QuoteHoly fcuk - now even the culchies have money.......!Originally Posted by Magicme
Should lead to some interesting retail trends though...
Naw am neither....am upper middle class! We are new money dont you know!
Holy fcuk - now even the culchies have money.......!
Should lead to some interesting retail trends though...
Oi less of the culchieism! Not that am a cluchie....am a refined young lady from the upper echelons of Monaghan Society with Tyrone royalty in my breeding!
Oh - you're a woman ! Sorry - didn't realise....
'How you doin'......?
Would've thought Rugby always was middle class in this country, and their success has been to stretch it's appeal out of that, particularly Leinster.
The gentrification of football has destroyed so many of the elements that I love about football supporting, I'd hate to see a similar move in this country. All seaters have destroyed atmosphere - they've taken away the pay at the gate, stand and sing with your mates that supporting football used to be about.
The only element that the clubs and Government introduced from the Taylor Report was the all seater rule. The Tories saw football as another way to get at the working classes, after they'd destroyed the unions. While class may not be relevant to our league going forward, you can't seperate it from what happened in England.
If you attack me with stupidity, I'll be forced to defend myself with sarcasm.
Feck off!Oh - you're a woman ! Sorry - didn't realise....
'How you doin'......?
Where'd you see that?
I agree that this talk of class is tosh, but that was the spin that came across very strongly at the recent 'Future of Football' debate at DCU.
Think it was the English Sunday Times.
I put the recycling bag out earlier, but it was still there when I came in a few mo's ago. Will bring it back into the house and see if I can dig it out.
Macy - that is one of the most absurd and politically fantastical things I have ever read on this site. And that is certainly saying something !
The Tories saw football as a way of getting at the working classes ? Hence they introduced all seater stadia...? Are you really typing that with a straight face ?!? I'm embarassed for you dude...
The Tories were, and still are, many bad things, and I never have and never would give them an ounce of support. But you've completely lost the head with your political conspiracies here. The Tories clipped the Unions (I wasn't aware they'd been destroyed !? I mean - they still own boat loads of big buildings all around where I live, and haven't they just been considering going on strike over at BA...!?) because it fitted their economic aims. Rightly or wrongly, they saw that Britain had to restructure economically to fit the needs of a changing world, and they correctly summised that the Unions would be the single biggest stumbling block to them achieving this structural economic aim. Hence why they dramatically curtailed their power.
As for them having it in for the working classes - it was the feckin aspirational working classes who kept Thatcher in power you moron ! Hence why they brought in the Right to Buy Council homes etc. And who do you think the Tories are anwyay - Polo fans ? Just like the rest of Britain, most of them support football and football teams themselves..
Idiotic pseudo-left wing Trotskyite chip-on-shulder nonesense of the highest order. Seriously embarassing....
You wouldn't have a photo of yourself in a Monaghan top by any chance, would you........?Feck off!
As usual, you're the one that's wrong but choose to call Macy's post "absurd" and "fantastical" instead. I understand the tactic but we can see through it.Macy - that is one of the most absurd and politically fantastical things I have ever read on this site. And that is certainly saying something !
In Macy's defence (not that he needs one) I give you Colin Moynihan, ID cards, the Hillsborough whitewash, and yes, the Taylor Report.
Thatcher was delighted by Heysel as it gave her a chance to demonise the young, working class, white males who went to football. This was an extension of her decimation of the traditional working class industries and all that "no such thing as society" rubbish.
Obviously you are free to choose to deny that this was class motivated and that football has always been the working man's game all you like. Similarly you can decide that all-seater stadia, the Premiership, Sky etc have not driven the working class away from the game. You'd be wrong though.
KOH
No One Likes Us, We Don't Care
What is working class anymore anyway? Are we all one huge middle class now? A trades person is probably more likely to earn more money than a lot of professionals so classes & these phrases mean nothing.
The eL is in catch 22 situation. We need bigger crowds as than means more atmosphere & more atmosphere means bigger crowds. On per person basis the eL has as good armosphere as anything out there. If we could get even half the crowds of rugby would have better atmospheres. At the same time the eL cannot rely on core base support anymore as too many games & too many distractions so need more support from people who may only do 5 games a year...
No we're not. There isn't and never has been a perfect fit between income and class; you don't become middle class the minute you start paying the higher rate of tax - and there are still working- class people - even in Ireland; come down to a football match and I'll introduce you to some (clue: they'll be the well dressed ones)
A patriot is someone who knows how to hate his country properly.
This one line is enough to blow everything else you say out of the water.
Football has not "always been the working man's game".
As I mentioned earlier in this thread, it was first created/codified at the most elite public schools in England - the likes of Eton, Charterhouse, Harrrow and Rugby. It remained upper-class property at public schools and Universities for a number of years, whilst slowly trickling down to the masses. And how did it trickle down the social scale ? Well - interestingly, via that favourite transfixation of a number of Rovers fans with regards Bohemians : i.e. the British military. Posh kids from the poshest schools in England went on to become Posh Captains and Majors in the British army, where the ordinary working class grunts finally got their first taste of the beautiful game. Darned unsporting really, considering it 'had always been their game' in the first place...
And how did football then make its way around the world ? Well - for very many it was via that old friend the British army again. Its not an accident that football in Ireland became called 'The Garrison game'.
In other parts of the world, however, it started to filter out via British businessmen, academics, students etc. Argentinian football was largely established by a Scottish schoolmaster who had set up an English High School in Buenos Aries. Football was brought to Brazil by a public schoolboy form Charterhouse, who's father was an English businessman involved in developing that country's rail network. All thoroughly working class characters, I'm sure you'll agree...
So football has clearly NOT always been the working man's game. It actually began life as the posh kid's game, before going on to become the posh soldier's game, then the colonialist soldier's game and the international businessman's game, before finally trickling down to fully involve the numerically greater working classes after about 3 decades.
So it is clearly not myself who is playing the historical revisionist to push some tired old class-driven political agenda
Anyways - why the desperate need to brand football as the property of one class or another anyway ? Why can't you just accept that football is the property of all classes and none ? A sport cannot be as big and as global as football without that being the case.
___
As for those crazy Tories looking to remove any glimmer of fun from the working class man's life, you need to look at theri actions in the context of the reality of the times. Endemic violence was destroying English and Scottish football in the 1970's and 1980's. There had been a number of major internationally shameful incidents regarding violence, stadiums etc (Heysel, Hillsborough), with English clubs banned from Europe as a resuilt, and the national team often a mere punch or stones throw away from following them. NO government at that time would have stood idly by in the face of this, and nor would they have been allowed to by the electorate/opposition parties.
The measures the Tories brought in to tackle the huge problems in English football may have been to varyigng degrees misguided. But to assert that their motivation was primarily a desire to be a killjoy for the working classes is the type of insane political history you thankfully don't hear any more outside of the pages of 'Socialist Worker newspaper. I suppose you likewise think that the current Labour government's misguided anti-Terrorism rules are all destined to destroy Islam....?
And bizarrely - by method or luck - the football legilsation brought in to tackle football hooliganism, stadia etc did successfully remove violence from stadiums (you'll never stop the nutters who want to meet up elsewhere) and restore to a large degree the reputation of English club football.
Nietzsche says something rude somewhere about philologists - of which he was, originally one - thinking that they can prove what a word means by telling you where it came from; telling you what something meant 'originally' tells you nothing about what it means within a language now; in just the same way, telling us that football was invented by toffs does nothing to alter the fact that for most of the time, in most of the world, its been a mass sport and most often played and supported by the urban working classes.
A patriot is someone who knows how to hate his country properly.
Wow! And all this because Rod Liddle can't have a fag! I'm sure there's a just-obscure-enough term for this kind of conversation on the net, that everyone understands after they've looked it up/invented it on wikipedia.
In the original post, I was rather focussing on the mention of the telly as part of all this, and should have taken more care with the title.
Liddle is talking about foot.ie's most hated -- BARSTOOLERS!
That was an essay on how football became popular around the world. Football became the game of the working class when the oiks decided that they'd like to get paid for playing it. So just like the divide between rugby league and rugby union in england, the workers went professional and those exploiting them thought this frightfully common and not living up to corinthian values, and wanted nothing to do with professionalism.
"I just came in to buy a stamp"-Padraig Pearse, April 24th 1916
Steady on there, Steve! Hillsborough had nothing to do with hooliganism/violence and everything to do with police incompetence. There is no evidence that 'safe' seating is less dangerous than 'safe' terracing.
And the lessening violence at games in Britain is down to good policing, not seating. Which is something the Gardai could do with learning.
Billy's rught the Hillsborough disaster was proven to be caused by the coppers plus the fencing that used to be in front of terracing in those days.
TO TELL THE TRUTH IS REVOLUTIONARY
The ONLY foot.ie user with a type of logic named after them!
All of this has happened before. All of it will happen again.
a greater density of people(terracing) in one area has to be more dangerous than seating. if you've ever been in a crowded terrace you must have been swaying from time to time. if you are sitting down there is no such danger unless you've had 10 pints. the evidence of improved safety would be the lack of any disasters. what is probably more dangerous now though is standing in the seated area. safe terracing would be the ideal but, as the argument goes, isnt desirable to the middle class. rather than class distinction the emphasis should be on the supporter. those who want to stand,sing and take part should have terraces available, while those that want their comfy seats and prawn sandwiches can pay 3 times for the 'privileged' comfort. i'll be back to ye with the stadium design, maybe lower tier would be terrrace and upper seats so the middle classes can peer down their noses?
an article in today's irish times mentions blackburn are slashing their ticket prices, clearly football hasnt been made friendly enough to the middle class of balckburn, now the club is going crawling back to proletariat.
its mentioned above that rugby should be targeted for supporters but surely its the gaa. 80,000 are going to croker on a cold saturday in february for an inconsequential league match...bigger attendances at provincial cup matches in january than big eL games...these people are obviously sports-mad but wouldnt dream of going to an eL match, maybe its because the toilets are dirty?
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