The usual snobbery from certain rugby supporters reared its ugly head again today, following the overwhelming, oppressive police presence in and around the Memorial Stadium. Millwall were in town and the police weren’t taking any chances. But why would they? After all, football fans are hooligans, aren’t they, and rugby fans are angels, right?
Forget the fighting at Ashton Gate earlier this season when the sainted rugby fans from Exeter decided to act like, well, football fans by hitting people, or the carnage on a few of the trains leaving stations near Twickenham yesterday following the annual armed forces game. As a friend of mine said, “Fancy those football hooligans infiltrating peaceful rugby supporters who simply wanted to get bladdered!”
These instances of thuggery are were certainly worse than anything I’ve seen at the Mem this season. Yes, we have our share of people who are not, in principle, opposed to having a punch-up but everyone I know goes to watch the game. That the football referee gets relentless grief from one-eyed supporters is not peculiar to football. Anyone stood in the Shed at Gloucester?
Why the snobbery? It can’t be a class-based thing, can it? Football is the game of the lumpen proletariat and rugby union is the province of the bourgeoisie, except that in the aforementioned Gloucester, rugby union is their football. Rugby union is what working class people in Gloucester go to see. We’re not all Bath, you know.
The idea that football fans are all pissed up neanderthals is as wrong as it is offensive. Just because many of us have thick accents doesn’t mean we are also thick in the head. And we certainly don’t all want to fight.
Yes, I know that if the police were not in attendance today, Horfield and the surrounding areas would have been carnage. Several hundred of nearly 12,000 people would have behaved despicably. Today, when some hare-brained idiot threw a smoke bomb from the home end, most Gasheads were livid. Do you see what I am saying? We are not all hooligans. Hardly any of us are.
Does football have a problem? Yes. Are things better than they used to be? Yes? Why? Because of better policing and stewarding and because most of the real hooligans are getting old.
Saying, as some rugby people do, that they are better supporters and better people than the football riff-raff, is utter tosh. Separate the deeds of a minority of idiots and we’re all the same. Many support both games without feeling the need to have a fight. Call me a hooligan and I’ll smash your face in. Okay?
