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Underground > Games & Gameplay >

Hooliganism in football

03:23 / 15.06.05

why does football get a bad rap for its hooligans? what is the genesis of this? is it in fact due to football, or is football just the outlet, or catalyst perhaps - if the latter, what about it makes it so?

but is it all it's cracked up to be, this talk of hooliganism?? there was a recent column in the 'theworldgame.com.au' site here that looked at a recent incident in multicultural sydney's western suburbs recently... an irony was pointed out in this column:

But there's another, much bigger, irony that hasn't been touched on at all by the media in Sydney. On the same day as the 'soccer riots' took place between Sydney United and Bonnyrigg in Parramatta (arrest count single figures), rather more trouble was afoot across town at the Rugby League game between St. George and the Sydney Roosters - twenty eight arrests to be exact. Anyone read that in their Sydney paper in the days that followed? No? Me either.

Fights at the League game? Just the lads having too much beer, that's all. Fights at the 'soccer'? Ethnic warfare – that's the message from Sydney's media.

is this typical of media coverage of our beautiful game across the globe? what is with the media, why do they give football a hard time?? why do ethnic issues raise such hackles - and is football, truly 'the world game', doomed to suffer this fate ever anon??

All Acting Regiment

10:04 / 15.06.05

Any conflict sport with such a big following, and so ingrained into the community's psyche, is going to include violence at some stage, on or off pitch. That is a given.

More people in England play or are interested in football than in rugby. Ergo more violence. Again, the racial thing, British Fascism has always tried to claim to be "of the streets", as with football= large volume of possibly racist fans, pissed up and pissed off.

I think football deserves it's bad name in England, but often decent people get tarred with the same feathers.

Regrettable Juvenilia

10:14 / 15.06.05

I think football deserves it's bad name in England

Why?

Regrettable Juvenilia

10:55 / 15.06.05

That's assuming we even accept that football has a "bad name" in this country, which I don't. Do you really think that if you went up to the majority of people in the UK in the street and said "What do you think about football?" they'd say "Ooooh, terrible business, all that violence!"

I think not.

15:29 / 15.06.05

Well the origin of the Millwall - West Ham rivalry/ hooligan thing goes back to the turn of the century with Millwall dockers seen as scabs by the Thames Ironworks dockers (predominantly West Ham) for breaking a picket line. Fights went on in pubs and streets all the time between the two sets of workers and their two unions. This antipathy fed into the terraces.

Fortunately our relative levels of success generally kept our resident nutters apart during the worst days of hooliganism, and of course, nowadays hardly anyone that's involved with all of that gibberish even remembers the docks (It's Surrey Quays now...)

It's seems to be more of a faddy(?) thing now, since the late 90s you've had all manner of books and films from former hooligans who've become near celebrities. The Football factory (God awful film based on a God-awful book) has recently seen a reasonably noticable rise in the number of Stone island wearing teenage berks in the East upper at the Den, and commentators like John Motson at the England Colombia game hardly help things - getting a little boner whenever there's trouble, you could imagine him straining in the press box to get a glimpse of what was going on (a few bottles thrown by either bunch, over in a minute flat according to an eye witness) 1a few million TV viewers were convinced that something seriously nasty was going on amongst the thousands of fans there

I dunno, I guess the media react like most people do when they see a fight outside a pub, or a car carsh; stop or slow down to see what's going on. The reporting is certainly out of all proportion in the cases I've been peripherally caught up in.

All Acting Regiment

20:25 / 15.06.05

"I think football deserves it's bad name..."

Fly:Why?

I'm really not with it today, apologies. I meant in terms of the hooliganism associated with it, compared to Cricket, for example. Which of course doesn't make any difference to the man in the street- well, maybe a positive one actually. Which I should have made clear.

20:54 / 15.06.05

Not quite what was claimed above but I think you could make a strong case that English football and supporters are seen as a violent lot *outside* England. This is partly to do with well known instances of hooliganism and partly to do with the reputation the English (maybe British) have abroad as drunken louts.

Regrettable Juvenilia

21:36 / 15.06.05

Wait, Legba, you think hooliganism gives "the man in the street" a positive impression of football? That's even nuttier!

21:50 / 15.06.05

i take legba to be saying this is a positive for cricket, yeah?

the analogy of the press as 'bystanders' [watching a pub brawl] is actually a good one and one of which the press themselves ought to take heed. they might witness something, but that isn't necessarily news. there needs to be a clearer, more objective balance between what sort of coverage stories get based on the merits of the story itself, not simply what the reporter happened to actually witness. that is just bias.

(i should note, this is a serious flaw in most journalism across all genres of 'news', not just reporting football - i don't know how we, the consumers of news, can affect it) (sorry if this is threadrot - topic for another forum, perhaps?)

Goodness Gracious Meme

15:58 / 16.06.05

Am a bit woolly today, but a few thoughts.

L'anime's point about the repuatation of English fans abroad is an interesting one. Throughout the 70s and 80s, from what I understand, travelling English attendees often had a hooligan element to them.

I say attendees as I think it's important to notice that in many cases, at home and abroad, the organised gangs that travelled with football didn't even bother to go to the matches, or would leave halfway in order to take up the best fighting positions. (I'm having to go on secondary sources on this one, will dig out some titles and get back to you)

So, what you often had is football as an environment which provided(es) a good excuse for someone looking to get a gang together and have a punch-up. It also definitely has a tribalism to its support as in many activities and most team sporting followings. So the two have fed off each other - two sorts of extremism can meet in a potent combination.

Don't have to, mind. There are plently of ferociously passionate fans who've never been violent in their lives/

There's another point about travelling fans and hooligansism, which is that when football clubs have a large following, the hooligans make up a tiny fraction of the support, so are less visible and more easily acted against. However, if a team is doing badly, it's likely to be the most 'hardcore' supporters/followers who remain.

And if you're going to the football to wear your colours and fight, it doesn't actually matter that much if your team is rubbish. This was very much the case in the late 70s/early 80s, when many people stopped going to football as it became increasingly a more dangerous atmosphere.