A few minutes before hearing of the death of Gary Speed, I had been browsing Twitter and following the timeline of a young man who had been revelling in the minor celebrity created by his personal abuse of the footballer, Michael Owen. I’m going to publish his message to Owen here, in the hope that it offends you in the same way it offended me.
“you crying little welsh munich cunt. It happens week in week out you big headed fucking midget!!!”
There have been much worse examples than this of course. The bloke’s timeline contains a string of friends all congratulating him on being noticed. One lad laughs about the time he insulted Gary Neville’s children to their face. John Hartson finally snapped and began to make public the many abusive tweets that he receives, some of them aimed a cancer-stricken kids that he supported. Last year, Robbie Savage was forced to confront somebody who had ridiculed the suffering of his father from Parkinson-disease.
The apparent suicide of Gary Speed was incomprehensible to us. Here was a man who had it all. Wealth, success, peer-respect, the looks of a film star, and the love and admiration of his nation and his family. It is always dangerous to assume of course, but it appears that Speed had been battling a dark illness behind those smiles and that wink. One can only imagine the torture that he must have been going through as he faced the cameras. My point is that if Gary Speed, with a promising future, and a glowing past can feel that despondent, then who knows which other sportsmen, which other people that we meet in our lives are also suffering personal hell?
We have come to treat professional football as a moral vacuum. A modern stadium is an anything-goes arena where thousands of people sing about Sol Campbell dying of AIDS, and individuals tell David Beckham that they hope his young son dies of cancer. The impunity from judgement as we stray from from decency goes way back. I remember songs being sung about a team of young footballers dying at Munich as far back as 1974 . I remember Manchester United, Bristol City and Chelsea fans laughing at the death of children in Aberfan, and Chelsea also celebrated the impending death of the comatosed boxer Johnny Owen. Cardiff are no angels either. A group of fans dressed as firemen went in fancy dress to Bradford some time after the tragedy at Valley Parade, and just last season there were chants of ‘Istanbul’ at Elland Road. Back in the 1990s, Cardiff fans used to make a hissing sound and sing “Gas a Jack” as they mocked the lonely suicide of Welsh international Alan Davies via a tube through his car window.
I’m just tired of it all. I’m utterly weary of the whole sordid fucking charade. These are not murderers and villains, they are just athletes. (Although ironically, if your new signing happens to be a rapist or a wife-beater, that’s OK, because ‘it’s what he does on the pitch that counts’). Abuse isn’t funny or victimless. That referee you scream at, the injury-prone attacker you ridicule, the passionate badge-kissing captain of your ‘rivals’ – they’re all real people, and you just don’t know what is happening in their fragile lives.
Whenever tragedy occurs in football, we all take a little reflection, we shake hands, we talk about a football family, and within a few months it starts all over again. I remember escaping a beating at the hands of a mob of BNP supporters in Darlington in 1991 because Hillsborough was still fresh in the minds of everybody. My would-be attackers were full of self-pity that Hillsborough had changed everything they enjoyed; the conflict, the abuse, the violence. It didn’t take long for the antagonism to start again.
Recent years have seen the excuse of ‘banter’ rolled out as a justification for personal abuse. I used to have a lot of ‘banter’ with the lads. I remember one hysterical occasion on a trip to Barnet in 1991 when a good mate of mind mocked the fact that I would be spending Christmas alone that year. I retorted with some well-aimed insults about nepotism easing his path through life and we didn’t speak for the next ten years. Still, it was only banter, eh? Nobody gets hurt.
Banter often leads to more serious abuse. Danish referee Martin Hansson was the man in charge when Thierry Henry handballed Ireland out of the 2010 World Cup. He went on to make this stark, illuminating film which detailed the threats of violence he received after that evening when he failed to spot Henry’s deceit. I find it deeply sad that we demonise well-meaning individuals. Who knows the real mental state of that person walking out to start the match? In 2009, German goalkeeper Robert Enke ended his own life, and recently German referee Babak Rafati attempted suicide before a German Bundesliga game.
Of course statistically, there are bound to be people in football affected by mental disease. But in other walks of life those sufferers would hopefully be cared for, understood and respected. In football the media and the public are merciless in their hounding and de-humanising of people involved in the game. I watched guiltily silent last week as an opposition goalkeeper whose Father had died at a young age was tormented loudly about his mental health by guffawing home supporters. The stress levels must be extraordinary on a diseased mind. We need to stop abusing people who play and officiate at football, because even if we’re prepared to abandon common decency when we walk through gates of our local colosseum, we don’t know what damage we are doing to those who entertain us.
As audible racism has been forced off the modern menu of the bigot, so homophobia has taken its place. I rarely go to a match where the away goalkeeper is not derided as a ‘rent boy’ or a ‘faggot’. On Wednesday evening, Cardiff City visit Brighton, the gay-friendly town whose football supporters have become the butt (LOL LMFAO) of a thousand unfunny homosexuality-related chants. I’m pretty sure those chants will be heard on Wednesday too.
I remember going to Torquay with Cardiff in the early 1990′s and the subject of the ‘banter’ that day was a homosexual striker called Justin Fashanu. The abuse was remorseless and unremitting, as it was wherever he played. Fashanu would kill himself a few years later, an indirect victim of ignorance and intolerance. Thankfully things are beginning to change – a group of Millwall fans were arrested for homophobic chanting at Brighton recently. And as they left the court, they seemed bewildered. ‘Banter!, they protested. “It was only ‘banter’. A harmless piece of fun.”
Excellent piece, the only critiscism is that Fashanu believed he would go to prison for sexually assaulting a (over the age limit) teenager in the USA. Although the hounding from the press and even his own brother may well have been the final straw.
It’s 2012, who cares who they sleep with. Remember when Gareth Thomas came out, did anyone care? Maybe it would have been a “bigger deal” had he been a footballer as opposed to a Welsh rugby player.
I also heard stories of Billy Sharp being abused on twitter after his baby died. Some football fans really are pond life.
Fashanu’s consentual partner was seventeen years old I think. I was careful about the words I used. He was a victim of intolerance. I think that law is pretty intolerant.
Do you think segregation of home and away fans at matches contributes to this charade? I’ve often thought that people would be far less likely to hand out the abuse that they do if the person they were abusing was sat right next to them.
Too many people hiding behind anonymity both on line and in crowds has made the banter more extreme. There appears to be more “banter” because of it.
In ths past extreme banter would lead to people being shunned until they apologised and realised they were in the wrong.
i was on my bike yesterday, riding past my old school, where my youngest son is, there was about 7 kids of both sexes sitting down in a field, they abused me in English not Welsh, the f word etc, i thought to myself why? Its endemic in our society, but i’m honest – i have sang abusive songs – in my youth, but i think and hope that its about growing up, some people sadly never will.
Excellent piece Phil and one that strikes a chord with all of us that watch our team.
We are all guilty of some form of abuse or another and although most of us would gladly shake the hand of our “victim2 after the game and share a beer or three perhaps we need to consider what we are saying, shouting, chanting *during* the game.
I’m sure that no right minded individual would call out the insults if we met the player in Tesco or the library or the pub, that we gleefully voice from the terraces.
Food for thought and thanks for the guilt trip – long overdue some may say!
I hope others reading this will also consider their actions the next time they take up their regular position at their ground of worship.
Yes, when banter turns to violence.
According to witness statements made public during the sentencing of Ian Mytton for the manslaughter of Mike Dye, Mytton had been part of a group of bevvied up English supporters who had been shouting anti-Welsh abuse at fans near the turnstiles. It was reported that Mytton had no previous record of violence.
What’s striking is that none of Mytton’s companions were charged with anything and the media have remained mute over the conduct of the police/stewards. Was the behaviour of this group of English fans sufficiently prolonged/aggressive that action should have been taken? Or was it impossible for anyone to predict that this’ banter’ could have turned violent with such tragic consequences?
Considering a man died at Wembley you would expect someone to raise these questions but in this particular case… tawelwch fu.
Fantastic piece.
On a vaguely related note that I’ve been thinking about recently, and further to Ben’s comment above, I like segregation at football matches. There’s something wonderfully human about the shared experience of being a fan surrounded by other fans of the same team – regardless of race, sexuality, age, gender, etc. – and the commonality of the emotion when things go well, or go badly. I’m not ashamed to say how moved I was at Wembly when Cardiff lost to Blackpool, but I was surprised at how strongly I felt.
I think, if we didn’t have segregation, that level of shared experience might be lost.
When I lived in Coventry I went to see the Sky blues v Leeds. Leeds decide to sing the catchy chant “we are going to rape your women” and invaded the pitch around the 97/98 season. I never went to see a Coventry game again. Made you shamful of the human race!!!
Enke’s biography should be read by fans for an insight into the effect that the game can have on players. After all, it’s their livelihood, where their identity often comes from.
I also wonder when did all this start? When did supporting your own club meant despising everyone else with a vitriolic hatred? It wasn’t always this way.
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“I’m just tired of it all. I’m utterly weary of the whole sordid fucking charade.”
This sums it up perfectly. Also, whoever it was who said they’ve lost faith in the human race – I feel the same. I was at Leeds away last season when the Istanbul chants were going up and I wanted the stand to open up and swallow me.
Preston away a couple of seasons ago will probably always stay with me. Not just because we lost 6-0. Had a great time in a small social club before the game with my mate, playing snooker and talking football with half a dozen Preston fans. No abusive banter, the odd bit of non offensive mickey taking yes, but plenty of mutual respect. Then approaching the ground before the game a Preston fan walks past me and says “Fuck off home you Welsh cunt!”
I guess we have to remember that there are still decent folk out there, they’re just becoming harder to find.
A very thought provoking and profound piece.I think pyschologists would need to be consulted to gain a clearer picture with a lot of this bile and hatred.
As a Burnley fan, I was once virtually stopped in my tracks and left speechless by a section of the home fans(my fans) taunting Cardiff with chants about Aberfan.
This to me was way beyond the pale. I felt sick and detatched from the verminous and ill educated moronic scum that considered this an appropriate response to rival chants.Munich inevitably also referred too on the odd occasion our teams met.
Suddenly the banter and quips become irrelevant and meaningless. There are undoubtably repellant arseholes in our midst and I want no part in it.Somethings are so poignant and personal that it just beggars belief that any individual or group could sing and laugh at such excrutiatingly painful memories.Imagine the pain and grief of a relative of a ten year old child dying in such horror in that Welsh village .
As working men, can there ever be a situation whereby that is regarded as mere humour.We freely mix with turds whenever we pass through the turnstiles. I have had enough.
I am a little late coming in on this but for many years I was a steward in the Away end at the Racecourse. Dealing with some of the viler comments from fans was always worthwhile and was generally appreciated by most of the visiting fans themselves.
Then, about seven or eight seasons ago it started to change. I finally decided enough was enough when I tried to deal with a Huddersfield fan who was shouting the worst kind of “Welsh cunts” type of insult (we always accepted the regular sheepshagger stuff although I often wondered why). What made this moron’s behaviour even more reprehensible was that he held up to the home fans his SIX YEAR OLD son who was shouting and gesticulating the same stuff. He refused to stop and refused to stop his son. To cap it all the Huddersfield fans just laughed as I tried to deal with him. A similar incident (no kid) with a Blackburn fan a few weeks later and I realised a sea change had occurred in fans’ behaviour. I no longer steward and I no longer defend fans against their many critics.
We all need to act against racists, homophobics et al and stop leaving it to underpaid, ill-equipped stewards and disinterested police officers.