On Saturday, I went to watch a football match. I used to go regularly - I was a season ticket-holder at Bury for several years - but the constant drip,drip, drip of stories from the Premiership have all served to taint the game and diminish my connection to it: salaries of £300K per week; managers being sacked after five minutes because success (i.e. income) has to be instantaneous and sustained in the Murdoch-polluted pond that is football today; and general acts of awful behaviour by a bunch of overpaid prima donnas. Still, a good game can still inspire me and get the blood pumping a bit. I guess I'm not anti-football, just not as into it in the way I once was. This Saturday's game made me question whether I want to attend another match and, if I do, made me think very carefully where I choose to sit.
The match was a League One fixture between Bolton and AFC Wimbledon at the Macron Stadium. I have no particularly strong feelings for either team: I worked in Bolton for 23 or more years and had attended a few games over the years and I had seen Wimbledon at Plough Lane during the years of miraculous rise up the football league as The Crazy Gang and, subsequently, over the years at various fixtures in the North West. The main reason for my being there was the same reason that I have watched Wimbledon over the years: my friend E who is fanatical about The Wombles. He followed them during the non-league years and all the way through the divisions to the top flight. We were at Wembley in 1988 when they miraculously beat Liverpool in the FA Cup final, E and I sitting in the Liverpool end while my wife and her dad sat in the Wimbledon end (don't ask!). When the Dons scored, E was unable to contain his joy and leapt into the air, not caring about the hundreds of pairs of eyes that turned to watch his celebration, all filled with a mixture of disbelief and menace. At the end, I think the Liverpool fans didn't care about the short guy celebrating in their midst, still unable to comprehend how the sporting thoroughbreds had been beaten over five furlongs by the brewery dray horse. When the team upped sticks and moved to Milton Keynes, E stuck resolutely with the new team formed in the vacuum. E refused to support 'the Franchise', a name he still uses for MK Dons. So, you get the picture: E is fanatical, I am more neutral and just looking to be entertained.
As it was E's team playing, we sat in the end with the away supporters. During the second half, somewhere to our right, the stewards moved up into the crowd. We couldn't see what had occurred/was occurring as many people chose to stand throughout the match. After a while, the stewards re-emerged from the crowd and were escorting out two Wimbledon supporters, neither of whom looked happy to be leaving. As I say, I cannot comment on the appropriateness of the stewards actions as I could not see. However, the five twenty-something blokes on the row behind us started to shout abuse at the stewards. In the main this consisted of "Fuck off!" repeated over and over. They had been fairly vocal throughout the game to that point, singing Wimbledon songs (of which there are many) and generally indulging in blokeish but harmless banter. Their transformation on seeing a fellow fan (who, from their comments, I am pretty certain they did not know) led out of the ground because of unknown transgressions (again, they do not seem to have seen the cause of the incident) was pretty shocking. What truly shocked, however, was the naked misogyny of their invective because one of the stewards was a woman. She was subjected to 'special' abuse: "Look at her, fat cunt" and "Fucking bitch" were two of the yells directed at her. The overweight male steward was not singled out, the balding male steward was not singled out, the steward in glasses was not singled out. Three other, uniquely identifiable stewards were not singled out for abuse, but the woman was.
Sitting directly in front of the lads was a father with his two sons aged 11 or 12. All around, young women were sitting, wanting to see the match and drawn to football as a live experience that is now supposedly 'safer' than it was in the bad old days of hooliganism and racism. Was no-one saying anything because the lads were 'their' supporters, passionate about 'their' team? Should I have said something? Much as I don't want language such as "fucking bitch" to become normalised ways to talk about women for 11 and 12 year olds, how would I have fared against five or six rather tanked-up lads? The truth is, I should have said something as I was the neutral and they weren't 'my' supporters to upset. I think the fact that no-one - including me - said anything to counter such awful language, was what really took the edge off the day for me.
