Sunday 13 June: To Wembley Stadium to watch England v Croatia.

After 466 days I was finally going to see a live football match again. Bearing in mind the last game I saw was Spurs going out of the FA Cup to Norwich City on penalties, and subsequently having to endure their travails from my sofa, I was beginning to think my obsession with football was starting to wane.

That obsession extends to four season tickets at Tottenham and three Club Wembley tickets and it was via a ballot of Club Wembley ticket holders that I was lucky enough to get my tickets (back in the day when I didn’t own a face mask and thought social distancing was a comment made by snobs).

Visiting Wembley is always special as not only is it the home of football, it is my home – I was born and brought up there and my mum still lives in the same house. (Whereas I now live on the same street as Dominic Cummings in Islington. We don’t speak.)

It was strange travelling to the game on the tube which was no busier than normal and frankly an altogether more pleasant experience than the usual journey there (not withstanding having to wear a mask).

The main NHS app (not the NHS covid app) was to be my golden ticket into the stadium. Being of an age where I have had my double vaccination I was able to show my vaccine certificate through the app which was an incredibly straightforward process – my Ray Berg QR code was scanned and I was off to the old fashioned ticket check.

People had been given 30 minute slots to try and ease queueing –  I only missed mine by about an hour and a half but there were no queues and the noise was rising as I entered the stadium.

Football fans can be true innovators when faced with adversity – in this case face masks. Everyone had clearly therefore realised that if you kept on drinking beer you could legitimately take your mask off (although everyone duly put it back on when they went to their seat).

Entering the stadium in blistering heat it was great to hear the singing and suddenly life felt a little normal, and there was an incredible wall of noise to greet the teams.

Sadly the events of the last 12 months were brought back into sharp focus as the England players took the knee to be greeted by booing from a minority of so called England fans – a stark reminder that the ugly head of racism is stubbornly refusing to be kicked out of football.  It is no way to start an international game but the players rose to the occasion; this is a very different England team to the one that lost to Iceland last time.

An England win was surely on the cards. And the irony was not lost on me, and no doubt others, with the raucous outpouring of emotion that greeted Raheem Sterling’s second half goal  (another Wembley boy like me although he is now an MBE). Not a bad week for him and his proud family.

Meeting some mates after for a few celebratory pints followed by a visit to my mum rounded off a great day.

The Covid restrictions seemed to be largely followed (a laissez faire approach to enforcing mask wearing inside the ground thankfully given the heat) and the procedures not too much of an impediment.

For those lucky enough like me to have a double jab, the entry system was straightforward.  But there have been very valid concerns and debate raised about vaccine passports.  One of the biggest concerns is that the system could disproportionately discriminate against people who perhaps can’t have a vaccine, or who chose not to.  And security is always a crucial concern around sensitive health data.  Which is why I feel broad roll-out of the system needs to be very carefully considered.

Next up is a day at Royal Ascot later this week. It may just be that (notwithstanding the deferral of Freedom Day) we are inching back to normality.  The hype that greeted this England win would suggest so. More soul searching about how to eradicate racism in football would be more of a step forward frankly.

Ray Berg is UK managing partner at Osborne Clarke. The Lawyer plans to run a series on The Great Reopening – if you have something interesting to say as life starts to return to a pre-pandemic normal, please email us.