CROSSING THE LINE
Fans need to behave
WE ALL love the beautiful game. That’s why we happily pay money to go and watch our teams, we get deflated when they lose, but are on cloud nine when they win.
Non-football lovers think we’re crazy, we must have a screw loose to go week in, week out to watch grown men kick a ball about. But we think they’re the ones missing out and, to be honest, we don’t give a monkey’s to what they say or think.
Yet the football haters love it when they hear or read about trouble kicking off at matches. It reinforces their belief that football is a sport for yobs and thugs.
And they must have loved it when a Birmingham ‘fan’ ran on the pitch and punched Aston Villa’s Jack Grealish, and on the same day an Arsenal ‘supporter’ went on the pitch at the Emirates and pushed Manchester United’s Chris Smalling.
Two unsavoury incidents without doubt, both shocking and any decent football supporter looked on with disgust. A football pitch should belong to the players and officials, and not a spectator who decides to run on and vent their spleen at the nearest footballer he can get at.
But as shocking as it was, are we that surprised this happened? Football has always been a passionate sport. On and off the pitch, all sorts of things occur before, during and after matches. And not always for the good!
Any football fan who went to games in the 70s and 80s would remember those decades that are called ‘the bad old days’. This was when football hooliganism was as commonplace at games as a half- time pie and pint.
You went to matches most weeks with the mindset that anything could happen, and it usually did.
I lost count of the mass
brawls at Coventry’s Highfield Road, inside and outside. Bottles flying through the air, and a visiting supporter wanting to punch your lights out - that was the norm most Saturdays.
Looking back, it was real madness, and when they started to cage fans in to keep rival supporters apart, no wonder all football fans were called ‘animals’ - that was the term the press liked to use in their reports.
Of course, not all football supporters went to games wanting a punch up, but when a large number of youths are hellbent on a scrap, innocent spectators got caught up in it and, unfortunately, many got tarred with the same brush.
Do we want those days to return? Of course not. Any sane person wants to go to games to enjoy the match and be safe.
They want to be able to take their kids along and know they won’t come to any harm.
But in those decades I’ve mentioned, safety often couldn’t be guaranteed. You just hoped that you’d get back home in one piece.
I often left grounds with a fat lip and bloody nose, but took it on the chin, pardon the pun, as I just thought that was part and parcel of following your club back then. Thankfully, we’ve moved on from those Neanderthal days, and going to a football match, in the main, nowadays is a lot safer.
But let’s not think that hooliganism and violence has been eradicated completely. It is still around, but not on as large a scale as before.
And those two incidents I wrote about earlier show there are individuals about who don’t give a fig about their actions. They’ll happily run onto a pitch and assault a player, even though thousands of people are watching on. They enjoy their moment of fame.
I went to grounds years ago and was punched, spat at, had bricks thrown at me and my mates, and at one ground we had fireworks lobbed at us. How we dreaded matches falling on Bonfire Night!
The Beautiful Game it most certainly wasn’t, but at least the football was good.
So put those years in Room 101 where they belong, they were crazy and insane times, and uncivilized.
Let’s not give the football loathers ammunition to use against us, let’s show them that football is still the greatest sport on the planet, and let’s see the young fans who are just starting going to games enjoy watching their heroes, and instilling in them to respect opposition players and their fans.
Yes, football has its faults but with a bit of tweaking here and there, it can be enjoyed by all – even those who say they despise it but who maybe secretly want to join us and enjoy all the highs and lows of being a football fan!