Drift away

Having dipped in, and mostly out, of today’s putrid offering on Sky’s Super Sunday, featuring four clubs I don’t give a toss about, I felt more than ever my declining interest in football. Neither Nottingham Forest v West Ham nor Chelsea v Spurs mattered. My usual coping mechanism of wanting one team to lose rather more than the other was redundant. So, the bits I watched just drifted by. But what did interest me – and not in a good way – were sections of the crowd. Some of the people looked proper horrible.

When the referee was checking VAR on the pitchside telly, Forest fans around the screen were going berzerk. One woman was screaming all sorts of charming abuse, the very obvious being “You fucking prick” over and over again. She must have been four feet away from the ref and he will have heard it. Whenever the camera panned on a throw-in or a corner, fans were equally ‘passionate’, as they say. Predictably, a number of Chelsea fans, notably the shirtless bullet-headed neanderthals, were even worse. You just knew that if there wasn’t a hoarding in place, they’d be on the pitch. I really didn’t like it, but in truth this is how things have been for as long as I can remember. It’s me who’s changed.

I am not without sin so I am not throwing the first stone, but I know I have changed over the years. At one Bristol Rovers game against Millwall, Neil Harris came over to take a free kick. As he lined it up, an elderly Rovers fan shouted, “Oi, Harris. You’re a fucking eunuch!” No one else reacted and certainly no one laughed because Harris had been suffering from testicular cancer. I felt physically sick that someone could be that heartless and stupid. Above all, I felt ashamed. I attach no blame whatsoever to the football club, nor the vast majority of its supporters, but what could make someone shout something so utterly appalling? Either way, part of my love for ‘live’ football died that day and it’s never come back to life.

I’ve been to a lot of rugby league games and a few rugby union games, too, and you simply never hear comments like that. I know that things are changing at cricket now that limited overs games and things are, shall we say, more rowdy than they used to be. And football has been tribal and over-emotional for many years. The advent of the Premier League has done little to help.

It’s all part of my journey away from professional football, a journey that started over 16 years ago which has taken me to where I am now. I’ve swallowed the ‘be kind’ malarkey and the hatred and venom doesn’t fit in with my mood.