Red And Circuses

I am pleased to announce that Bristol City will have one more Junior Red for their next match. Little Millie Jane Flynn arrived a couple of days before the Port Vale game, so she’s never seen us lose. In fact, here’s a picture of her dressed in her Bristol City romper suit celebrating Beadle’s opener.

Having a baby – or to be more precise Mrs RedTop having a baby – got me wondering about what sort of experience she can expect to get when I take her to her first game, and whether it would be gripping enough to make her want to go back. At this point, I am not contemplating what will happen if she decides she would like to spend her Saturdays any other way. It doesn’t bear thinking about.

When I went to my first game, against Leeds United on 28 April ‘79, I was just eight and it was towards the end of the season before we were relegated from the old First Division. It wasn’t the football that captivated me. Frankly, it was a pretty dire 0-0 bore draw. As far as I can remember the only action was Peter Hampton getting sent off and a reasonable save by David Harvey from a City shot which was off-side and wouldn’t have counted anyway.

But it didn’t matter, because at that age there was no way I could concentrate on the match for a whole 90 minutes. What actually transfixed me was the crowd. I was one of 25,388 packed into the Gate that day - a turbulent, fluid mass of people spontaneously swaying, surging and breaking out into witty chants and threatening taunts as a single body. The tension was palpable with a real edge and, yes, I enjoyed it. When I came out I knew I had been part of something special and there was absolutely no way I was going to stay away. I was going to pester my Dad to take me back if it killed me. It wasn’t just a game. It was an event. A spectacle.

How things have changed. Some of that is to do with the success, or otherwise, of our team in the intervening years. Sure, the crowd is now half the size - 12,221 attended the last home game against QPR – and that has an effect. But much of what turned a day at Ashton Gate, and most other grounds, into a spectacle has evaporated. The Taylor Report put paid to terracing. Fans are threatened with ejection if they have the audacity to get caught up in the drama of a match and stand up. Clubs have also been hell-bent on Disney-fying the game, making it more acceptable for the big-money TV men and the prawn sandwich brigade. In the process, they have taken away much of what made the game special. Do you honestly think the businessmen in the executive boxes would pay so much to watch a game of football if there was no crowd, no atmosphere?

Of course, the seed of all this came from within. Hooliganism was, is and will always remain unacceptable (unless your name happens to be Sam Hammam). Much of what has been done to our game has been done in the name of ridding us of the hooligan element. Yet despite that, those of us who go to matches have seen with our own eyes that the spectre of hooliganism within the game is on the rise again. For the clubs or the government to shake their heads and say: “They aren’t real fans” is a cop out and just wishful thinking. They ARE genuine fans – and that’s the problem. The game matters as much to them as to us. These low-life scum are as loyal to the team as we are. They are just ill-bred louts who enjoy fighting and in some warped way think they are representing the club by doing so. I am not making excuses for them. They deserve none. What I am doing is suggesting that the powers that be are taking the soft option by trying to infer they are not fans. We all wish they weren’t, but they are. In my opinion, the best way to keep hooliganism under control is by not only banning them from the grounds, but by ensuring they stay away. If that means forking out for extra staff to screen people as they go through the turnstiles looking for those who are banned, then fine. If that means those convicted of football hooliganism have to report to their local station at 3pm on a Saturday, that’s fine by me too.

Nearly 2,000 years ago, the Roman satirist and poet Juvenal gave the recipe for social control of the masses as “bread and circuses”. He argued that provided masses had bread on their table and entertainment to divert their emotions away from politics, they would be happy enough and the leadership could get on with running the state without fear of revolt.

In those days, the circuses were provided by the gladiatorial contests and the chariot races. These days, football matches are our circuses - our escapist way of letting off steam and diverting our attention from some of the crap we have to deal with in everyday life. Put it down on paper, or try to explain what being a football fan is about to someone who has never got involved, and it seems absurd and illogical that we spend literally thousands of pounds a year on tickets, petrol, food, shirts and merchandise. Of course football is not more important than life or death. But what makes it special is that it FEELS like it is. That is why the circuses of today – football grounds – are like those spectacles in Roman times. They allow us to experience emotional extremes and the raw tribalism gives us a sense of belonging. There is nothing wrong with that. Cleaning up our sport entirely will also take away those things which are unique. As long as there is drama, high emotion, club loyalty and rivalry there will be hooligans. Unpalatable, but true.

Don’t believe me? Well, hooliganism at sports matches is not a new phenomenon. In 59AD there was a riot between hooligans in Pompeii when the local team took on their rivals Nuceria in a gladiatorial contest. The pitch battles on the terraces and outside the ground led to many deaths and injuries among the fans. A fresco painted at the time showing images of the fighting around the ground is in a Naples museum. Their Roman masters imposed a ten year ban on gladiatorial contests as a result in a bid to stamp out hooliganism. It didn’t work. Not because they didn’t introduce ID cards, or because the amphitheatre wasn’t all-seater. But because of human nature.

I don’t think hooliganism will ever be completely solved without ruining our game beyond recognition. The same thing that rouses emotion on the terraces for most of us, that makes us scream abuse at the ref, taunt the rival centre forward with the dodgy haircut, howl at the linesman when he misses yet another blatant off-side is the same thing that makes those who lack any social responsibility go over the edge. To get rid of the one, you have to get rid of the other. And that, to an extent, is what has happened. We are expected to sit in our seats and are threatened with ejection if we don’t. We have a band trying to knock up fake atmosphere by playing the Great Escape. We are bombarded with commercial music over the tannoy when the goals are scored, making it more like an American basketball match than a football match. At Old Trafford, they even play a backing tape to try to dictate which songs the fans sing so that all the players get sung about with nice, clean homely lyrics your grandmother would approve of. I mean, for Christ’s sake!

Living in the US, I can tell you that if we go down that path football as a spectacle will be over. It will become a nice, pleasant family day out. Nothing wrong with that, you say? Well, there are plenty of them as it is. If I want to take Millie to a nice, pleasant day out I’ll take her to a theme park or the zoo. I would take her to a football match to experience extremes of emotion, atmosphere, drama and comedy on and off the pitch. I am not seeking to exclude women and children from football. Quite the contrary, the thrill of being part of a throbbing mass of fans experiencing – and playing a part in - the drama of a football match is universal. When I was a schoolboy, the thing that football gave you was a unique, raw high, a thrill, a buzz, a sense of belonging to something exciting. The very fact I wasn’t being fed a sanitized, cleaned-up experience was what gripped me as a kid and would grip kids today if we gave them the chance to experience it. We just have to give them the chance instead of turning football grounds into picnic parks.

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