The little things that make us smile

i guess that when we go to a game or watch a game on television, all we care about are goals, passionate performances, a really good game of football and three points (if it’s our team!)

But whether your team wins or loses, there’s so many things which happen in this beautiful game of ours that must make you smile, they certainly do me.

Here’s my list in no particular order:

• Chants that unite the home and away fans, for example when we played Sheffield Utd last season we all united to sing always ‘’you know what‘’ on the old blue and white.

• The wind up merchants, and there are plenty of them. Who enjoyed Bullard’s goal celebration at Manchester City in 2009 mimicking Phil Brown’s on-pitch team talk?

• The home fans doing the Mexican wave and us craning our necks to see if everyone joins in. What about the away fans, who when they are getting thrashed always end up doing the conga that must make you smile?

• Watching the manager’s behaviour and body language near the dug outs. Dennis Wise would be a hard act to follow at Carrow Road, he kept up a continual conversation with fans sitting near the dugout and to everyone’s surprise kissed a man on the forehead after the game that he had enjoyed some banter with. Also what about managers’ goal celebrations; who remembers Jose Mourinho’s dash down the touchline at Old Trafford in 2004?

• The Snakepit and Barclay singing to each other, goes on for ages some weeks and gets louder and louder, keeps us all entertained and makes most people smile

• When it’s an important game, with only minutes remaining and the goalie of the losing team runs up to the centre circle shouting to his manager for permission to go up for the corner, then when the ball is dead, he has to scurry back to his goal at 100mph. It makes me laugh!

• Goal celebrations, there’s Earnie and his somersaults, Crouchy and his robot dancing, Norwich’s rocking a baby celebratation and some players choose to interact with the corner flag. Then there’s our own Leon Barnett who ran to the Sunderland fans to celebrate his goal, looked up and realized where he was and quickly moved further along to the home fans!

• Sorry, but I always smile to myself when a couple from the front of the City Stand, as regular as clockwork leave 10 minutes before the end of games, they missed loads of goals last season.

• Fans who dress up for football, canary fairy who used to dress or rather undress topless with his ballet tutu, the canary girl with her face painted, bless her, and the lad in the green morph suit, they all make us smile.

• What about Marc Tierney and his antics when the lights went off, he ran out of the tunnel, cartwheeling down the halfway line and back again, what a joker he is, bet he can make anyone smile

So did any of these make you smile? I hope so because if you’re now smiling so will I be.