I simply cannot bring myself to watch anymore of the Stoke v Arsenal game on Rupert Murdoch’s Sky Sports channel. Banter, often on an industrial scale, is commonplace; sometimes a line is crossed, but we just bite our tongues, perhaps pretend it never happened and move on. Today’s events at Stoke are way beyond that.
Cast your mind back to 2010 when Ryan Shawcross broke Aaron Ramsey’s leg with an X certificate foul, putting the young Arsenal player out of action for a considerable period of time and inflicting upon him scars, both physical and mental, which have taken years to heal. Shawcross made an apology to Ramsey which was not accepted by the player. That is entirely within his rights. You might say, in the interests of having an easier life, that Ramsey should have accepted the apology but you are not him. The foul was one of the worst I have ever seen and I find it hard to believe it was an accident. In fact, I will not even try to accept it was an accident: it wasn’t.
Watching Sky this afternoon, already feeling slightly down in the dumps after watching the latter stages of Liverpool’s home defeat to a dour and uninspiring Manchester United, a part of me just gave up on football, at least for a short while when the abuse started at Stoke. No, not abuse aimed at Shawcross for his thuggery of six years ago, but abuse at Ramsey for being the victim of it. I would be lying if I said I had never heard abuse like it because I have and rather a lot of it too. I was there at Ashton Gate over 40 years ago when the home fans welcomed the opposition centre forward by chanting ‘Zigger, Zagger, Zigger – Millwall’s got a…’ and you don’t need me too fill in the last bit. I watched Bristol Rovers from the terraces one day to hear supporters shouting abuse at Neil Harris, also of Millwall, for having had testicular cancer. “You fucking eunuch” shouted a particularly unpleasant group of middle aged men. Both shook me to the core, but I got on, reminding myself that, well, it was only a minority, they were all trying to secure an advantage for their own teams by being racist and by abusing a man for having had cancer. It’s all just banter, isn’t it?
It certainly wasn’t just a handful of Stoke fans letting rip at Ramsey this afternoon and even Sky’s attempts to distort the abuse was not successful. They were abusing a player for having his leg badly broken and having suffered for years afterwards. Nice. I was going to try to stick with it until Arsenal’s Giroud plainly told the referee to “Fuck off”, didn’t even get spoken to and then I opted to use the off switch.
Like most people in life, most football fans are decent people. Some get carried away in the heat of the moment and cross that line, most just cheer their heads off. I’ve done both, I have to say, and I hope I never do the former again.
I still love the beautiful game but there is so much I don’t love about it too. Giving a bloke dog’s abuse for having his leg broken six years ago is not a high point.
