The Cult: Jamie Vardy

The final Cult addition of 2015 is not the Roy of the Rovers character the world wanted, but that should hardly come as a surprise. You can (in fact you must) read our previous entries here.

Take a stroll with me, won't you, into that place where you imagine people saying things you don't like so that you can have pointless fights with them in your head. Specifically, when I imagine people talking about Paulie from the Sopranos, they say something like man that guy was hilarious how can you not love Paulie, the guy's all-time. And what I'd say to that, once I'd unclenched my jaw, it that exactly this kind of ehhh T, lemme just go back an get dose cannolis cod-Italianism-clowning-as-substitute-for-actual-acting drivel is what made me so ill-willed towards the show. So much so that, by the time it reached series 54, if they could have just written on a large board what was going to eventually happen to Adrianna and held it up to the screen, I would have immediately switched off.

Mafia guys aren't clowns. It might shift DVDs to portray a world of thugs who for the most part are backstabbing each other and jimmying open parking meters to make a living like it's 'Play Italian Day' at clown college, but it sure as hell doesn't work for me. I've done the hard graft, wondering through pages of Google Image results looking at mugshots of Lefty Ruggiero and Carmine Galante; one thing they're all noticeably lacking is a clownish twinkle in their eye.

It is a more palatable way to portray them, of course, more fit for mass consumption. So, in this idealised world of Mafia guys saying mamma mia and the Krays being loveable rogues as opposed to a thug and a schizophrenic working in tandem, how would you like Jamie Vardy to be?

Roy of the Rovers, no? Getting up at 6am to make the sandwiches and fill his thermos while whistling Chumbawumba, then biking into the sunrise with a smile, off to the next godforsaken cowshed of a stadium. Still whistling Chumbawumba, he'd be happy in the knowledge that with a bit of hard work and good luck, he might one day be stroking it under an on-rushing David de Gea to set a new goalscoring record for the Premier League era. Vards would warm the heart of everyone who met him. That boy's got something. And as they watched him rise through the leagues, they'd feel nought but giddy, supportive delight. As opposed to what I'd speculate they actually feel, which is on the one hand envy for whichever team possessed such a goalscoring animal, and on the other thank god I'm not still having to try to chat with him in the dressing room. Because Jamie Vardy proves better than any footballer I've seen in quite a while that a sentient dose of humanity and a razor-sharp goalscoring instinct do not the happiest of bedfellows make.

Perhaps I'm being too harsh. Perhaps, deep down beneath the blank exterior, there's an honourable acceptance within Jamie Vardy to swallow all the hard grind of lower league football, saying little, and just focus on getting your runs timed. But perhaps even that much thought would slow you down. Vardy's recent achievement isn't a fluke – it's the consequence of him being the undisputed number one at a particular skill in the league that most rewards it. And that is, getting going. That blankness, the same that allows him to thoughtlessly regurgitate naff racial anachronisms like 'Jap' at people, also means that the microsecond he sees a run across the defender, or in behind, he's on his bike. In the non-stop Premier League microseconds are what counts, and the trigger-effect his thoughtless action then has on the minds of Riyad Mahrez and Marc Albrighton is a pretty enthralling thing to behold. Yes, of course, he also brings to his game all the grit and relentlessness that is a predictable and deserved weapon of someone who doesn't want to go back to where they came from. But I'd guess he doesn't think about that either. He just does.

And now here he is, set in stone as, among other things, the most perfect example of the silliness of The Cult – that you'd be hard-pressed to find less suitable people to idealise than the planet's most idealised. Is there honestly anyone worse on the planet to analyse a game of football than Alan Shearer? Of course not. You'd take a toddler who was ahead of the curve with learning their ABCs over what Big Al usually summons. He's just got to hit that, Gary, and he hasn't. And why do you think that is, Al? I don't know, Gary, in all honesty.

And likewise, you really couldn't pick a worse place to look for Roy of the Rovers-style fantasies than a mind for which the phrase hmmmm, is it this, or is it that simply draws a blank.

Not that it isn't still bloody great to watch.

I like this goal as much as any of them, partly because I'm getting old and it's the freshest one in my mind, partly because it demonstrates so clearly the divide between where Chelsea are at – fretting and doubting and mistrusting their instincts – and where Jamie Vardy is at. Kurt Zouma gets about 50% of the way into tracking the run that Vardy makes, and then something happens. His brain kicks in and, for no logical reason at all, he checks his run, before trying to restart it. Gary Cahill can only manage a flinch at another situation gone wrong. Vardy on the other hand runs the cleanest line imaginable. From identifying what could be on, to making it on, to finishing it occurs in one unbroken movement, and all in the space of a moment. The phrase 'goalscoring machine' has never been so apt.

"Chat shit get banged."

About as philosophical as Member #24 is ever likely to get.

Words: @tobysprigings / Illustration: @Dan_Draws