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LOATHSOME LOVERS OF LIVERPOOL 25-11-06
Calum Law
Being outnumbered whilst watching his team in the pub is hardly a noteworthy experience for the London Smoggy; he gets used to being a kind of footballing ethnic minority in the corner - his reticence decreasing in inverse proportion to his bar tab.
I was primed then for a familiar feeling of lonesomeness/incipient physical threat after work on Saturday as I managed to catch the last fourty minutes of Boro's Masterclass in Avoiding the Soccer Ball.
Not for the first time however, what was palpable (as I took my place amongst the hostile throng) was just how few of the 'opposition' would have known one end of Lime Street from the other. As Boro craftily saved themselves for an all-out assault in the final five minutes, I had time to ponder the (to my mind a little distasteful) phenomenon of the success supporter and the attendant statistical bulge.
For of course, just as the seven and eight year olds that I trained on Saturday mornings favoured Chelsea, whilst their older siblings pledged alleigance to Man United, so the perfectlylogicalbutstillstrangelydepressing path of least resistance for my generation was a preference for the machine-like virtues of the 'Pool.
Thus were Middlesbrough fans outnumbered in my class at school - despite being a mile from Ayresome Park. I suppose you could say 'it's natural': you ask a child if they'd prefer a large 99 with red sauce and sprinkles or an anaemic-looking milk lolly, you'll only get one answer - but then if they don't get to choose they'll be happy with the latter. One could argue that a few moderate thrashings at the right stage of development should ensure alleigance, and indeed should you manage to, ahem, persuade your nipper of the anachronistic charms of the milk lolly, he or she will doubtless thank you in time.
For just as too much sugar rots your teeth, so too much success could be said to rot the soul. And whenever one encounters the type who refused to put aside sickly childish demands for the properly adult reality of grimly-rationed highs, it's hard not to see a retard, a lower lifeform of fan
Even after twenty-odd years of repeating the same material, it's still possible to derive entertainment from the squirmings of Home-Counties Tim (or Stockton Keith) as you quiz him about bus routes into Toxteth etc. Of course, any discomfort is handily assuaged by each passing piece of silverware, but all the same, I wonder how all those Liverpool fans in my class really felt when we ended our 127-year wait in Cardiff - was there just a tinge of regret that they felt unable to fully share in the ecstasy of their home town team?
For it seems to me there must be some notional protocol by which we measure our contempt - there's a tipping point beyond which we fail to excuse their choice. So though my Leeds-supporting friend accepts a bit of good-natured ribbing over the fact he grew up in a small north Essex village, the fact that there was no league team within a thirty-mile radius renders his choice understandable. Similarly, coming from a town with a team that will always be small and rubbish - Torquay say - no one will begrudge you a fondness for Arsenal.
However, I reckon that when you come from a place whose team regularly gets gates of over 20,000 - Derby or Coventry or Portsmouth or Middlesbrough - then your excuse for not putting away your childhood fixation with mastery and continuing to embrace the perennial victor into adulthood needs to be compelling and original.
Perhaps Bill Shankly used to share his lunch with your Grandad as they toiled at the Lanarkshire coalface; or maybe as you lay close to death in Great Ormond Street with some obscure childhood malady, Kenny Dalglish popped by with a bag of fruit, thus inspiring you to pull through. Certain reasons cut it for sure but 'I've just always liked them' will only ever garner sardonicly raised eyebrows from us men and women of the faith.
For one is always disposed to wonder if an over-fondness for the sweet at the expense of the bitter is embedded in their natures, if they are apt to flourish in arenas where greed, opportunism and an aversion to losing find reward. Will such suspicious characters stab you in the back professionally, for instance? Will they make a play for your girlfriend?
Or do they have an even more egregious personality weakness: namely that they just pretend to like football?
NOW HAVE YOUR SAY IN THE NEW HOLGATE FORUM
BACK TO CALUM LAW INDEX
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