There was a football match in my city today. Southampton vs Portsmouth. These two are traditionally great rivals, and everyone jokes that there’ll be “rioting” after a game between the two of them, as if that’s a perfectly normal thing to expect to happen after a sporting event.
I didn’t encounter any particular problems myself, but there sure were a lot of people wandering around to and from town, plus several local shops had either put up signs refusing to serve alcohol, or closed completely, citing the football match as the reason. As I walked through town in the middle of the day, there was a constant police presence, with officers on foot walking around the pedestrian area in the middle of town, while cars and vans raced around the major roads of the city, sirens blaring.
As I saw all this I had to think to myself “why?”
I know people get attached to their sports teams. This may be for personal reasons, it may be just something you’re interested in, or it may be a sense of loyalty to where you come from (although the last one is rather rarer than it used to be, with many people choosing to follow the clubs with the most money rather than the ones nearest them). It may even be a completely arbitrary decision.
The thing I don’t get is this: what is it about supporting a team that makes people get into such a state that a police presence approaching that required for a terrorist incident is necessary?
That was a terribly clumsy sentence. But do you see my point?
Surely if you enjoy watching football you enjoy watching football. Many people I know who do like football are perfectly normal people who have never been in a fight. So why all the police? Why do I hear shouting morons passing by my window on the way to the stadium? (Incidentally, the only noise I hate as much as people chewing is drunken football chanting.)
Perhaps one of my trans-Atlantic readers could shed some light on this issue. Does this sort of thing happen with American football games? I get the impression that the “local loyalty” thing is a much bigger deal in the States.
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You know, you guys have a horrible stereotype as hooligans here stateside. There’s plenty of imbibing going on at American football games; but they just look like sloven drunks who are mostly harmless. Usually representative of our own stereotype of being a sloven gluttonous people.
As for local loyalty; I have no clue. I live in a state whose entire population doesn’t even amount to a quarter of even the smallest “big” city. We live between Denver and Minneapolis; usually football teams are divided that way.
I don’t think hooliganism is quite as bad as it used to be – there haven’t been full-on riots for a while now – but violence, abusiveness and binge drinking is still very much a part of our national game. Not wishing to be associated with this is, more than anything, the reason why I hate football with a passion.
I know it’s unfair to tar all football fans with the same brush – my wife’s a football fan, after all, and she doesn’t kick the shit out of rival club supporters (at least, not to my knowledge) – but something about the fact that those people even exist offends me.
This is arguably a bit rich coming from someone who partakes in the same hobby that created people who use “rape” as a term of endearment and are world-renowned for their racism. Oh well! 🙂
The comments on this page say it all really. Rivalry is fine. Calling each other “scum” and “fukin priks” [sic] is not cool.