Apologies for unoriginality, but I lifted this off Football 365.com, but I believe that it should be compulsive reading for any football supporter as it seems to find a place in the world for all types of supporter, from the true supporter to the f*ck wit barstooler.
What Annoys Me About Football Crowds Is...
Thursday April 29 2004
Football pulls big, big crowds. We take for granted just how big they are. Compared to any other form of live entertainment in Britain, football is on a different scale altogether.
Carlisle average 7,000 per home game. Imagine if the theatre, the ballet, opera, or any other sport pulled in such a big crowd for such a low level of quality. Even clubs like Rochdale, with no history of success ever, pull in a couple of thousand. which is a typical City Hall gig crowd for a major touring band.
So it's obvious that even crap football is hugely popular. But this can't be just down to the sport itself. It must be something to do with the whole concept of going to the match that consistently pulls the same punters to the game every week.
Being part of a crowd can be a wonderful thing. The collective passion, the binding of a common cause, the shared emotions both high and low. There's the bizarre wit that develops uniquely at every ground that draws on the history of the club and the innate local culture.
This is all as important as the actual football, but only to what I think of as real supporters.
By real supporters, I mean the fans of clubs who are unswervingly loyal, persistent and downright bloody-minded in their support of their club, whatever happens. Fans who intimately understand and are bound to their club.
For these people the club is always with you like family, the blues or a beer gut.
This concept excludes football tourists and anyone on a corporate trip.
It almost always excludes people in executive boxes.
It even usually excludes people who were not born or didn't grow up in or near the town or city of the club they support. This is because the club is a integral part of your life. By which I don't mean the football is, I mean the actual club.
You've got to feel it in your bones and I reckon you need to understand the town itself to really feel that fully. No matter where you live in the world now.
You carry the club around with you wherever you go like it's an identity tag.
You understand in an almost Zen-like way the nature of the place.
You know what makes it what it is, what it was and what it shall be.
True fans can spot the non-true fans a mile off. They stand out in a football crowd like a cheap wig.
Your non-true fan is usually far more rational in their analysis of the game because they're not blinded by their loyalty to the club but ironically they're also liable to over-react to success or to failure.
If the club wins something it tends to attract a disproportionate amount of new fans who think they're the best team ever. If the side starts losing or is relegated the fickle fan will be on their bike, disgusted that they've had so little reward for their investment. All of these are attitudes true fans would never entertain.
The current top clubs naturally attract a lot of untrue fans. Fans who, if the club was unsuccessful, would sod off immediately and be sort of embarrassed by their previous support of the club. This is rightly a bit galling for the true fans. We looks sideways with suspiciously narrowed eyes at them.
Supporting the Boro has always been great. This year a cup win was astonishing but had we won nothing as usual, I wouldn't have felt any different about the place. Teesside is a very special part of my DNA spirals. Victory or failure will never change that. It doesn't change whether I'm in Yorkshire, California or Ashby-De-La-Zouch.
Mind you, crowds can be embarrassing. Excruciatingly so. Ever been in a rock crowd when everyone routinely and inevitably starts holding their lighters aloft? Like it's part of the corporate rock experience or something.
Or imagine being the bloke who has to stand next to that bell ringer at Pompey - how bloody annoying would that be? Shut the feckin' bell up son.
Then there's the naff chants.
My most loathed currently is 'Champions League, you're 'avin a larf'. I hate this because it's a cockney expression that is ok within the sound of Bow Bells but has now spread everywhere and there's something annoying about non-regional, generic chants. Besides which no self-respecting Northerner would put an 'r' in laff. It's pure southern affectation and we should have nothing to do with it.
There was a time when every club had its own special songs that no one else would or could sing, even if in my case it involved Alan Gowling and an Alsatian.
Almost as annoying in any crowd is the loudmouth know-it-all fan who you'd swear practices broadcasting his analysis of the unfolding tactics during the week. He seems driven by a need to show off his knowledge of the game which is usually in inverse proportion to the volume of his voice.
Then there's the fans who boo their own club. God knows we've all had good cause to be p***ed off at the quality of the football your club is playing but booing them to me always seems like humping your mistress in front of your wife and I often suspect it's the non-true fans who do it because they think it shows that they feel more passion about the club than the players.
The true fans know this is the case and we feel no need at all to express it. It's a given. This is our gaff. What is understood need never be spoken as Sammy Hager once said and if you can't look to the Red Rocker for a bit of philosophy, who can you turn to?
Whatever the dynamics of a football crowd there's no doubt it's compulsive stuff even in the neat and tidy I'll-sit-down-and-shut-up-until-they-impress-me atmospheres at most top grounds now. Back in the 60's and 70's most grounds were visceral, steaming, rocking places that were almost frighteningly intense.
This may have been down to the drink, the waves of pheromones from the p*** that cascaded down the terraces or the moldy rabbit fur on our parka hoods. But it's long gone now.
These days, in the Premiership only Birmingham City keep this flame alive. Why Brum manage it I don't know but like their neighbours at The Hawthorns, St Andrews is always noisy, irreverent and exciting almost regardless of the quality of football on display and that, as any true fan of their club will tell you, is exactly how it should be.
