Yob rule
MICHAEL 1.11.141.r
1 t isn't often that a journalist pays public tribute to one of his peers, but that is my task this week. Simon Barnes. once of this parish, wrote a piece of such splendour last week in the Times, after England had beaten Turkey in a football match in Sunderland, that it must be acknowledged.
Actually, it should be sent to every football club in the land and to the dullards of the Football Association, but it would be lost on them. In order to appreciate a work of prose, it is necessary to be able to read and. as we know, far too many people within the game can neither read, write nor speak.
Barnes is a brilliant writer, of course. Moreover, he is usually right. In his observations of the horrors of Sunderland, when England's bone-headed followers revealed themselves in their true colours, he offered a profound and quite magnificent essay on the nature of passion; how it ennobles and corrupts. I can't tell you how good it was. Yes, I can. It dignified the very business and practice of journalism.
Of all human traits, passion is the most overrated because so many wrongdoers hide behind it. But. I suppose, without it we would have been denied the greatest works of Beethoven, Velazquez and Ibsen, to name but three, so there must be something to say for it. Like everything else in human affairs, balance is all.
The people who went to Sunderland last week have never achieved a true balance. Football means so much to them, in their blighted lives, that they cannot cope with victory, never mind defeat. It takes some believing, but there were more than 100 arrests before the game as English yobs fought among themselves. The truly sad part is that they probably didn't know they were doing wrong. Once again, we are in Theodore Dalrymple's territory.
As Barnes related, this was no small gathering. Half the crowd, some 24,000 people, responded enthusiastically when the chant began: 'Stand up if you hate the Turks.' Hatred. What an awful, lifedestroying feeling. And yet, in football, how widespread it is. It is the very lifeblood of the game. Without hatred thousands of lives would be diminished and yet the people who run the game yawn and look the other way. England must now travel later this year for the return game in Turkey, where two Leeds fans lost their lives a couple of years ago. They would do well to avoid giving offence, as English supporters have done there in the past, and as our yobbos do habitually on foreign soil. Although the FA is determined to prevent 'our boys' going there, some will find a way. The consequences of poor behaviour hardly bear thinking about.
From time to time, there is talk of banning England from international competition, and there is merit in that argument. There may be hooligans in other countries, but they do not export violence in the way that ours do. Every time England play abroad, except in the back of beyond, there is trouble. And every time the halfwits at the FA bleat miserably about 'a minority who spoil it for the rest'.
It's t'other way round, actually. The footballers spoil it for the yobs, most of whom would not recognise a left-back from an outside-right. Lock them up, and throw away the key.
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