The Pause: Parenting a football club
08.12.25, 21:30 Updated 08.12.25, 21:30
Among the reams of modern parenting advice is a fairly useful technique called The Pause. It starts in infancy, instructing parents to wait for a moment before attending to their crying baby. Listen to the cry. What does the child need? If you’re lucky, it might even stop before you intervene.
As the child grows, you use The Pause to calm yourself and consider the child’s perspective and needs before stepping in. Master the art and you’ll become the most obnoxiously considerate parent in the playground. You still have to wash the jam out of the hair, but you’ll feel slightly more saintly while doing so.
That’s the children taken care of, but what about the football club? Failure to progress in the FA Cup robbed Bromley fans of a fix this weekend, and while we might glance jealously at giant killings and bumper crowds, what Bromley’s season actually needed was The Pause.
This time last year, Andy Woodman’s side made history by scraping a 2-1 win against Solihull, which earned them a third-round berth for the first time in the club’s history. The draw that followed was footballing perfection: Newcastle away, glory be! But while we were enjoying the piggback ride, we couldn’t see the underbelly.
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