I'll add one other thing in response to your point about people taking football over seriously especially in these times.
I cremated my father today. He was a man of varied interests and of some intelligence having travelled extensively for a man of his age. But he was buried in claret and blue and I wore claret and blue and the beautiful flowers our florist managed to source were also centred perfectly around claret and blue. Dad was from a working class family from Handsworth/Aston, thinking they'd gone up in the world when moving to Kingstanding and a council house with no bathroom and outside loo in his childhood. Nothing special there. His younger brother my uncle now aged 80 was on Villa's books and offered professional terms of 18 quid a week, but told by grandad he couldn't accept it because he was already on 23 quid a week as an apprentice. Perhaps football was overly important to dads family bearing in mind the family link, but I actually think not. It was just as important to my mothers family and no one on her side signed for the Villa. Football was, and in certain places still is as important as it gets, and although it's became laiden with glitter, it really need not have... it just needed cleaning up, because it will always in my opinion, remain the number one sport for the majority.
Thankfully, dad forgave me a long time ago for following my own team just down the road.
Thoughts are now with you today CJ, I hope the occasion went as well as it could have been expected, in these unique circumstances that we are in...