AT LAST... THE JOKE’S ON YOU
WELL, that was a fun 48 hours, as football’s self-appointed elite tore themselves apart then came crawling back to the only people that really matter – the fans! Pathetic. Watching the circus from the sidelines as a Non-League fan, you could almost feel smug, albeit tempered, by all but our top division being curtailed for the want of the kind of money these creatures could probably find down the back of their yachts. As a ‘legacy fan’ of an unfashionable club like Chester, finally some vindication though, as well as redemption for a traumatic childhood incident.
At school in Chester in the 80s, a teacher randomly conducted a straw poll of who supported who. Surprise, surprise, it yielded approximately 30 Liverpool fans, one Manchester United fan, and one Evertonian. How many Chester City fans? One, yours truly, news that was greeted by gales of incredulous laughter, despite being within walking distance of their Football League stadium. Who’s laughing now? Guess what – these insidious bean counters don’t give a toss about you, other than as a paying customer. Buy the shirt, take your seat, shut your mouth (unless you’re shovelling overpriced food into it). Even that’s being generous, as it’s entirely plausible that the long-term plan was to take games further afield than Europe in order to ‘broaden the global fan base.’
The major factor in me growing up as a Chester fan was proximity: Saint and Greavsie, bit of chippy, bowl to the ground, home for Brookside Omnibus. Then you start going to away games and your whole world opens up, or Swindon at least. While I made the occasional trip to Goodison or Anfield with mates, I could never grasp the concept of regularly travelling to a different city to support their team. Seemingly, not a quandary for the coach loads of Man United fans that would regularly depart Chester on a Saturday lunchtime, often with my two-fingered blessing. Obviously people are free to support whoever they want, but it’s still a big leap to follow a team that regularly plays on a different land mass (and I don’t mean Canvey Island). These muppets have talked about attracting younger fans, but what 16-year-old has the time or money to nip over to Madrid or Milan on a weekly basis?
Arrogance
But of course it was never about the fans. Concocted amid a tragic pandemic, this clandestine festival of greed was about little more than turning football into endless televised content for the benefit of the oft-mentioned stakeholders. The astonishing arrogance of not consulting the fans or even the players beforehand beggars belief. Given the current backlash, they would presumably have received short shrift, and the whole thing would have been put back in its box for another day. They might have even employed a professional logo designer, or a proofreader. As it stood, the whole thing seemed to have been knocked together by the work experience kid on a Friday afternoon. And exactly how super would their so-called Super League have been anyway? Surely it’s the rarity of European giants meeting that makes them big games. Otherwise it’s the footballing equivalent of Wizzard’s grotesquely ill-conceived festive hit, I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday, a truly nightmarish scenario. If the same teams are playing each other every week it becomes mundane, a kind of sporting wallpaper rather than appointment-to-view occasion. It’s similar to what’s happened with snooker, the difference being that entire communities aren’t built around Shaun Murphy. You can be a Mark Williams fan, but it’s not necessarily a fundamental part of your identity.
Now the toothpaste is out of the tube and these devious snakes have been revealed for what they are, it’s hard to see where football goes. Points deductions have been mentioned and subsequently shouted down on the basis that they punish the fans not the owners. I don’t recall anyone being so concerned when Chester had points deducted for the misdemeanours of their owners, along with numerous other lower division clubs. Mercifully, our fans and owners are now one and the same, and this surely has to be the way forward.
So stick your Super League where the sun don’t shine. Give me Non-League every day of the week… Wall Of Sport by Steve Hill is published by Ockley Books and is out now!