The great escapism: Everton’s Corner Flag Guy and football’s lasting capacity for joy | Max Rushden

This has been a testing time on a personal level but seeing the euphoria at Goodison reminded me how the game can liberate

The clock at Goodison reads 97.41 (+5). The Everton players, fans, stewards, ballboys are enmeshed in a throng of hi-vis and blue joy. In the middle of it stands a bespectacled man in a black puffer jacket and black bobble hat. It’s hard to tell from the footage, but he’s perhaps 50, maybe older. He is holding the corner flag aloft, waving it high in the air in his right hand – something between a medieval spear and the world’s most passionate morris dancer. He’s just scaled the Dawn Wall, he’s circumnavigated the globe. It’s a fleeting moment before a steward assumes control of the flag and our man bounces off in another direction.

I love Corner Flag Guy. I love how football has moved him in that moment. Those of us (most of us) who support success-starved clubs often question the point of it all. Everton may be the ultimate example. They were good once. How many times now does the radio cross to Goodison at full-time: “A chorus of boos from the Gwladys Street End.” Years of blunt strikeforces, of channel balls, of being reduced to only loving your right-back; 11th, 11th, 7th, 8th, 8th, 12th, 10th, 16th, 17th, 15th. What is the point?