Post by QPR Report on Apr 20, 2009 6:01:37 GMT
Paul Wilson/The Guardian
Football's second period threatened by neanderthalsHigh ticket prices and even higher wages have led to huge amounts of venom being directed at players
Professor Rogan Taylor is head of the Football Research Group at Liverpool University, the sort of job title that frequently makes people smile and wonder where to obtain the application form, though his academic and historical perspective cut through the emotion of the Hillsborough anniversary.
For a start, Taylor was one of a very few who pointed out that the disaster, or at least the policing of it, was a product of attitudes adopted during the miners' strike, when the government seemed to want to abolish anything that was working class or "smelled of the smoke-stack industries". Taylor has also observed that Hillsborough, coming as it did almost exactly a century after the foundation of the Football League in 1888, marked the end of football's first era. Compared to what has changed since, professional football remained pretty much the same for its first 100 years. Now we have something that looks the same, but is quite different. Think Dr Who regenerating himself, or the stone age morphing imperceptibly into the bronze age. We are now in the early years of football's second period.
This is the one in which, as you will have heard, spectators pay theatre‑type admission prices for theatre-type privileges. You can take your seat as late as you wish, halfway through the second half if the interval drinks and conversations are particularly stimulating, so that far from being subjected to crushes and rushes, some of the biggest games these days are played out to less than full houses. Football has become adult entertainment, in as much as children and youths independent of their parents can no longer afford it, and though the Premier League like to put a positive spin on the number of females and families at modern games, it is a rare family that is wealthy or well-connected enough to attend every match together.
Families and females are important, though, in football's second age, because no one wants to go down the hooliganism route again. That led to fences, and they led to Hillsborough, but what led to people being penned like cattle in the first place was the gradual abandonment of the terraces by "normal" spectators. People like your mum and dad used to go to football once, or at least your dad and your uncle, until they were put off by bad language, violence or physical discomfort, permitting a cycle of deteriorating behaviour that eventually left hooligans unchecked except by each other and persuaded the authorities that a sub-human species had to be kept behind bars, moats or (although it never happened) electric fences.
Football's second period is based on the notion that if you stop treating people like animals they will stop behaving like animals. It's a comforting thought, especially if you can get people to pay through the nose for the comfort, but it does not appear to be working. Modern grounds have mostly prevented rival fans kicking off against each other, even if what you see in bars and sidestreets afterwards gives the lie to the impression that loutishness has been eliminated. The problem now is that the fans have turned on the players. The whole point of seats is that they can only face the pitch, so that is now where all the excess bile and testosterone‑fuelled rage is directed.
There is no room here for the socio‑economic factors. It could have something to do with players earning unreasonable amounts of money, it may be because society as a whole is now angrier and less tolerant than it used to be, or it may be due to theatre-type seats and prices encouraging a view that poor performances deserve to be heckled. Some players accept abuse as part of their well-paid deal, others feel it is out of order at any price. Only two things are certain. One is that spectators' behaviour towards players and managers is worse now, in the early years of football's second period, than it ever was in the first. The other is that seated spectators have shown themselves capable of directing just as much venom at their own players as at opponents, something that no one would have understood in football's first period.
The PFA have just spoken out against "obscene language and gestures with intimidation", arguing that if such hostility persists players may be forced to leave the pitch. Arguably more worrying is the number of managers and club officials who will privately admit to being disgusted or dismayed by the attitude of their own fans toward their own players. This is a new phenomenon. Every club has always had its share of nutters and negativists, but seats seem to be either encouraging them or giving them a more prominent platform.
Easily the most worrying of all, though, is the assertion by Nick Cusack of the Professional Footballers' Association that unrestrained swearing, cursing and rabid abuse is "a source of huge disquiet among the majority of decent fans". Football needs those decent fans. They are the basis of the second period. Even the television money will eventually disappear if the game is once again perceived to attract only thugs and Neanderthals. The answer is not to bring back standing areas. The answer is to recognise that seats in themselves are not a civilising influence and take action. Football has buried its head in the sand before, and we don't need reminding how the story ended
www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2009/apr/19/hillsborough-premier-league-paul-wilson
Also:
The Times - Paul Canoville: learning lessons the hard wayTom Dart
April 12, 1982, and the 20-year-old Paul Canoville prepares to make his Chelsea debut as a late substitute at Selhurst Park. He warms up along the touchline in front of the visiting fans, who greet their new winger. “Sit down you black c**t! You f***ing wog!” A banana lands near him. He takes off his tracksuit, crosses the white line. “We don’t want the n****r, we don’t want the n****r, la la la laaa.”
When Canoville visits Stamford Bridge now, he is greeted warmly and thanked for being a pioneer: Chelsea’s first black player. The shift in attitude delights him, the respect is compensation for suffering that remains raw. Canoville had not realised it when he joined the club, but a section of their support had links to far-right organisations and racial tension was rife in the capital at large.
“I came in from Fulham Broadway station to games, walking up to the club and there is the National Front giving out leaflets, and that guy must be one of the boys blasting me when I’m on the pitch,” he said. When line-ups were announced and Canoville’s name was read out, he was booed. He would warm up at the last minute to reduce the venom. Chelsea’s players and staff were a blend of sympathy, ignorance and indifference.
“Most of the boys from London had mixed with ethnic minorities but the boys from the country hadn’t and they didn’t understand my culture at all,” Canoville said. “The questions they asked!” The things they said. “ ‘Black people can’t swim, they’re too heavy, they sink.’ Pardon me? I expected a bit more from Chelsea, to be honest. I don’t know, should I have complained, said something that made them react? Because I didn’t say anything they just left it as it is.”
Canoville’s debut forms the prologue of his memoir, Black and Blue. It was recently named Best Autobiography at the British Sports Book Awards and it is quite a read. “There’s always somebody worse off than you,” he said, looking healthy and relaxed in the bar of a London hotel. It’s good that he can think so.
Canoville in a nutshell: a turbulent upbringing in West London as the son of Caribbean immigrants, delinquency and a spell in solitary confinement in a borstal. Making it as a winger with Chelsea but enduring vicious racism, then a career-ending injury in his mid-twenties. Descent into crack-cocaine addiction. Theft to feed the habit. Homelessness. The death of a baby. Cancer — twice. Rehab, remission and rebirth as a youth worker. It’s a wonder he ever found the time to become a successful DJ on the London club scene and to have 11 children with nine different women in the space of 16 years.
It’s the story of a chaotic existence, a victim of callous environments, his own deficiencies and sheer bad luck. The book is full of remarkable episodes. Canoville joined Chelsea from Hillingdon Borough, where for a time he played semi-professionally while living in an abandoned car.
“Obviously when you haven’t washed, that odour . . . it was great to go training because I knew I’d get a shower,” he said. “Living in Southall was hardcore enough — it was a case of you didn’t walk alone because you were in danger of being attacked.”
Back from the edge, Canoville has found purpose and direction. A couple of years ago he discovered a talent for connecting with kids. He is a teaching assistant at a school in Westminster and has formed a company, Senkaa, to work with troubled youngsters.
“I tell them how important school is, about my life, to follow your dreams but that life’s not only about football,” he said. “And I’m getting to them, I really am. I just want to make a difference. To make them decide to stop the gun crime, the knife crime, the drugs and find work, take opportunities and enjoy a better life.”
And because he played for Chelsea, even long ago, they listen. That is the power and reach of football. Canoville’s path from Selhurst Park to inner-city schools is a journey that shows the game as a force for exclusion and community, spite and beauty, inhumanity and compassion.
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/article6128454.ece
Football's second period threatened by neanderthalsHigh ticket prices and even higher wages have led to huge amounts of venom being directed at players
Professor Rogan Taylor is head of the Football Research Group at Liverpool University, the sort of job title that frequently makes people smile and wonder where to obtain the application form, though his academic and historical perspective cut through the emotion of the Hillsborough anniversary.
For a start, Taylor was one of a very few who pointed out that the disaster, or at least the policing of it, was a product of attitudes adopted during the miners' strike, when the government seemed to want to abolish anything that was working class or "smelled of the smoke-stack industries". Taylor has also observed that Hillsborough, coming as it did almost exactly a century after the foundation of the Football League in 1888, marked the end of football's first era. Compared to what has changed since, professional football remained pretty much the same for its first 100 years. Now we have something that looks the same, but is quite different. Think Dr Who regenerating himself, or the stone age morphing imperceptibly into the bronze age. We are now in the early years of football's second period.
This is the one in which, as you will have heard, spectators pay theatre‑type admission prices for theatre-type privileges. You can take your seat as late as you wish, halfway through the second half if the interval drinks and conversations are particularly stimulating, so that far from being subjected to crushes and rushes, some of the biggest games these days are played out to less than full houses. Football has become adult entertainment, in as much as children and youths independent of their parents can no longer afford it, and though the Premier League like to put a positive spin on the number of females and families at modern games, it is a rare family that is wealthy or well-connected enough to attend every match together.
Families and females are important, though, in football's second age, because no one wants to go down the hooliganism route again. That led to fences, and they led to Hillsborough, but what led to people being penned like cattle in the first place was the gradual abandonment of the terraces by "normal" spectators. People like your mum and dad used to go to football once, or at least your dad and your uncle, until they were put off by bad language, violence or physical discomfort, permitting a cycle of deteriorating behaviour that eventually left hooligans unchecked except by each other and persuaded the authorities that a sub-human species had to be kept behind bars, moats or (although it never happened) electric fences.
Football's second period is based on the notion that if you stop treating people like animals they will stop behaving like animals. It's a comforting thought, especially if you can get people to pay through the nose for the comfort, but it does not appear to be working. Modern grounds have mostly prevented rival fans kicking off against each other, even if what you see in bars and sidestreets afterwards gives the lie to the impression that loutishness has been eliminated. The problem now is that the fans have turned on the players. The whole point of seats is that they can only face the pitch, so that is now where all the excess bile and testosterone‑fuelled rage is directed.
There is no room here for the socio‑economic factors. It could have something to do with players earning unreasonable amounts of money, it may be because society as a whole is now angrier and less tolerant than it used to be, or it may be due to theatre-type seats and prices encouraging a view that poor performances deserve to be heckled. Some players accept abuse as part of their well-paid deal, others feel it is out of order at any price. Only two things are certain. One is that spectators' behaviour towards players and managers is worse now, in the early years of football's second period, than it ever was in the first. The other is that seated spectators have shown themselves capable of directing just as much venom at their own players as at opponents, something that no one would have understood in football's first period.
The PFA have just spoken out against "obscene language and gestures with intimidation", arguing that if such hostility persists players may be forced to leave the pitch. Arguably more worrying is the number of managers and club officials who will privately admit to being disgusted or dismayed by the attitude of their own fans toward their own players. This is a new phenomenon. Every club has always had its share of nutters and negativists, but seats seem to be either encouraging them or giving them a more prominent platform.
Easily the most worrying of all, though, is the assertion by Nick Cusack of the Professional Footballers' Association that unrestrained swearing, cursing and rabid abuse is "a source of huge disquiet among the majority of decent fans". Football needs those decent fans. They are the basis of the second period. Even the television money will eventually disappear if the game is once again perceived to attract only thugs and Neanderthals. The answer is not to bring back standing areas. The answer is to recognise that seats in themselves are not a civilising influence and take action. Football has buried its head in the sand before, and we don't need reminding how the story ended
www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2009/apr/19/hillsborough-premier-league-paul-wilson
Also:
The Times - Paul Canoville: learning lessons the hard wayTom Dart
April 12, 1982, and the 20-year-old Paul Canoville prepares to make his Chelsea debut as a late substitute at Selhurst Park. He warms up along the touchline in front of the visiting fans, who greet their new winger. “Sit down you black c**t! You f***ing wog!” A banana lands near him. He takes off his tracksuit, crosses the white line. “We don’t want the n****r, we don’t want the n****r, la la la laaa.”
When Canoville visits Stamford Bridge now, he is greeted warmly and thanked for being a pioneer: Chelsea’s first black player. The shift in attitude delights him, the respect is compensation for suffering that remains raw. Canoville had not realised it when he joined the club, but a section of their support had links to far-right organisations and racial tension was rife in the capital at large.
“I came in from Fulham Broadway station to games, walking up to the club and there is the National Front giving out leaflets, and that guy must be one of the boys blasting me when I’m on the pitch,” he said. When line-ups were announced and Canoville’s name was read out, he was booed. He would warm up at the last minute to reduce the venom. Chelsea’s players and staff were a blend of sympathy, ignorance and indifference.
“Most of the boys from London had mixed with ethnic minorities but the boys from the country hadn’t and they didn’t understand my culture at all,” Canoville said. “The questions they asked!” The things they said. “ ‘Black people can’t swim, they’re too heavy, they sink.’ Pardon me? I expected a bit more from Chelsea, to be honest. I don’t know, should I have complained, said something that made them react? Because I didn’t say anything they just left it as it is.”
Canoville’s debut forms the prologue of his memoir, Black and Blue. It was recently named Best Autobiography at the British Sports Book Awards and it is quite a read. “There’s always somebody worse off than you,” he said, looking healthy and relaxed in the bar of a London hotel. It’s good that he can think so.
Canoville in a nutshell: a turbulent upbringing in West London as the son of Caribbean immigrants, delinquency and a spell in solitary confinement in a borstal. Making it as a winger with Chelsea but enduring vicious racism, then a career-ending injury in his mid-twenties. Descent into crack-cocaine addiction. Theft to feed the habit. Homelessness. The death of a baby. Cancer — twice. Rehab, remission and rebirth as a youth worker. It’s a wonder he ever found the time to become a successful DJ on the London club scene and to have 11 children with nine different women in the space of 16 years.
It’s the story of a chaotic existence, a victim of callous environments, his own deficiencies and sheer bad luck. The book is full of remarkable episodes. Canoville joined Chelsea from Hillingdon Borough, where for a time he played semi-professionally while living in an abandoned car.
“Obviously when you haven’t washed, that odour . . . it was great to go training because I knew I’d get a shower,” he said. “Living in Southall was hardcore enough — it was a case of you didn’t walk alone because you were in danger of being attacked.”
Back from the edge, Canoville has found purpose and direction. A couple of years ago he discovered a talent for connecting with kids. He is a teaching assistant at a school in Westminster and has formed a company, Senkaa, to work with troubled youngsters.
“I tell them how important school is, about my life, to follow your dreams but that life’s not only about football,” he said. “And I’m getting to them, I really am. I just want to make a difference. To make them decide to stop the gun crime, the knife crime, the drugs and find work, take opportunities and enjoy a better life.”
And because he played for Chelsea, even long ago, they listen. That is the power and reach of football. Canoville’s path from Selhurst Park to inner-city schools is a journey that shows the game as a force for exclusion and community, spite and beauty, inhumanity and compassion.
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/article6128454.ece