The football fan collective and wit can be, at times, glorious in its dark and observational humour.
I fondly recall, even now, the exchange between Newcastle and Sunderland fans not so long ago when the Newcastle fans, delighting in the seemingly fatal demise of their opponents took to chanting “going down, going down, going down.”
Unoriginal and predictable yes. But what wasn’t, was the reply of the Sunderland masses who chose to answer back with a cry of, “so are we, so are we, so are we.”
They could make a fortune writing half decent jokes for the likes of Russell Brand if that’s the speed and calibre of their riposte to a half-hearted put down.
Then there was the famous effort from Liverpool, the fans of whom are the self appointed masters of terrace wit, wisdom and repartee. Improvised and sung in tribute to the Bambi on ice tendencies of Djimi Traoré, it didn’t as much celebrate his capabilities as a defender, more his unerring ability to sometimes trip over his own feet whilst, at the same time, managing to fit in the names of three of his more balanced companions into the song thus,
“Don’t blame it on the Biscan, don’t blame it on the Hamann, don’t blame it on the Finnan – blame it on Traore. He just can’t , he just can’t , he just can’t control his feet. He just can’t , he just can’t , he just can’t control his feet. “
Love it. Football humour as it should be. Swift, dark and cutting. And, as all of the best chants and songs in football often are, self deprecatory as well. It’s part of what makes the matchday experience, home or away, worth its weight in gold.
I remember a game at the beginning of the 1985/86 season against Sheffield United. We hadn’t had the best of starts to a post-relegation season with only one win in our opening five games, something which was reflected in a disappointing crowd of just under 13,000 on the night. We won – and won convincingly to the tune of 4-0, yet despite their demise and the onfield woes of their team, the backchat between the large number of travelling supporters and their peers in the Barclay got funnier and funnier as the game wore on. I sat in the old South Stand (H Block) that night and became more and more distracted from the game as I listened to the repartee between the two sets of supporters.
It was a like the Last Night of the Proms for the footballing lads. Banners, colours, singing, exchanges that were as sharp and accurate in their observation and delivery as were those by David Williams on the pitch. As the game petered to its conclusion, I sat back in my seat (or would have done, had there been room) and thought just how much I loved football.
The game, the culture, the interaction between the players and the fans, the wit, character and colour of it all. It was great.
Yes, Carrow Road left a lot to be desired at the time. The state of the road behind the old South Stand was so bad at the time that you often found yourself walking in several inches of mud and water as you navigated it whilst the Barclay was guarded by that stentorian black fence, beyond which was the grassy mound you had to climb and conquer to reach your seat. It was like going into battle – and, once you got to your allotted place on the terrace, you became as familiar and intimate with those around you as you would never want socially, the mass of bodies all packed in together in what was, pretty much, communal harmony.
We all sang from the same hymn sheet and expected little more than to be able to support our team, for good or bad. We were there regardless and we supported the team and one another.
But that sort of wit, the spontaneity and sheer fun of it all seems to be missing from the game now, or has, at the very least, been diluted by the long term commercialisation of the game over the last two decades. One where both clubs and media alike seem to prefer that family-friendly image of spectators with happy smiling faces; young attractive, sometimes painted faces with women and children in healthy abundance.
And, before anyone has a go at me for being a footballing luddite, I’m not objecting to that at all. Football might be our game but that ‘our’ is as in the biggest collective imaginable. It’s for everyone and rightly so.
But I do think that the rise and rise of the football watching demographic is pushing that original spectating hardcore out of the game – and that as much as football is the peoples game, the game for everyone and anyone, not everyone and anyone can necessarily afford to watch it anymore.
With that, for me, a part of the game has died and will, in all probability, never return. Football’s gentrification has, in many ways, been a good thing. But it hasn’t, I don’t think, been for the total good of the game. And this might just be me – but I don’t see much wit at the football anymore. No character, no personality, no repartee and certainly no banter between fans – never mind between the opposing sets of fans, I don’t see it much within our own ranks, indeed, we seem now more likely to want to verbally joust or fight with one another than we would have wanted to have done with the opposition.
Maybe the day of the ‘true’ football fan has gone. We’re now seen, after all, as customers, even, and I shudder at the use of the word in this context, ‘consumers’. Football has become dearly departed from the simple game that it once was. It is now a product and we are the consumers who choose to support said product. Thus expectations have gone through the roof.
Think about it. The minute you have the iPhone 4 you want the iPhone 5. And as soon as you have that then the reviews of the ‘new and improved’ iPhone 6 begin. And you want one of those so bad that it hurts. And so on and so on. Into, as Buzz Lightyear would say, infinity – and beyond. There are, nor will there ever be, any limits or barriers to greed.
And so it has been with the football.
The minute we were in League One – and, in all honesty, fortunate to even exist, we all wanted nothing more than to have a team to support. Then we dared to want to be back in the Championship. But once we were back there the demands and expectations changed and we all wanted to get back into the Premier League. Once we were there we wanted to stay put and, in time, spend the sort of money that would have been maybe a couple of season’s total budget for Dave Stringer on just one player. The more we had, the more we wanted. And the more we want, the more we demand, the more we have – the more we expect. And nothing, in the entire history of this club, has even come remotely close to those expectations that surround this season, Premier League III.
Expectations which haven’t so much gone through the roof as, for some, broken out of earth orbit and started making their way towards the stars.
Expectations which have manifested this season in the constant grizzle that seems to be coming from some parts of our support for whom, one way or another, nothing is, or has, been right since day one. And, as far as they are concerned, the person who should take responsibility for those expectations being dashed is Chris Hughton.
And this was never more embarrassingly demonstrated than it was at the weekend when the cries of “You don’t know what you’re doing” rang around Carrow Road in response to the manager replacing Gary Hooper with Johan Elmander with around twenty minutes to go.
Might I suggest that, in this instance, the only people who do not know what they are doing are that vocal minority who are chanting it in the first place? As one critic of the game has since observed, whilst we – or anyone – have every right to wonder at a manager’s reasoning when any decision is made, we certainly do not have the right, experience or knowledge to credibly challenge the experience and acumen that he has got; accrued in his career in order to be entrusted with the job in the first place.
In Monday’s (28/10) edition of the Pink Un, Chris Hughton felt obliged to explain his thinking behind that substitution. It sounded reasonable, sensible and logical and one carried out in the best interests of the player involved, the team and the game as a whole. Yet the way people have gone on about it, I almost wondered if he was going to be expected to issue a formal apology and promise never to do it again.
The game has, of course, moved on since those days of my Canary supporting youth in the mid-1980s. And it had to. Hillsborough, Heysel and the Valley Parade disasters all pointed to a sport that was being played in, for the main, antiquated surroundings where very little regard was held for the supporter; this matching the attitude that Margaret Thatcher had for us all at the time. The game was dying on its feet and she would have been amongst the first to dance on its grave, of that I have little doubt.
So yes, change was overdue, both in attitudes and infrastructure – and not a moment too soon in many cases. Sadly, however, as the game has moved on, so has the demands of the spectator and so has, it would seem, a lot of the fun that there was to be had in going to the game and supporting your team.
Fun has been replaced by the need for instant gratification and reward. It’s as if the only reason to go to the game is to see the team win. Everything else is peripheral, secondary, insignificant even. Nothing else matters other than those three points at around 4:55pm and the total of around 40 of those points by the end of April. The thought of defeat is unthinkable. The prospect of relegation terrifying. No wonder it sometimes doesn’t feel like fun anymore – because there’s too much at stake for it to be fun.
Or so it seems. Yet, despite all of that, try to stop me going. No chance. Talk about contradictions. Football, as Sir Alex Ferguson has been known to say. Bloody hell.
Bloody hell indeed.
I’m curious to know what other people think, particularly those who have been going to see Norwich for many years. How does it compare, the matchday experience and your expectations now, those of the club in general, the players and the manager compared to say, how it felt just before the formation of the Premier League or even the seventies and beyond that. Did it feel different then? Was it more – well, fun? Was there less expectation to deliver?
And did anyone ever try to tell Ron Saunders that he didn’t know what he was doing?
Still love and get excited about every game. Been watching football at Leicester and Portsmouth in 70s and supporting Canaries since 76. Football has changed but so have lots of things. Still think the wit is there amongst supporters. My favourite memory from a few seasons back – a friendly against Italian opposition with about 2 supporters in the away section, canaries score and Barclay turn on mass to direct ‘you’re not singing any more’ to these 2 individuals! Brilliant!
Ed – thanks for the article. You have summed up my thoughts on the present matchday experience perfectly. The instant gratification analogy is, I think particularly apt. The seemingly inevitable need for a scapegoat also irks me – if its not an individual player that is the sole reason for our failure to pick up the three points it must be the managers fault.
Back in the day it seemed to be understood that we would win some, lose some,but now if we lose, the perception seems to be that our club must be failing us.
I’d like to think it’s all the fault of the new breed of football supporter, unfortunately many of the crowd I attend with (all 40 plus somethings) are just the same.
Ed, great article. As for your final question, I don’t think any of the current vocal minority would have the testicular fortitude to speak to Ron Saunders – let alone convey to him that they didn’t think he knew what he was doing!
Sounds like a bout of either ‘early winter blues’ or PMAC (post Munich anniversary celebration) syndrome you’re suffering from. Would this article have come out if we were sitting in the top half of the table? Are Southampton fans craving for the Dell-days right now?
It falls to each generation to bemoan the passing of better times. For me, Tom Baker and dodgy cardboard scenery will always beat Matt Smith and fancy CGI. Patrick Moore or Magnus Pike will always knock Brian Cox and his fancy foreign travelogues into a cocked hat.
I was always a fan of a half-time piping cup of Bovril but I think that has now been classified as a chemical weapon by the UN?
That said, as a previous veteran of the South stand, I don’t recall much banter in the 80s and 90s other than, “Excuse me, can I get past,” or “Ouch, you’ve just spilt your coffee on my leg.” I do recall the coin-tossing, car park fights and blatant racist chanting back then.
Maybe we need a new, contemporary club song to replace the old classic? Maybe we need to bring back the inflatable, waveable Canaries?
I think Ron Saunders would have responded to team/tactical criticism from fans in the same way Buzz Aldrin did when accused of conspiring in a Moon landing hoax – he would have smacked that person in the cakehole. I wouldn’t blame CH for doing likewise to all the armchair experts that have been booing him.
I’m off to take the back door off the latch and get a cup of sugar ready..just in case.
Last season we had to endure an entire 90 mins of some ‘fans’ giving Grant Holt the most atrocious abuse. In front of children – no language spared. No thought as to how without Holt we’d not be in the Premier League. No respect. No perspective. So many angry people. I feel sorry for the partners they go home to.
Brilliant article Ed. I used to go a lot in the early 90’s when the premiership was launched and I would say there was a lot more of a buzz those days as everything was less commercialised and it all still felt a bit more real. Players showing loyalty to clubs for long periods of time and not earning fortunes etc
I don’t get the Hughtonouters! They must realise where we are, where we have come from and that the only thing they are doing is demoralising the team. The team ARE playing well and just need a bit of luck. I feel it will start tonight winning on pens at Man U!
Brilliant article, agree with everything in it. This from someone who had forgotten that it is supposed to be fun. Thank you for reminding me, OTBC.
Although there was some (ridiculous) booing of Hughton when the substitutions were made there was an immediate reposte of ‘who the flip do you support?’ directed back to them. Football has always been watched by angry and impatient men; I clearly remember as a young child with my dad being surprised at irate old men in the Main Stand throwing cushions at the bench-in a reserves game! Most of football has changed for the better (other than the admission price).I am still finding it odd that I can mix freely with opposing supporters around the ground without fear of violence; that didn’t happen in the 80s. I can have a beer in comfort at half time in the Barclay without fear that a pint of urine will be thrown over the barbed wire topped wall that used to keep the supporters apart. The joy and despair associated with results hasn’t changed one iota, a win is a win whichever division we’re in and the euphoria of celebrating one hasn’t changed in the 40ish years I’ve been a fan. The funniest song I can remember was the opposition fans (I think from Burnley) who sang to Paul McVeigh ‘You’re supposed to be a gnome’
Initially I thoroughly agreed and reminist with this article but then reconsidered. Why do we have a contradiction with the rules of service not applying at football grounds. For example at a restaurant if I suffer poor service or food I’m encouarged to complain as this will improve things (very American of us)!! However if another professional (person getting paid for their trade, and very well too) serves up short I’m encouraged to accept this….confused ? Is the problem that football is too commercial, expensive and people expect VFM ? Wish that football could be as amusing as before but while the ‘bean counters’ continue to rule our world I fear not !
Super article Ed. I pose the question – how would we view our current standing without the internet? If you cast your eyes over social media during/after a game at the moment you would think that our world is about to collapse! Pre the web we would have to wait until Monday morning to review the action/discuss with work colleagues/school friends. You also have to wonder how much of the local journalism is fuelled by these same instant reactions on messageboards….
Sadly, I have to agree with the article. I was at the Cardiff game at the weekend, and I thought the support was much poorer than I’ve seen it in the past. Even the Barclay were quiet. The Cardiff fans were great, however. I was also at the Spurs and Arsenal games as an away fan, and I was very disappointed with the Norwich support there. Although you could say what we saw at White Hart Lane was demoralising, the Cardiff fans had very little to shout about but still made impressive noise throughout. When the inevitable chants of ‘You’re supposed to be at home’ came I felt a little embarrassed to be amongst those so quiet.
The home fans were poor at both WHL and the Emirates, so I’m sure it isn’t just our fans who don’t make the noise they used to. The gentrification of the game as a whole is to blame, without doubt, for the lack of real atmosphere. It has its positives, of course. Many who wouldn’t have felt safe at grounds now would. That sense of danger is all but gone, but that sense of danger is what drew a lot of people, the noisy ones, to the games. Those who were in modest jobs on low wages could gather on a Saturday and have something to collectively shout about. Now they can’t afford tickets, never mind season tickets, which most of the seats are taken up by.
I think back to how loud the Barclay used to be, and I wonder. Could it be that the only ones who also remember that and can get seats in that stand are a bit too old to be shouting themselves hoarse, and can afford a season ticket, while anyone young enough to want to sing all game can’t afford a season ticket and therefore can’t get in the Barclay at all because it’s almost entirely taken up by the former?
Ah. Memories of trips away in the early eighties and taunting home fans with “nil-nil” before the game knowing that it was unlikely to get any better. Or singing “there’s two linesmen but only one referee”.