This weekend, football found its way back into the headlines for all the wrong reasons. An FA Cup semi final between Millwall and Wigan was marred by widespread fan violence, while Newcastle’s 3-0 defeat at home to Sunderland was followed by “scenes reminiscent of the dark days of football riots” in the centre of Newcastle. All in all, this was “football’s weekend of shame”.
If you solely read the Daily Mail, and were a total idiot, you’d blindly accept that opening paragraph as the absolute truth. The reality is far less sensational, and far less likely to sell newspapers to people whose view of football culture remains tragically prehistoric.
While this violence has been rightly condemned, it’s vital to get some perspective on what actually happened over the weekend. Some people got hammered, decided that gesturing at men in a neon jacket and a funny hat was a good idea, and went too far with the abuse. In other words, what happens every weekend all over the country every Saturday night. The fact that these people did so while masquerading under the comfortable stereotype of football fans is no reason to assume that these incidents had anything more to do with football than your average post-nightclub fight has to do with the perpetrator preferring Skrillex to say, Rihanna.
The guilty parties in Newcastle weren’t even at the match (the “riots” happened on the other side of the city). Blame the pubs that opened at 8am so people could still get boozy before the big game, don’t accuse the people who paid good money to actually go and support their team. Wonder instead what made those sneering youths so disenfranchised with society that they felt the need to throw beer bottles at the police from behind their balaclavas; it’s complacent and wrong to assume that this is solely football’s fault.
Granted, the violence at Wembley was more troubling. Millwall, a club with a fraught history of fan disorder in the 1970s and 1980s, should never have put tickets on general sale. After a series of incidents in the late 20th Century, perpetrated by yobs for whom the main (only) attraction of football matches was the chance to punch people from other towns under the guise of fandom, the club cleaned up their act. Banning orders were issued, travelling fans were policed more rigorously, and statistics fell into line with other clubs. To undo that work in a stroke designed to sell more tickets was stupid; the banned could come back into the fold, their desire to cause trouble barely dampened by ten years of enforced exile.
The resulting images show a few people fighting, faces contorted with rage, while everyone else looks a bit bemused. Despite the outraged headlines, 12 Millwall “fans” were arrested at Wembley on Saturday, and eight people in total were arrested in St. James’ Park on Sunday. That’s twenty people out of nearly 140,000 who attended those two matches. 0.0001% of those who attended the two games, not withstanding the tens of other games that took place over the weekend. Even for the most pious amongst us, that surely cannot constitute a “weekend of shame”. For perspective, 152 people were arrested at last year’s Notting Hill Carnival, described by police as “trouble-free”.
Football undoubtedly has an image problem. Post-London 2012, footballers are overpaid, arrogant, and cheats, especially compared to the apparently saintly Team GB. Imagine if Steven Gerrard had sworn at the media like Bradley Wiggins did after being papped following a crash last year. There would have been outrage, not understanding.
That’s not to say that the beautiful game doesn’t have an ugly side. Racism controversies have been splashed all over the ‘papers, while fans of rival teams still retain the capacity to be utterly vile to one another. People behave differently in football stadiums to how they do on the street. You could, however, say the same thing about nightclubs; I don’t know about you, but I’ve never whipped out the robot at a bus stop.
It’s also unfortunate that this weekend’s events happened so close to the death of Margaret Thatcher, a woman whose tenure as Prime Minister has become synonymous with the grossly unjust cover-up of the Hillsborough disaster, as well as ill-fated plans to demonise football fans by issuing them with compulsory ID cards.
If you believe certain sections of the right-wing media, who have spent a week eulogising about Lady Thatcher, one of the most divisive leaders in British history, then her stark views on football fans have been vindicated. That’s simply not true. Football these days is a safe, comfortable entertainment industry, or as safe and comfortable as anything can be in England in 2013. Football and its fans are merely a reflection of the issues that trouble a nation not only struggling with severe financial difficulties, but also dealing with some of the most sweeping social and cultural reforms in its history. Dissatisfaction is inevitable.
If anything sums up the storm in a teacup that was this last weekend, then it’s the image that many newspapers carried to demonstrate the scale of the violence. This image showed a man attempting to punch a horse. Having attended several games across the country, from Hull to Exeter via quite a lot of places inbetween, I can safely say that football fans are not generally like this. No amount of legislation or outrage will ever stop someone from being *that* much of an idiot.
Owen Keating, News Editor
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