, as do those hapless girls who fall hard for the 'bad boy' only to discover, months on, that he is, actually, quite bad. The shithouse did as the shithouse does. Because, remember, she is a shithouse-for-rent.
Yes, more than anything, the incident reveals how out of touch some fans are with reality, forgetting that professional football players are people with careers, making a living - just like them - not dolls for them to play with.
On BBC Breakfast on Friday Ellie Kildunne spoke on her future after announcing that she would leave Premiership Women's Rugby side Harlequins after five years at the club: "I'm trying to work out what's best for me as a player but also a person as well."
The Telegraph spilt some excellent tea on why Kildunne is leaving the club which she says has come to feel like "home". The article cites a "strained" relationship with head coach Ross Chisholm and Kildunne's efforts to balance the temptation of commercial opportunities (as the sport's most marketable icon) with the need to be a team player.
Nothing to do with the badge - and the decision about where she goes next may be similarly 'un-sporting'.
So, would she prefer to tap the badge of Ealing Trailfinders, or Sale Sharks, where her rent might cost as much as £600 a month less?
In my life as a football fan, I've never known the kind of agony expressed by Arsenal fans this week.
Hatred arises quickly when I watch the likes of Irene Paredes and Aitana Bonmati doing their thing for Spain. I have never forgiven them for being so good in the 2023 World Cup final or the result that devastated me.
A lot of Leeds fans were hurt when Rothwell-born Alan Smith left Elland Road for Man Utd. I was six when this happened. But even so, I can't grasp the full heft of the Roses rivalry because - though it hurts to admit - the sides have never properly competed in my lifetime. For needle to thrive, you have to be fighting over the same toys.
Behind hysterics over McCabe's and Smith's departure is the fear that they might actually have a better time somewhere else. As though the memory all those laughs you had together will be quickly eclipsed by your new best friend from another school.
Rivalries are odd. They can feel totally made up, but usually rest on deep foundations of cultural, regional, religious and family history. Just like the act of pitting any team against another, it's just a frame on which to hang our innate desire to fight - and escape through fire exits at the back of buses.
When I see stewards in yellow jackets crack a smile as the chants veer from boisterous to offensive in the south stand at Elland Road, it reminds me that children remain in us all, crying that we don't always get our way and seeking to push the boundaries invented by our adult peers.