Tips on successfully brainwashing a child?

You know when you get to that age where Christmas becomes a little bit less magical? You don’t believe in Santa any more. Your presents are fewer, more predictable and no longer the result of scouring the Argos catalogue. You get up later and later on Christmas day usually with a stinking hangover from the night before. People start saying things like “wait til there’s kids in the family, that’s when the magic comes back”. Christmas Eve pints are magic, don’t get me wrong. But overall, they aren’t wrong with that logic.

And that’s where I find myself in a life and a footballing sense this Christmas. With two little nephews on the scene, Christmas has been exciting again the last few years. This year, even more so. The eldest of the two has got big into football. He’s just turned six and he’s joined his first football club, he’s been watching the World Cup (human rights abuses apologist that he is) and absolutely loves it. One problem- he doesn’t have a team. When the kids are asked at training who they support, the usual answers come up. Liverpool, United, Arsenal. “England”, he replies.

So, it’s time for me to do my Top Uncle duties and fix this boy up with the institution that will bring him some of the most exciting, enriching, ecstasy inducing moments of his life. Of course, it will also fix him up with some of the most mind-numbing, tedious, soul destroying days and nights as well.

So, where better than the Memorial Stadium and Bristol Rovers?

Apparently he’s really excited. I think he’s expecting to turn up at the Camp Nou, bless him. I might have to take a picture of the exact moment that he spots the first tent.

Camp Nou, Barcelona.

However excited he is, I can confirm that he’s not as excited as me. It takes me back to being that age. I was just shy of my 6th birthday when World Cup 98 came round and football became the one joy and passion that would always remain in my life. I remember the day before going to my first ever live match and asking my Dad if he reckoned I could take a football, so that at half time we could have a kickabout on the pitch. “Don’t be a prick” he thought, but didn’t say aloud.

My uncle took me to my first ever football match and I was absolutely buzzing about it. It ended in a nil nil draw, naturally. It was freezing cold, naturally. Regardless, I spent the next week running around my living room pretending to be that team and trying to remember the names of all eleven of the starting line-up.

You forget, as you get older, how magical it all is when you’re a kid. You don’t care about modern football being rubbish ™, sportswashing, how tight or not tight your owners are, the state of the ground, the divides in the fanbase, the transfers that may or may not happen. It’s just football, you get stuck with a team and for reasons apparently beyond yours or anyone else’s control they just become one of the single biggest and most important parts of your life.

Or, alternatively, you could be standing on a terrace on a freezing Thursday night with your useless uncle who writes all that rubbish on his rubbish blog, unable to see a thing, watching your new team you’ve been lumbered with lose. Not even quietly wishing you were back home in the warm with your mum, eating the Christmas chocolates and watching youtubers unwrap toys. Or whatever it is that six year olds do in their free time nowadays.

That’s the fear ahead of this most exciting of uncle/nephew bonding trips. I feel the pressure. I want him to fall in love with the club. If he wants an hot chocolate, he’s getting one. A nice blue and white scarf? All yours, kid. A cornish pasty at half time? Say no more. A replica shirt? There’s a cost of living crisis on, i’m not made of money.

All the stops are getting pulled out. I’d love for him to love a team, and i’d love for him to love one that’s local to him. You will have a good time.

As I get older, more miserable and increasingly bald, I’ve realised that’s the whole bloody point. It’s a football club. A club. A club that the fans are supposed to be members of. A club that belongs to its community, not a bunch of weapons grade *censored* online talking about Pessi, Penaldo and taking L’s. By supporting his local team, he’ll end up with life experiences, friendships and connections that he could never make by sitting on his sofa watching a team on the tele.

I could well be putting a bit too much pressure on the whole thing, to be fair. I’ve definitely spent too much time thinking about what part of the ground to take him, whether he’ll be able to see anything and what to do in the event that he does one of those mad little kid things like wet himself or throw up for no apparent reason. I’ve heard tantrums can be particularly tricky to deal with. I just hope he catches the bug, and I can’t wait to live that once in a lifetime excitement of going to a match for the first time ever, again, through him.

One month ’til kick off. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Stags, Small Margins and Hard Tackles

Andy Moore is back on his travels around non-league. Next stop, Bashley FC…

At around midday on Tuesday, a tweet from Bashley FC’s account advised fans that there might be a bumper crowd for the ‘Stag Derby’, and that early arrival would be necessary to secure a parking spot.

They were correct, with AFC Totton in town for a clash of two New Forest teams, 590 people were in attendance at the Glenmex Stadium. The population of Bashley is listed as 711.

The hottest ticket in town

With Totton just a 25 minute drive along the A35, there was obviously a good mix of home and away supporters – and so it may be a stretch to claim that 85% of Bashley’s residents were in attendance. Either way, the atmosphere was excellent from the off – with a group of twenty lads belting out a repertoire of songs that would be at home on any football league terrace.

Bashley’s stadium caters for fans that like their football any which way. There’s a 250 seater stand, a covered standing terrace and even a glass fronted suite which looked as comfy as anything offered at the nearby Vitality Stadium. It’s clear the club is well run, the pitch is crisp, the social media channels have a professional look to them and the clubhouse has merchandise to go with the halftime queue for the bar.

The standard on the pitch is also good. Between the two sides there are a number of players who have played for football league clubs, as well as those that went through the youth systems of Southampton and Bournemouth. One Bashley supporter takes the time to explain that Totton have got one of the larger budgets in the Southern League Division One (South), and that they’re determined to attract the best talent possible. That’s evident with the Summer signing of Scott Rendell, a 35 year old striker that has scored goals in every tier up to League One.

But for all the pedigree in the away side’s lineup, Bashley’s newly promoted eleven match them every step of the way. It’s a game full of hustle and bustle, big tackles – particularly from Totton’s Captain, Mike Carter – and half chances.

Ethan Taylor comes closest for the visitors in the first half, as he hits a dipping half volley just over the crossbar. Minutes earlier, Sam Davidson had sprawled out to head a chance off the foot of an on rushing Totton player, preventing a certain goal. Bashley are fairly quiet in the attacking third, but just before halftime Rafael Ramos barges a defender out of the way before seeing his shot saved by Lewis Noice.

The second half is equally as cagey, but not in a boring sense, it’s frantic and those edging towards the exit can’t quite take the leap and leave before the final whistle. The best moment of the game comes in the 76th minute as former Rotherham goalscorer, Brett Williams, forces a good save from Bashley ‘keeper, Ross Casey, to keep the scores level. And like that it’s all over at 0-0. The 590 fans in attendance make their way back to the overflowing car park and off into the darkness of the Forest. At least one of the first time attendees will be back, let’s hope I’m not the only one.

Follow @ajmoore21 on Twitter for more.

The 3pm Blackout is under threat. If you tolerate this…

Since the ’60s, the Football League have banned the sacred 3pm kick-offs from being televised. Should English football be moving with the times or protecting what we already have?

I hate the “Best League in the World” marketing spin. We haven’t got the best league in the world. A cursory glance at the winners of the respective European competitions over the last decade makes a mockery of that piece of perceived wisdom. What we do have, however, is the best football pyramid system in the world.

Full stadiums, great atmospheres, thriving fan culture scenes all around the country and right the way down the non-leagues. Last season, three League 1 teams had higher attendances than half of La Liga. Notts County of the National League attracted over 12000 fans to a home game last season, higher than the average attendance of the bottom 4 La Liga sides. Wrexham had a higher average attendance than Monaco. It’s that incredible support that separates our pyramid from everyone else’s.

It has of course been somewhat eroded down the years. Things are far from perfect. Fans complain of lower attendances, higher ticket prices, rogue owners, the effect of parachute payments on competition and the failure of the supposed ability of the Premier League riches to drip down the system. But it still stands head and shoulders above the rest.

Anything that puts that at risk is a firm no from me. I get the arguments. In a cost of living crisis, there’s plenty of fans who can’t justify following their team week in week out. For them, it’s a chance to watch their beloved team without having to fork out 100 quid for a two hour train journey with no vacant seats and a blocked up toilet. For others, it’s a simple case of wondering why we aren’t, if the means are there, just moving with the times as in other countries. Subscriptions could lead to more money for Football League clubs who desperately need whatever cash is on offer.

I sympathise, to an extent, with some of those views. But it’s short term thinking that could damage the long term health of our game. Of course hardcore fans will still travel to watch their team even if you paid them to sit at home and watch on tv. They’ve already got the bug, it’s in their blood. But these clubs need the next generation and they need them in stadiums. Many a casual, potentially regular fan will be lost, preferring to stay at home and take their pick of matches. It threatens turning a system made great by its attendees into a television event.

It also overlooks the impact on the non-league system. Many attendees at non-league level are there on a Saturday afternoon because their Football League team is away from home. Give people the option of watching every game from the comfort of their own homes and those clubs are also put under threat.

There is another argument that fans of the top Premier League can watch the majority of their club’s games, so why shouldn’t EFL clubs have the same privilege? There’s a perceived inequality. However, again, the Premier League shouldn’t be seen as the be all and end all of how to run a league. It may be a money spinner, it may be entertaining, but it’s also home to two state-owned clubs, one of which is set to win the league at a canter yet again at somewhere around the 100 points mark. It’s full of greedy owners who don’t care about the fans, the matchday experience is largely watered down and frankly awful and has been turned into a shiny product. What makes the rest of the English game so great is precisely because it isn’t the Premier League.

To a lesser extent, it’s also possible to have too much of a good thing. Do we really need to watch every single kick of every single ball in ultra high definition? When the blackout was lifted during Covid, at first it was like a gift sent from the footballing gods after so long without a game to watch. Very quickly, however, it felt like more of an obligation to watch than actually wanting to. Watching the scores come in on Soccer Saturday or Final Score and taking in the highlights is more than enough for me.

For now it’s just the EFL. If they get rid of the 3pm blackout, how long until the Premier League follow suit? Somehow I can’t imagine the EFL being best pleased if they did. That should tell you everything about the effect this could have on the non-league system.

Money, as always, will talk. There will be whopping deals on the line with the likes of Amazon and Netflix circling. But the league and its members have to stay firm. Not just for the sake of protecting tradition and preventing progress, but for the future of the game in this country.

Football in the Forest

Andy Moore is embarking on a spree of watching Wessex Premier League games, beginning at Brockenhurst Football Club. “£5 in. £1 for a tea. Perfect.”

There was a group of lads standing outside Grigg Lane at 2.50pm on Saturday, clearly debating whether or not to go through the turnstile. After a brief exchange with the Steward, who did a great job of convincing them, they take the plunge and join a further 113 people to watch Brockenhurst take on Baffins Milton Rovers.

It’s a well worn cliche to say that clubs playing at this level are at the heart of their community, and that they are more than just a football team. However, as you look around and see the mix of people, young and old, friends and entire families, it’s entirely evident that the cliche is grounded in fact.

The Badgers have played football in the heart of the New Forest for more than a century, and at Grigg Lane (now the Meadens Skoda Arena) since 1951. With an elevated stand, a social club and a coffee bar, the team seemingly has everything they need to host a team playing in the Wessex Premier League. However, it’s the volunteers that keep things ticking over, and the two friendly women working in the coffee bar are the perfect example of that.

On the pitch, Brockenhurst are clearly a side in transition, with a lot of young players throughout the starting eleven. Despite that, they got off to a bright start and threatened down the right hand side with Kieran O’Connell looking particularly lively until he picked up a knock. However, where the home side lacked experience, Baffins Milton showed off a front three that will cause difficulties for any team in the league this season.

The combination of Jason Parish, Tom Vincent and Kelvin Robinson was too much for the Badgers’ back four to handle, with both Parish and Robinson scoring twice. Despite not getting on the scoresheet, Vincent was dominant all afternoon – winning everything in the air and creating chances throughout the game.

With his team on the backfoot, it was good to see Mitchell Speechley-Price rallying his teammates. So often at any level of sport there is a void of leadership, even at the highest levels of the game players blink at the first sign of adversity. So with Brock falling behind by four goals to nil just after half time, the physical striker’s commitment to his teammates was important and a spark that demonstrated what Patrick McManus is trying to build.

One particular recipient of Speechley-Price’s motivation was debutant goalkeeper, Heath Bartram. The sixteen year old flashed his ability, and despite the scoreline it is clear that the Badgers have a very good player on their hands. Midway through the first half Vincent played a nice ball in behind the Brock back four, only to see Bartram quickly out of his area to mop up the danger. The fundamentals were spot on all afternoon, as you’d expect from the son of a former Wolves, Arsenal and Bournemouth shot stopper.

Eventually, the away side closed out a 6-1 victory, with a host of substitutions giving way to a fairly quiet end to the game.

Meandering out at the full time whistle were the four lads who were unsure about going in to start the game. They’d made it through the full 90 mins, pints in hand, laughing and joking. That’s what football is all about.

A Defence of #SupportLocal and Tribalism in Football

Andy Moore takes a look at the #SupportLocal trend and its detractors. In a footballing world that sees clubs search outwards for support, should there be greater emphasis from clubs to local supporters?

The year is 378. In Adrianople (Edirne in modern day Turkey) a decisive battle is taking place. A large Roman force, commanded by the Eastern Emperor Valens, is fighting an army comprised of so-called ‘barbarians’, a group of people that historians now refer to as Visigoths.

The Romans suffer a thumping defeat, one that sets in motion a chain of events that would see Rome itself sacked by the Visigoths some 32 years later.

But if you delve into the people that made up the Visigoth force on that day in 378, you see something fascinating. Instead of one large group of people that were born in the same town, village or even country, the army was made up of a diverse group of people, from different Germanic tribes and all corners of the Roman Empire. They were united by their need to survive and their mistreatment by their Roman overlords.

Why is this relevant to an article on football? Well, fast forward 1638 years, to Marseille in 2016. Another battle is under way. Russian ‘ultras’ chase England fans through the streets of the French city, leading to headlines in British tabloids which accuse English fans of shaming the nation.

If you look at the people that made up the English contingent in Marseille that day, you also find something interesting. Adorning the windows of hotels and all over the Velodrome stadium were flags, predominantly carrying the St George’s cross, but also small markings such as BCFC, MCFC, SUFC, QPR and more. The people that hung these flags usually spend 52 weeks a year following one club, they despise neighbouring clubs, enjoy goading any opposition supporters who enter their town or city and wouldn’t be found dead in another team’s colours. But for four weeks every two years, they ascend to a higher cause, England and a national football tournament.

Like the Visigoths in 378, England fans are more than just one people, they’re a group of tribes that have come together with a common goal.

Now, that is an incredibly long winded way of saying that this article will look at tribalism and its place within the modern game.

There was a time when football was looked down on, a working man’s sport which was marred by crowd trouble and too often defined by tragic loss of life. On the pitch, teams often reflected the community they were part of, which those that went to games in 60s, 70s and  80s say created a stronger bond between club and fans.

‘Support your local team’ seemingly wasn’t really a concept during this period, you just didn’t really have a choice. A lack of broadcast options and standing terraces meant that local football was a lot more accessible and probably the only way the majority of fans could see the beautiful game being played live.

Away days presumably had a sense of adventure and danger, with huge followings turning up to renew rivalries on and off the pitch and in some cases with the local police force. Groups of people that wouldn’t normally cross paths came together to travel the country under the banner of their local area. And, in the country’s bigger cities, football helped break down racial and social barriers.

But this isn’t an ode to that era, and it certainly isn’t a glorification of football violence, instead I am merely trying to highlight that tribalism was at the forefront of football at this point in time, that the game gave whole areas of the country an identity.

Fast forward to the modern era, and those that seek to keep these identities alive are often maligned. There’s been a recent theme of condescension to those that use #SupportLocal on Twitter, often this comes as part of a debate on why those that have faceless accounts are so aggressive in their support of a team based nowhere near where they originate from. The condescending comments flow and seek to shame and belittle the person tweeting ‘#SupportLocal’ (who nearly always supports a team that has never even dreamed of playing top half premier league football).

In many ways it’s a reflection of our society at large at the moment, globalisation vs localism, remain vs leave, tradition vs modernisation.

The idea that you should support and give back to your local team has been torn apart by 24 hour access to sports, direct interaction with players on social media and cheap global travel. To many, it’s clear that this is progress, and it’s not hard to see why.

Families that can’t afford the £40 per adult and £20 per child price of tickets can afford to pay £30 a month for BT Sport or £90 a month for a Sky package. Football fans overseas can rightly watch every minute of the Premier League, Championship and any of the lower leagues that offer pay per view options. And those that can afford to pay overinflated prices can purchase tickets for overhyped luxury at the top clubs, but if they’re willing to pay then who really loses?

If your answer to that question is no-one then that of course is absolutely fine, but I respectfully disagree. The people that are losing are those members of the tribe who have been priced out of attending games by these overinflated prices, those whose parents and grandparents stood in the terraces and paid a small amount for the privilege.

‘But who cares?’ I hear you saying. Another good question, and again, I’m probably in the minority in this, but I really do, and I’ll tell you why.

It’s not an understatement to say that one of the best days of my life was the 27th February 2011. An underdog Birmingham City beat Arsenal with a last minute fluke goal in the Carling Cup Final. I was there and what I witnessed will live with me forever, pure euphoria swept over the 20,000 or so Brummies in the stadium that day. Being the club they are, a working class club with an up and down history, Birmingham aren’t a club that’s flush with fans from anywhere but the city itself. That made it all the more sweet that day, there were whole generations of family, school friends and large supporter groups all present, everyone that was there seemed to know at least one other group of people elsewhere in the crowd. In short, it was one big family, one community and one tribe.

Fast forward 10 years and Birmingham are a mess, a succession of bad decisions and bad owners have left the club languishing at the bottom of the Championship. But, the same people that were at Wembley are still there week in, week out, they celebrate the odd win and commiserate every loss with the dark humour that sets football fans apart. Some, like me, have moved away from the city but when we go back for match day we’re instantly welcomed back as if we’ve never been away. That’s what makes the tribal element of football so special to me.

The way football is going, chomping at even further global domination, it’s clear to all of us that things aren’t going to change. And this is where I divulge from the traditionalist view,  because I think the modern game needs even more modernisation. I think the FA and English football needs to embrace ideas that are popping up to try and level the playing field between clubs, whilst also injecting a lot of money into the grassroots game, giving opportunity to those that may otherwise fly below the radar. Without the money currently rolling into football, this might not be possible.

But, and this is the key point I’m trying to make, without the fans and without the support of the local community, football is nothing. So even as the game continues to evolve and overseas audiences have access to every kick, I hope clubs will remember that their history is important and there are huge benefits from embracing their local fan base.

As it happened, the Visigoths were able to come to an agreement with the next Roman Emperor and for a short period of time they went back into their individual tribal groups in relative peace, a clear sign that when people come together they can achieve great things. Who knows, if fans of the game come together, they can demand change and demand clubs and the FA give more back to their communities.

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The rise and rise of AFC Bournemouth

It’s the goal of any avid player of the Football Manager series, take over a team languishing in the lower reaches of the Football League and construct a rapid rise to the Premier League.  

In reality, it rarely happens that way. When clubs escape League One, the step up to the Championship can be overwhelming on and off the field and they do well to stay in the second tier for longer than a couple of seasons. 

One club, however, has proved it can be done, going from the brink of extinction to the dizzy heights of the England’s top division in just six seasons. And then staying there (for now).  

AFC Bournemouth are often spoken about as a ‘fairy tale’, a romantic story that highlights all the good things about the beautiful game. From the brink of relegation into the National League in 2009 to the Premier League in 2015 and five years of glitz and glamour, with wins against Chelsea, Manchester United and Arsenal under their belt during that time. 

With their rise up the leagues seemingly so unique, so too is the impact this success has had on a fan base, a seaside town and a south coast rivalry that barely existed in years gone by. 

As is only natural for a club that has spent the majority of their existence in the lower reaches of the professional game, Bournemouth don’t have a huge fanbase to draw upon. Instead, a loyal core support has been supplemented by a new generation of young fans, drawn in by the quality of the football Eddie Howe has drilled into his teams, the chance to watch Premier League opponents and the slightly nicer facilities top division away days have to offer. 

This surge in support is notable as you make your way around Bournemouth’s surrounding areas. Where once you might have seen an abundance of Liverpool or Man Utd shirts in Christchurch, Poole or Boscombe, the red and black of the Cherries’ home shirt is now joined by the often-garish shirts that the club employs away from home.  

The club have embraced this influx of young fans, with countless youth programmes and community initiatives firmly establishing them as a family friendly, community club, in the mould of Premier League rivals, Watford. Given the size of the fan base, this is clearly a clever move, with players seemingly accessible and influential in a way that isn’t always possible for those who play for teams based in England’s bigger cities. 

The town has seen change as a result of the club’s success, with youth programmes and community initiatives implemented. Picture by Andrew Moore.

On matchday, the increase in support has also driven an upturn in attendance and demand for tickets. In their 2009/10 League Two promotion campaign, Bournemouth had an average attendance of 5,720, a respectable third in the league that season. Yet fast forward 11 years and the 11,364 capacity Vitality Stadium is always sold out, with a long season ticket waiting list and a points-based system for individual match tickets. 

One thing that hasn’t benefited from the race up the divisions and influx of fans is the matchday atmosphere within the ground. Despite the close proximity to the pitch, which can lead to an intimidating atmosphere in some stadiums, you’re more likely to get asked to sit down by a home supporter than be joined on your feet for a rousing rendition of ‘Eddie Howe’s barmy army’. Ahead of last season’s game against Southampton, supporters were provided with clappers by the club in an effort to generate atmosphere, a staunch no-go for all you ‘Against Modern Football’ fans, but even this failed, with most ending up as makeshift fans to help with a particularly warm autumn day. 

Away from home, as with every club, the support is much better, with a loyal following often travelling hundreds of miles to away days in Newcastle, Manchester and Norwich. However, despite the diehard nature of these fans, there are considerably less of them when compared to others, including their near neighbours. Earlier this season Bournemouth took 936 fans away to Liverpool, compared to Southampton who took 1829 in February – a simple reminder of the difference in the size of the respective supporter bases. 

When it comes to Southampton, a slightly strange rivalry has developed in recent years. A rivalry which can at times feel particularly one sided. Geographically, Southampton are Bournemouth’s natural rivals. Sat either side of the New Forest National Park, they’re two very different places, Southampton a port to the world, industrial in places but a thriving city with a population of more than 250,000. Bournemouth is a tourist hot spot, it’s miles of beaches bringing in millions of people each year, which can overwhelm its small population (as we’ve seen in recent weeks!).  

The main issue is that Southampton don’t see Bournemouth as their natural rivals. Just down the road, Portsmouth have been a constant thorn in the side of the Saints for decades, and the rivalry has grown naturally, with two working class sets of fans taking their animosity into the dockyards, factories and pubs all year round. 

Therefore, when Bournemouth burst onto the scene in 2015, the new South Coast derby was born. But where some derby games can feel like a war zone, the Cherries – Saints games are more of a playground exchanging of words, with Bournemouth fans very much the instigators. Sky have done their upmost to drive it forward and the game has occasionally been included on ‘rivalry Sunday’ line-ups, but for me, it isn’t quite there yet. 

I know this must feel like an attack on Bournemouth, but the simple truth is that their rise has been so meteoric over the last ten years that they’re in a completely unique situation. The average age of their fans must be amongst the youngest in the league, and that is only a good thing, with more kids engaged the atmosphere will improve in time and a new generation will start to venture out on their first away days – boosting away day allocations and giving the team a twelfth man on the pitch. 

Aside from the fans themselves, part of the future must centre around an upgrade in current facilities. Plans for a new stadium have been approved, and initially the club wanted to have it open for punters as soon as the 2020/21 season. Concerns around financial risks to stakeholders have since dampened optimism, but the plans are still in place and it appears that the Board are still committed to driving forward with a vision for a new stadium and training complex in the coming years. With the club’s Premier League status currently looking precarious, you’d be entitled to think that these plans could take a further knock. But should the aforementioned demand for tickets continue, even if the club takes a short trip back to the Championship, it would surely make sense to at least expand on the current 11,000 capacity. 

With a long season-ticket waiting list and loyalty points required to attend home games, the club may require a larger stadium in order to build on their success. Picture by Andrew Moore.

A new stadium and continued top flight status would provide one certainty, continued benefit to the local area. It is here that the impact of Bournemouth the football club being good at football, has had the most impact on Bournemouth the town.  

Premier League football has put Bournemouth on the map, the local council’s tourism strategy agrees, saying, ‘Promotion to the Premier League has raised profile hugely’. Away teams use the new Hilton hotel which is metres away from the sea front one way and the town centre the other. A host of bars, clubs and pubs host away fans from all over the country all year round. And, a global audience has seen everything the South Coast has to offer with regular broadcast on Sky, BT Sport and multiple overseas networks.  

It’s tricky at times to sum up the impact of football to someone who doesn’t live and breathe it every Saturday. But in the case of Bournemouth I’d say it’s much easier to do, a whole town has been revitalised by the success of their football team, with a generation of young people convinced to look closer to home for their heroes.  

It might not appear so rosy on the pitch at present, but it seems to me that a drop down a division will just be a blip in the upward trajectory of this unique football club. 

Andy Moore is a guest writer for IntoTheTerraces. You can find him on Twitter by clicking here.

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Football without fans is…

That the highly anticipated return of Premier League football began with a mind-numbing goalless draw and monumental cock-ups from video technology and David Luiz was pure poetry. It’s back, and it’s like it’s never been away.

There were, of course, some differences. Players on “the bench” were scattered around at a safe distance, and the only fans in sight were on the big screen watching via zoom. Whoever’s idea that was is a brave man or woman, and thankfully it never turned into a chatroulette kind of situation.

“Football without fans is nothing” is a popular phrase in the fight against modern football, and one that we can pretty much all agree with in theory. But i’m not sure it covers the current situation, where we’ve been left without the game for three months and trapped in an endless news cycle with no way out. When suddenly it’s day 50 of the government’s boycott of Good Morning Britain and you actually care about it, you know it’s been too long without the blissful distraction of football.

What the phrase also doesn’t account for is the delight of stumbling upon a game of Sunday League or a kid’s fixture, and finding yourself glued to the action. It doesn’t account for the way that playing for your local village team or 5-a-side on a Tuesday night can feel as big as the World Cup final when you’re in the throws of it, even when literally nobody is watching. Not even the ref, most of the time.

Saying that football is all about having a drink and meeting up with your mates is all well and good, and is bound to win social media popularity contests (is there a football equivalent of Fiat 500 Twitter?) and is obviously a huge part of the culture of our game, but there is another term for that activity: Going to the pub. Football is also about football.

That aside, this new-look, empty-seated football has proved just how important and necessary we are to clubs, TV companies and, shudders, “the product”. Playing artificial crowd noise seems like a laughable, bizarre idea, yet it’s been immediately adopted across the board. There is the recognition, if we needed it, that this multi-billion pound industry desperately needs us to survive. They aren’t just playing crowd noise for the fun of it, they are doing it because they know it is part of the reason that people tune in. It’s a huge part of the reason why the Premier League is seen as the best in the world. Perhaps in months and years to come, this can be used to our advantage. It is often debated how best to take action against TV companies- how about a silent protest?

While it may seem that IntoTheTerraces has totally sold out and should immediately change its name, there are definitely some warnings for the future here as well. TV companies now have months to get the crowd noise sounding just right, who’s to say that it won’t end up being here to stay? The one thing that sounds more bizarre than crowd noise being pumped into an empty stadium is crowd noise being pumped into a stadium that’s full but where clearly nobody is singing. Where could this end? Approved chants broadcasted to the world each game, regardless of what’s really happening? Can clubs now afford to usher in more daytrippers and the middle classes, safe in the knowledge that Sky will ensure the crowd sounds as loud as ever? Is there a future where match-going fans can be entirely replaced?

Perhaps its the 1984-ness of the lockdown getting to me, but there is some evidence of this already being at play. Certain clubs have been accused of artificially improving their atmosphere by playing crowd noise over the speakers in their stadiums, and we can all hear Sky and BT rushing to turn the volume down on their mic’s for certain chants. They’ll argue with some reason that kids at home probably shouldn’t hear “the referee’s a w*nker”(although it never did us any harm), but it would not be a surprise at all if we reach a point where chants against owners, exchanges between rival fans, or anything containing a bit of naughty language is airbrushed out. There is a genuine risk here of fans losing their voices more than they already have.

On the one hand, the situation is empowering for fans. It gives us a bargaining tool and proves beyond all doubt our importance to the game. No player wants to have to lift silverware and enjoy the biggest moments of their career with nobody there to see it. No club wants empty seats visible to the world. It is currently in their interests to ensure that atmosphere is protected and shown off to their millions of viewers. But they will undoubtedly be working to figure out how they can use this short term situation to their advantage in the long run, which we should all be wary of; it’s usually us who have to pay the price.

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The Opiate of the Masses

Thank god the football’s back.

The fantastic Women’s World Cup, the Copa America and the AFCON all helped fill the void over summer. We turned to cricket for our kicks and some of the more desperate among us even turned to the golf.

The wait ended this weekend as the Football League got underway, and the annual curtain raiser for the Premier League season provided the entertainment too. With a swift channel change after the penalties there was Bristol City vs Leeds to complete a solid three and a half hours of constant football. God, that felt good.

God. Real or not, the big man has dominated life on earth. Karl Marx described religion as the “opium of the people”. I’ve been saying opium of the masses all this time. Google suggests it might’ve been opiate of the masses, which made me feel better. Either way, this country has largely cast religion aside. According to the most in depth recent studies, somewhere around half of Britain’s inhabitants belong to a religion. Of that, around half say they aren’t religious; they were born into a religion but don’t follow its teachings or go to a place of worship.

Football is my religion, *insert stadium name here* is my church and IntoTheTerraces is my bible

Alright, nobody has ever said that last bit. But the rest is a common, slightly cringy statement that you see touted around on social media. Vomit inducing it may be, there is more than an element of truth to it. I’m going to say it. In Britain and in much of Europe, football is bigger than religion. It just is.

Football significantly impacts our weeks way more than any religious beliefs do. We spend our days longing for the next game, we watch Sky Sports News constantly, even though after an hour it is literally the same stuff told to us by a different presenter. We spend hours sorting our fantasy teams out, putting our bets together, listening to phone-ins, scrolling through football twitter, reading forums and gossip pages. Some of us even spend hours researching about clubs we don’t even support, to write articles about them simply because we just fucking love the beautiful game.

My theory goes, that this summer, we weren’t just looking for a distraction from a lack of football. It was bigger than that. We were looking for a distraction from the constant Brexit bickering, Trump’s latest gaffes, the value or lack thereof of climate change protestors bringing towns to a standstill and the mind numbingly awful build up to the tory leadership election. I watched Channel 4’s documentary on Boris Johnson and it made me wish I had his blonde locks simply so I could tear it all clean off my head.

No deals, backstops, borders, trade agreements, private schools, silver spoons. Make it stop. Give me VAR, crooked refs, financial fair play, weird offside rules and equally baffling interpretations of handball any day.

We all nostalgically celebrated the anniversary of the wonderful opening ceremony to the 2012 London Olympics. People talked of how wonderful life seemed at the time. Others rightly pointed out that things were equally bleak politically then. But that was the point. Things seemed great because we were blinded by the incredibly rousing impact sporting events can have.

If football is the new opium of the people, then it stands to reason that we should probably chill out about it somewhat and concentrate on “more important” things. Put our efforts into fixing our broken country, engage in activism, save the world, man. Go out leafleting or something. Change the planet we live on for the better. Are you up for it?

Nah. Me neither. And the football’s back now, anyway.

Football fandom and winning the lottery

“Fair play to them, they deserve it”

Football Twitter, May 2019

There aren’t that many convincing arguments in support of a member of a nation’s Royal Family owning a football club and buying its way to glory. It doesn’t stop this generation of online football fans reacting as if that club has just won the lottery and been saved from the abyss, while everyone else watches on with admiration and more than a hint of envy. Lucky old Newcastle, potentially the latest propaganda wing for a nation bedraggled with human rights issues.

The tone of some of this well wishing says everything about the way that football has changed, and the way that we see our clubs, at least those at the highest level. It wasn’t so long ago that we were just happy to be able to make that fortnightly pilgrimage to our home stadiums. Win, lose or draw, the important thing was to be part of a community that meant something to people, that represented the values and way of life of an entire town, a football club in its purest sense. This feeling seems to exist further down the pyramid but has completely disintegrated the higher you get.

Newcastle, people argue, deserve this little break, this reward at the end of years of misfortune, of thankless slogging and constant failure. Of dragging themselves to matches only for it to end in crippling disappointment. Do we really detest the act of supporting our teams this much, unless they are winning trophy after trophy?

This obviously isn’t a defence of Mike Ashley, who it goes without saying is an outrageously awful owner and human being. Neither is it a suggestion that fans should forget ambition and just be happy with their lot. We all want the best for the clubs we support, we want to see them win and be successful. The frustration with the Newcastle takeover is that they really don’t need investment of this magnitude. They are an established giant in Britain; a club belonging to a city that happens to be bonkers about football, providing them with a huge, loyal fanbase that will forever make them attractive to players and sensible backers alike. They sit in 19^th in the Deloitte Money League, a global table calculating clubs with the highest revenue.

Newcastle, with hard work and clever organisation, good recruitment and coaching, could be competing for a top six position with a competent owner using this revenue well. From there, with time and patience, they could compete for Champions League football. Without selling their soul, watering down their identity and moving the game ever further away from the decades of history and tradition that clubs like their own helped build. You know, the old fashioned way.

We live in a culture of instant gratification and that is becoming reflected in the unwillingness to accept that sometimes in football you need hard work and competence to be successful.

The concept of “winning the lottery” has skewed the notion that clubs have a natural level. Sometimes they will do better than expected, and sometimes they will do worse, but generally most of a club’s history will be spent around about in the same place. If we as supporters don’t like that, it’s easy enough to go and support someone who always wins everything. Instead, every club now feels that it should be able to compete with the clubs at the top who have played their way there over many years.

Of course, those clubs haven’t always done that in a manner that reflects how purists would like to see the game played. Man Utd floating on the stock market and Liverpool’s nudge in the right direction from the Moores family are held up by detractors, for example. These clubs have helped pave the way for this next generation of superpowers. But you also can’t ignore that the biggest part of their transformation into the nation’s two biggest clubs were through the work of footballing visionaries, Busby and Shankly, academies that produced the best talent and their massive fanbases.

If competitive balance is the problem, then is creating a new tier of even more unfathomably rich football clubs the answer? Should every club in the football league be represented by a state until all the rich ones get taken, we run out and then sit back and wait for Martians to land with some space gold to redefine clubs winning the lottery?

Newcastle don’t “deserve” a shortcut to success because their club has performed below its means for a couple of decades and suffered a couple of relegations. Otherwise, probably about three quarters of the football league will feel they deserve it as well, many will feel far more deserving. In fact, their eternal enemy alongside them in the North East would probably stake an even larger claim. They will deserve success when they earn it.

This is perhaps a slightly naive outlook in the modern era. It’s harder than ever to compete, but for Newcastle, it is possible. They have the revenues, the fanbase, and the potential to grow both of those much larger. They’ve challenged for titles and competed in the Champions League. If the takeover goes through, if Newcastle do spend their way into contention, they will have to live with the “plastic” label. Any pride they have in being a traditional, working class football club will have to be shelved and forgotten about. A part of a great football club’s soul is on the line. To those in the city who live it and breathe it, can that ever be worthwhile?

Pitch Invaders; Security in Football

Swearing in writing is a lazy habit, often frowned upon as an attempt to get a cheap laugh or dodge around picking up a thesaurus to find a proper word. However, I have to say, talking about the prospect of reintroducing fences to football stadiums is just plain f*cking stupid.

It is a point that has been made aplenty since Martin Tyler seemed to pontificate (I say, closing my thesaurus) on that very matter during his commentary for the Arsenal vs Man Utd game on Sunday. It is a point that can’t be made enough. Primarily, there are 96 reasons why not. While terracing was the fall guy over the Hillsborough disaster, standing was never the main issue. The main issue was the criminalisation of football fans, forcing them into pens and behind fences that there was no escape from.

There shouldn’t be much more of a debate on it than that. The bottom line is that putting up fencing, or indeed introducing armed police into grounds as was also mentioned, is clearly f*cking stupid.

Beyond that, however, questions should be asked in the aftermath of Sunday afternoon. It was too easy for the supporter to run on to the pitch and attack a man doing his job. Anyone who has been to a football match with a crowd of anything over 1000 spectators, will have observed that stewards generally seem more focussed on getting people to sit down than anything else. They are overwhelmingly outnumbered, often young and inexperienced, and many attest to not having sufficient training. It certainly seemed that way when the man ran on to the pitch, and later when a different steward bizarrely got dragged away by police for manhandling Grealish after his winner.

Stewards shouldn’t come under fire over it, they are merely working in the conditions given. The first and most obvious solutions must be based around giving them whatever support they need, whether that be in training or in giving them greater backup, to do their jobs properly. Tough fines and properly enforced bans need to be applied to anyone encroaching the pitch.

Over 770,000 people attended a football match in the top 4 divisions this weekend.

2 invaded a pitch. (0.00026%)

The BBC just published the opinion of an ex-player who says we need armed police at football.

(The novel idea of "train your stewards properly" wasn't mentioned)

— Against League 3 (@AgainstLeague3) March 11, 2019

What the authorities need in order to deal with this incident effectively is a sense of calm. They need to talk to people who go to football matches, and not the ones in hospitality suites or director’s boxes. While only 0.00026% of attendees throughout England’s top four divisions encroached the pitch at the weekend, it only takes 0.0001% for an even worse incident to happen.

After the Stade de France was targeted during the Paris attacks, I think we all expected major changes in the way that security at football was handled. It is then, surprising that when entering a major ground, the security is still so lax. You are patted down but it’s usually so hurried that it seems more of a box-ticking exercise than a genuine safety check. Just a couple of weeks ago, a fan threw a glass bottle of beer at Angel Di Maria at Old Trafford. What these incidents highlight is that better security is needed all round. For the players, but for the fans as well.

To overreact would be dangerous. History shows that as soon as you begin criminalising football supporters because of the actions of a tiny few, you start to invite major problems. Authorities believe they can treat us like criminals, and we are more liable to treat each other like criminals too. We require perspective; anyone could get punched on their way home from work for no apparent reason. There are idiots everywhere, there is only so much we can do about it.

The powers that be would love nothing more than to use this incident to make the game even more watered down. They’ll be wondering what changes they can make on the back of this to bring in more tourists, to convince them further that football is a pleasant day out worth spending hundreds of pounds on, without being bothered by the gobby, violent, working class.

There needs to be reaction, not overreaction. No fences, no armed police, no empty stadiums, no points deductions, no ID cards. More awareness, more training, more money allocated to policing. Anything else would be, quite frankly, f*cking stupid.