On Banter

Aston Villa fans on Saturday away at Wycombe were actually able to get through to the players what they thought about their performance so far this season. Villa fans were also able to catch the players getting on to the team bus after the match  (the players have their own private entrance/exit at Premier League stadiums). The Villa fans were extremely angry and got very abusive.

I thought it was fantastic, and hilarious. 

 I'm sure Villa fans are sick to the back teeth of being goaded at work by fans of other clubs and they had every right to take that out on their overpaid, underperforming players. Angry shouting and swearing is an integral part of the English game. Some stupid so-called journalists call this 'passion' - it's nothing of the sort. The American travel writer Bill Bryson has called Britain 'the angry isle' and I think he has a point. The average Englishman does like to go to the football on a Saturday afternoon to curse and bawl and generally take out the week's frustrations, everyday humiliations and the quiet despair eating away at their soul on the players and the referee before going to the pub afterwards to get obliterated and forget everything completely. 

However, some fans are far too thin-skinned for my liking. Some Villa fans complained that Joleon Lescott swore at them on Saturday, but I think players should be allowed to swear at fans who abuse them. I also think that referees should be allowed to join in with the banter. Adam Lallana putting in a complaint about a referee who told him 'you've changed since you played for England' was petty and pathetic. I also think referees should be allowed to swear at players, players swear enough at them.

More troubling than mere swearing though is the amount of racist, homophobic and misogynistic language which is still heard. Eva Carneiro, Sian Massey and other women in football have reported being subjected to misogynistic abuse on a regular basis and it is instructive that there are no openly gay Premiership football players (they are terrified of the abuse they would receive). And although a lot of the racist chanting at grounds has now been cut out, anti-Semetic abuse in particular is still quite common. Worse than that, although it is not directly connected to racist abuse inside grounds it is very sad that there are no British Asian players at all in the entire football league - English football clearly does still have a race problem.

The lines between 'banter' and 'hate-speech' are obviously blurred, but perhaps we need to redefine what is and what is not acceptable. While the energy and the excitement of fans and the atmosphere at matches (up to and including personal abuse) is one of the things that makes English football so great, the accompanying bigotry is totally unacceptable and needs to change.