Could 'pride' be masking something more sinister?Oh, how I wish this post would reflect the title, just based on petty English vs Welsh football rivalry. But no. I am someone with little interest in football, I grew up with a football hooligan father and in my household, football was law. I had a healthy interest in the sport as a child, I played it, wore the merchandise and even had a season ticket to Cardiff FC, but it didn’t take long after growing up, to realise my father was on the wrong side of football culture. I am talking the dark underbelly which perpetuated toxic masculinity and glorified violence. But that was just a subsection of football violence loving fans and what has this to do with a cancer blog right? Bear with me...
Picture a 12-year-old me, the only young female amongst a small minibus full of men in their late 30s. I could feel the warmth of the sun through the dirty windows on my freckled cheeks, my dad was at the wheel with a can of Stella in his right hand, leaning on the window ledge. The radio had a faint crackle in the background behind grown men with raised voices talking over each other about the ‘big game’ ahead, keen to display their knowledge and dominance amidst the smell of home rolled cigarettes, cheap deodorant and Stella in the air. I hated those trips, I felt out of place and exposed, but it was worth it to see the football.
When arriving in Ninian park, the group of men sat on the grass opposite the ground, and proceeded to crack open more Stella while we waited to enter the stadium. An impatient young Tass, I jumped on my dad's back with my arms wrapped around his neck asking for pocket money to wander into the FC’s merchandise shop. I emerged 20 minutes later with pop, crisps and a match programme, I slumped on the grass next to my dad and would proceed to read every page. It was quite boring if I am honest, but I never felt comfortable in this space. I would often hear things I don’t think a 12-year-old should have heard. But none the less it was match time! The grounds roared as the teams came on and the match day would roll on. I recall joining in, in what would be described today as borderline racist chants, and would hear people engaging in outright racism referring to their star striker at the time, Robert Earnshaw as a ‘monkey’. As a 12-year-old I had no idea of the cultural and social significance of these words at the time, but I can only look back and cringe. Half time would ensue and a pair of very thin women walked onto the pitch, their bums were squeezed into tight denim jean shorts and their thin football ‘shirts’ were cropped below the bra line. Their large breasts were causing the shirt to cast a shadow on their midriff, while their long blonde hair bounced off their torsos as they jumped up and down... The crowd erupted in a thirsty roar and wolf whistles echoed off the old tin roof in the Ninian Park ground. I shuffled uncomfortably in my seat and folded my arms, while the crowds around me howled, how was I supposed to react? Even though my background is within in Wales, I am willing to bet my anecdotal experience can be shared by many over the UK. Like it or lump it, football has been a huge part of UK culture and it is such an emotive game to many revellers, and as a consequence this can lead to taking results from the games, rather personally. This blurring between feeling a part of this collective group and actual social reality, can be found in the language - “WE won last night”, “WE are going to the top”, “WE won’t go easy on them”. Of course, this is light hearted and harmless when it starts and ends within the sport. But this concept may suggest when teams do well, the fans associated with them feel they have personally achieved something. I believe it is within this blurring of the ‘justified’ reality, is when football has a lot to answer for, when it comes to where it sits on the social and political spectrum vs “It is just a game”. Sure, in the 17 years since I was into the sport, it has come on leaps in the social spectrum and as a result racism, sexism, paedophilia and violence have arguably been reduced, but there is still a long way to go in regards to individual people accepting personal responsibility for the injustices that have happened when the crimes are committed and enabled by a collective mob. For example, take the scandal of child sexual abuse on English players which spanned from 1970 to 2005. I am sure I wasn’t alone, when my eyes were filling up watching the BBC documentary- listening to grown men, actual English football stars talk about the abuse they suffered at the hands of an institution that arguably allowed this to happen. This has been verified by an independent report here. Could it be said a lack of accountability within this powerful collective of white middle-aged men coupled with the toxic notion men should not talk about their feelings is what perpetuated such abuse? Sport, especially football is personal... And the personal is political. The power of major sporting tournaments has been used by fascist and totalitarian dictators to brainwash their public into ultra-nationalism. The most notorious examples of this can be seen under Italian dictator Mussolini when it was realised national sport “keeps the younger and naturally insurgent elements of the community from thinking too much about internal political conditions and lack of employment”. In 1936 sports writer John Tunis stated an “An Italian triumph in football, cycling, tennis, or any other sport, particularly if over old rivals like the French, is seized upon, written up and paraded as proof positive of the superiority of the race and its governing principles”, (Source 2013). Looking beyond a domestic level, we know Hitler used Arian athletes in the 1936 Olympics to extrapolate a wider context of supremacy. So, what is my point? Well, after the horrific year we have all had. I have found it personally gruelling and extremely testing to say goodbye to 13 friends since September due to Secondary cancer. For me, and many others the inadequate governance grows from tiring, to fury. Name your poison: Past health minister caught shall we say ‘not socially distancing’ with his tongue down another woman's throat?, how about Boris’s famous “Let the bodies pile high in their thousands” line? Ohh, perhaps ‘Cummings gate’? The lack of PPE? Failure to pay nursing staff adequate wages? The policing bill? ...Cancer wise, how about, the changing of treatment plans and a serious drop in referrals (Source, 2020) have led to noticeably more deaths and secondary cancer being diagnosed right off the bat?
They are literally dragging us to our knees while they pull the ladder up, slam the door shut and exhort the NIMBY philosophy, they then have the cheek to be outraged when their entitlement is called into question. Nothing highlights this more than the appointment of former investment banker Sajid Javid as our new health minister, he has some serious investments in private health care and this is the person ‘we’ have entrusted to handle our very precious NHS, and guide us through the worst health crisis seen in the UK since we waved goodbye to Spanish flu 1920? Riiiiiiggghhht...
Back to the football and I see English flags encircled in poppies and I can hear chants rippling through Wembley directed at the German football team “Two world wars and one world cup!”. The only political slogan I can fathom is “lions led by donkeys” as I watch while our ‘lord kitchener-esc’ pig faced ‘leaders’ lead us into the proverbial slaughter house. They are packed in, sipping unlimited champagne in Wimbledon to jumping and screaming in Wembley. And yet, my hospitality friends are shouted at when they follow orders and ask people to stay in their seats. To see Wembley stadium jammed with 60,000 people screaming, drinking, jumping just served as the biggest FUCK YOU to vulnerable and struggling people that I have ever witnessed. Last night led to fans ‘surfing’ double decker buses and fighting riot police and was somewhat reminiscent of the 2018 world cup riot (When England got to the semi-final) that ended with over 1200 people being banned from travelling to see the game. I am so disappointed by my fellow humans; these people are not recognizable to me in my immediate circle but they evidentially exist in their masses. The statements made by the commentator of last night's game; Sam Matterface left me gasping with disbelief - “You’ve had a terrible 16 months; kids you can stay up, don’t you dare go to bed. The rest of you, call your boss, you ain’t coming in, in the morning”. “You deserve this. England deserve this. Feel it, ride it. All that outpouring of emotion is just 50 seconds away”. (Lets just forget the fact most people watching were not English, like the UK is the only nation to suffer?) Wow just wow.... My friends have died alone in their hospital beds, I have had friends banned from hugging their children, or seeing their parents in homes, I have friends that have had treatment delayed and their cancer has grown, I have friends who have worked tirelessly through the night and have held backed tears seeing body after body being zipped up and thrown out, I have friends who’s hospitality jobs have screwed them over and they have been on the breadline, I have not been able to attend my friends funeral, I have not been allowed to live out my bucket list and final wishes like thousands of others. The once controversial policing bill which bans peaceful protests has been slipped through two days ago, in amongst the “It’s coming home” cheers. In a post Brexit world, I look around while the poor and vulnerable drop and ‘survival of the fittest’ has become a rigged game reminiscent of the Orwellian novel ‘Animal Farm’. I feel every day we are living in an increasingly fascist state, pitted against one another while they live by their own rules. I propose our national sports are currently being used as a propaganda machine to drum up the public, why else would they waiver the rules for things like 2500 UFEA delegates to travel to the UK and back to Europe without quarantining when the rest of us have can’t even fly? What have they got to gain? Money? Sure, but I would debate it is more about having the UK coming together in a collective mindset to feel personal pride in their nation. Pride is a nice emotion to feel, especially when the individual has not really done anything to justify feeling it. This ‘free’ pride felt by the individual could be collectively harnessed into fuelling nationalism, and when our nation is evidentially failing, what do we have to be proud about? This could turn into blind following of the ‘powers that be’ when left unchecked. Please, let football be just football and allow it to be the game it was meant to be. |
A ' no holds' page about my life with incurable advanced Breast Cancer, in the hope it will give a realistic, detailed account to other young women going through the unfortunate illness.
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