02 February 2024 , 19:27
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We've been hearing a lot this week about football “going back to the Dark Ages”. Or, for those who like to give 110% in cliches, Jeff, that once again we’re looking at “the ugly face of the beautiful game”.
Here are the reasons: last weekend the FA Cup derby between West Brom and Wolves had to be stopped after fans fought in the stands and a man was taken to hospital with head wounds.
Manchester United striker Marcus Rashford knocked back tequilas in Belfast before throwing a sickie, and his England colleague Kyle Walker admitted he’s been exercising his libido so much he’s now got almost as many kids as Boris Johnson.
Certain former male players have turned into Sid The Sexists because TV has the audacity to hire women pundits, and black players like Leyton Orient’s Dan Agyei are being trolled on social media by vile racists.
Most of which needs to be condemned and acted upon by football’s stakeholders, which thankfully it is. But something also needs to be pointed out to commentators who enjoy painting football as a grubby lower-class pursuit and politicians seeking kudos by moralising about our national sport. Today is nothing like the Dark Ages.
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In the late 1960s, I heard entire sections of grounds rocking with monkey grunts aimed at black players like West Ham’s Clyde Best. In the 70s, I was regularly chased through streets and underpasses by rival fans wielding Stanley knives. In the 80s, I had to perfect the peripheral vision of an eagle to dodge the coins, darts, and, during one FA Cup semi-final, golf balls bearing 8in nails heading my way.
As for Rashford’s night out in Belfast, it seems like a Women’s Institute tea dance compared with some of the benders players went on back then.
I remember Liverpool manager Bob Paisley being asked if he thought midfielder Terry McDermott was spending too many nights in drinking dens and answering: “So long as he lays off it for 36 hours before every game that’s fine. It keeps him thirsty.”
In 1984, Liverpool’s all-conquering team embarked on a late-night, drunken brawl among themselves in a Tel Aviv square which involved urinating on tables, legless punch-throwing and black eyes. Nobody found out, or cared, especially when they won the European Cup the following week.
As for these young, fit men being too promiscuous, had Fleet Street deemed their sex lives newsworthy in the pre-Premier League era there would have been no room for other stories.
The truth is today’s fans and players, many of whom do so much good work in their communities, have never been collectively better behaved in the six decades I’ve watched football.
The English game still has many problems, a new one being the number of fans on cocaine-fuelled highs. But so does the country.
From company directors to Deliveroo drivers, you can find a cross-section who get too drunk, too angry, have affairs, hold racist and sexist views, take drugs and act violently.
Football merely reflects society. A fact politicians like Rishi Sunak, who was quick to respond to the West Brom violence by saying “there’s no place for that kind of behaviour”, should remember.
Because there’s no place for sex offenders, liars, racists, fraudsters and bullies, either. Yet Westminster is full of them.
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