The Sock of Poskett
The best is yet to come (spoiler alert)
- Jun 12, 2009
- 2,803
Have a read and see what you think: he makes some good points IMHO 
It's always pantomime season at the match
Matthew Syed
Joey Barton and Danny Baker went at it on Twitter on Sunday night, debating the perennial question as to whether it is, or is not, acceptable for fans to boo their own side.
Barton takes the view that this is not something real fans do. He was disappointed that his QPR team got it in the neck from a small section of home fans during their 0-0 draw with Crystal Palace. He said that people who boo are more like “consumers” than “fans”; people who change with the wind.
Baker, however, offered a different perspective. He argued that fans have a perfect “right” to boo and that it can, on occasions, be useful. “Booing helps supporters. They are the only people in the place who PAID to get in. It makes them feel better #Cathartic,” Baker wrote.
My sense, however, is that they are both at least slightly wrong. The mistake is to try to shoehorn fans into categories that do not really fit. Fans are not consumers (they do not switch clubs if the neighbouring club offers more attractive football or tastier meat pies), but they are not really supporters, either. At least, they are not only supporters.
They are also actors. They are jobbing extras in the nation’s biggest pantomime. And this is the only way to understand their behaviour on the terraces, and not just with regard to booing.
For example: ask any fan away from a stadium what they think of referees and he will say that they are doing the best job they can in difficult circumstances. He will sympathise with how tough it is to keep track of everything that is going on with just the one pair of eyes. Ask him to offer an opinion from the stands, however, and suddenly the referee is “the b****** in the black”. He will scream with incredulity every time a decision goes against his team, even when the decision is justified.
Or ask a fan on a Wednesday morning his view about an opposition manager in the middle of a bad sequence of results and he will probably offer compassion. He will point out that management is a tough job, and empathise with the poor fellow and his family. But ask his opinion while he is at a game on a Saturday afternoon and he will sing (with gusto rarely seen in the modern world): “you’re getting sacked in the morning, sacked in the moooooorning”.
Or ask a fan about a fine player who has left the club for pastures new, and he will recognise, given the lure of a bigger contract elsewhere, that it made sense for the player to leave. Ask him while he is at the ground, though, and he will describe the player as a Judas. He will regard his name as taboo. And he may even jeer the player whenever he comes to visit, possibly for years to come.
What happens on the terraces, then, is not “rational”. It is not something that can be analysed in the way that Barton and Baker, from their differing perspectives, attempt to do. Rather, it is pantomime. Fans are serious about their football; of course they are. They have a deep sense of identity with their clubs. But while football is serious; it is also fantasy. Fandom consists in the trick of believing football is both the most important as well as the most gloriously trivial thing in the world.
I have travelled to games with perfectly stolid folk who, half an hour into the match, particularly when caught up in moments of crowd euphoria or anger, morph into ham actors. They shout, scream, laugh and cry. They are not at the ground as spectators, supporters or consumers; they are part of the cast. They get into their Saturday afternoon personas rather as they get into their club scarves and woolly hats. Fandom is method acting on a grand scale.
Look at postings on websites and you will see the same basic truth: fans hamming it up. The postings are angry, impassioned, and often sincere, but these are, ultimately, superficial qualities. Underneath, there is a profound if unspoken sense of irony: a glorying in the fact that, in a world with death, war and pestilence, we are able to take a group of 22 men kicking a pig’s bladder around a pitch so terribly seriously. Is not this the essential paradox of fandom?
And this takes me back to Barton and Baker. I know many fans who would never boo their team. For them, it is a Rubicon they would not cross, no matter how awful the lads were playing. But for some fans, booing is part of the script. They are desperate for their team to win, but they reserve the right, on rare occasions, to scream at their own players or jeer the manager. It is not about fickleness. It is not “disloyal”. It is simply about enacting an essential storyline in the wider pantomime: the need for episodic crises.
Even the owners get caught up in the madness because they are at heart (many of them) fans too. The managerial merry-go-round, for example, has no basis in logic: sacking and recruiting the same cast list of middle-aged men, sometimes within the space of a week. People try to analyse these episodes, rather as Barton tried to deconstruct why fans boo their own team. But these things take place precisely because they defy analysis. It is another part of the escapist fantasy known as modern football.
Some fans take things too far. They threaten a player or engage in unacceptable chanting. But they are like actors who have not understood the concept of the Fourth Wall. They have not learnt the trick of wearing strong emotions lightly. Even the great Nick Hornby, who missed big family events to watch his beloved Arsenal, recognised the irony that underpins fandom. He could see that it exists in a parallel universe to real life.
In so many ways, football is not amenable to rational analysis. It is better thought of less as a sport, or even a facet of capitalism, and more as a remote island where people get marooned in childhood and then stay for life. It has its rituals, customs and anthropology. It has its own set of assumptions. And, like many remote cultures and tribes, it can only be understood by examining its internal logic. That is, ultimately, its beauty.
It's always pantomime season at the match
Matthew Syed
Joey Barton and Danny Baker went at it on Twitter on Sunday night, debating the perennial question as to whether it is, or is not, acceptable for fans to boo their own side.
Barton takes the view that this is not something real fans do. He was disappointed that his QPR team got it in the neck from a small section of home fans during their 0-0 draw with Crystal Palace. He said that people who boo are more like “consumers” than “fans”; people who change with the wind.
Baker, however, offered a different perspective. He argued that fans have a perfect “right” to boo and that it can, on occasions, be useful. “Booing helps supporters. They are the only people in the place who PAID to get in. It makes them feel better #Cathartic,” Baker wrote.
My sense, however, is that they are both at least slightly wrong. The mistake is to try to shoehorn fans into categories that do not really fit. Fans are not consumers (they do not switch clubs if the neighbouring club offers more attractive football or tastier meat pies), but they are not really supporters, either. At least, they are not only supporters.
They are also actors. They are jobbing extras in the nation’s biggest pantomime. And this is the only way to understand their behaviour on the terraces, and not just with regard to booing.
For example: ask any fan away from a stadium what they think of referees and he will say that they are doing the best job they can in difficult circumstances. He will sympathise with how tough it is to keep track of everything that is going on with just the one pair of eyes. Ask him to offer an opinion from the stands, however, and suddenly the referee is “the b****** in the black”. He will scream with incredulity every time a decision goes against his team, even when the decision is justified.
Or ask a fan on a Wednesday morning his view about an opposition manager in the middle of a bad sequence of results and he will probably offer compassion. He will point out that management is a tough job, and empathise with the poor fellow and his family. But ask his opinion while he is at a game on a Saturday afternoon and he will sing (with gusto rarely seen in the modern world): “you’re getting sacked in the morning, sacked in the moooooorning”.
Or ask a fan about a fine player who has left the club for pastures new, and he will recognise, given the lure of a bigger contract elsewhere, that it made sense for the player to leave. Ask him while he is at the ground, though, and he will describe the player as a Judas. He will regard his name as taboo. And he may even jeer the player whenever he comes to visit, possibly for years to come.
What happens on the terraces, then, is not “rational”. It is not something that can be analysed in the way that Barton and Baker, from their differing perspectives, attempt to do. Rather, it is pantomime. Fans are serious about their football; of course they are. They have a deep sense of identity with their clubs. But while football is serious; it is also fantasy. Fandom consists in the trick of believing football is both the most important as well as the most gloriously trivial thing in the world.
I have travelled to games with perfectly stolid folk who, half an hour into the match, particularly when caught up in moments of crowd euphoria or anger, morph into ham actors. They shout, scream, laugh and cry. They are not at the ground as spectators, supporters or consumers; they are part of the cast. They get into their Saturday afternoon personas rather as they get into their club scarves and woolly hats. Fandom is method acting on a grand scale.
Look at postings on websites and you will see the same basic truth: fans hamming it up. The postings are angry, impassioned, and often sincere, but these are, ultimately, superficial qualities. Underneath, there is a profound if unspoken sense of irony: a glorying in the fact that, in a world with death, war and pestilence, we are able to take a group of 22 men kicking a pig’s bladder around a pitch so terribly seriously. Is not this the essential paradox of fandom?
And this takes me back to Barton and Baker. I know many fans who would never boo their team. For them, it is a Rubicon they would not cross, no matter how awful the lads were playing. But for some fans, booing is part of the script. They are desperate for their team to win, but they reserve the right, on rare occasions, to scream at their own players or jeer the manager. It is not about fickleness. It is not “disloyal”. It is simply about enacting an essential storyline in the wider pantomime: the need for episodic crises.
Even the owners get caught up in the madness because they are at heart (many of them) fans too. The managerial merry-go-round, for example, has no basis in logic: sacking and recruiting the same cast list of middle-aged men, sometimes within the space of a week. People try to analyse these episodes, rather as Barton tried to deconstruct why fans boo their own team. But these things take place precisely because they defy analysis. It is another part of the escapist fantasy known as modern football.
Some fans take things too far. They threaten a player or engage in unacceptable chanting. But they are like actors who have not understood the concept of the Fourth Wall. They have not learnt the trick of wearing strong emotions lightly. Even the great Nick Hornby, who missed big family events to watch his beloved Arsenal, recognised the irony that underpins fandom. He could see that it exists in a parallel universe to real life.
In so many ways, football is not amenable to rational analysis. It is better thought of less as a sport, or even a facet of capitalism, and more as a remote island where people get marooned in childhood and then stay for life. It has its rituals, customs and anthropology. It has its own set of assumptions. And, like many remote cultures and tribes, it can only be understood by examining its internal logic. That is, ultimately, its beauty.
