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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

to not get football

34 replies

nortine · 02/11/2010 23:32

I've been to see my parents tonight and my dad,brother,sister were all watching the football. For the whole match they were on edge constantly going ooooooooooh!. When their team scored their first goal db jumped on dsis back and they ran round the room. When they scored their last goal all 3 of them got in a circle and started jumping up and down.
AIBU to not get all the excitement that football seems to generate in people.

OP posts:
newwave · 02/11/2010 23:40

You are usually born to it, my family, me included are season ticket holders and also attend some away matches. Football is an emotionally roller coaster and at matches you feel like your part of an extended family.

Myself I could never understand the attraction of reality TV and think X factor and strictly is for the brain dead other feel the same about various sports.

Each to their own I suppose.

Original poster
nortine · 02/11/2010 23:43

My family are quite into it except me and my my mum. I just don't get why my df who is 58, dsis (23) and db (14) behave like my dc on xmas day when a goal is scored.

OP posts:
newwave · 02/11/2010 23:48

nortine, because if you care for your club it's an amazing emotional high, when a goal is scored by your team you will hug people you dont know at away matches and celebrate with the regulars around you at home matches.

You either "get it" or you dont

huddspur · 03/11/2010 00:02

YABU watching your team win is awesome. Guess your family are Tottenham fans (I was dancing with them).

newwave · 03/11/2010 00:08

Hudd, "Tottenham" please refrain from foul language and no I am not Arsenal or a Chelski plastic :o good win by the spuds (gits)

FunkyCherry · 03/11/2010 00:11

Agree, you either 'get it' or you don't.

Going to a live game is TOTALLY different to watching on TV. I get goose-pimples when I walk up the tunnel at the tube station and hear the crowd.

Try watching the film/reading the book 'Fever Pitch'.

huddspur · 03/11/2010 00:12

newwave do I sense you are a bitter spammer. Yes I'm a lifelong Spurs fan (its even in my MN name) and its was a fantastic win by us tonight.

newwave · 03/11/2010 00:19

Funky, spot on about the goose-pimples.

Hudd, correct, my parents are from that area and were themselves Hammers, we travel down for matches now. Been poor for a while now but what can you do it's in the blood as you would know.

Joolyjoolyjoo · 03/11/2010 00:25

I don't get football, although I really enjoy watching the rugby. It's the politics/ celebrity-ism (?!) of football that put me off as much as anything. I find it hard to see footballers as sportsmen rather than fashion models/ slebs, and I get p'd off with their amateur dramatics on the pitch! Rugby players get proper injured and make far less fuss!

Original poster
nortine · 03/11/2010 00:29

Yeah Hudd they are Tottenham fans even we're from Hull.

OP posts:
newwave · 03/11/2010 00:29

Jooly, a lot of us feel the same about SOME modern footballers but what can you do, a good game of footy is a thing of beauty.

huddspur · 03/11/2010 00:32

Well the Hudd stands for Huddersfield so I'm also a northerner but I'm a Tottenham fan and always have been. Football just gets the emotion up and when I'm watching it I feel like all Tottenham fans and players are part of my family. I think you either feel it or you don't.

Joolyjoolyjoo · 03/11/2010 00:33

newwave- I probably could enjoy a game of football if it was just about the game.

But unfortunately I live in the West of Scotland (just outside Glasgow), where football seems to have been tied up with the nastiest kind of sectarianism Sad. I grew up with it, even in my own family, so rather than take sides I just boycotted football altogether!

huddspur · 03/11/2010 00:35

Jooly I'm also a Huddersfield Giants fan so I like rugby league and the games are different but I enjoy them for different reasons. I prefer football though if I had to choose between them.

newwave · 03/11/2010 00:36

Jooly, you will find intense rivalries all over the country although I will admit "the old firm" takes some beating.

Give a lower division club a try usually a friendlier atmosphere.

Joolyjoolyjoo · 03/11/2010 00:42

Well, I've kind of resigned myself to the fact that as ds gets older he will probably be into footie, so I will be forced to learn the ins and outs of the game. He will be supporting the local team,though- none of this old firm stuff!

But I am secretly trying to get him more interested in rugby Wink He is only 3, so I have time...

jesole · 03/11/2010 09:11

YANBU its just men running around after a ball.

UnquietDad · 03/11/2010 09:16

I can see it's an entertaining game and I get quite into it during the World Cup and the Euros, as does DW.

But I don't follow a club and have never felt the need to. Why subject yourself to that, week after week? I see various Facebook friends' updates about it and I shake my head in despair.

It's the "we" thing that I find ridiculous. "We" beat "them" more heavily than at any time in the last 80 years, according to a Newcastle supporter last week. They thought there was no need to explain who "they" were, or indeed it was football they were referring to.

mayorquimby · 03/11/2010 10:22

Never understood the insistence of people to compare it to rugby. They're completely different games both with their own set of serious problems which need to be adressed for the good of both games.
People complain about footballers as role models and point to rugby as the alternative for the behaviour based on the respect showed to referees (which is definitely a plus point) but then should we really look at a sport which has a history of almost apathetic leniency towards eye-gouging when it comes to banning players and which will regularly see punch ups on the field resukt in no punishment and be chalked up to excitement boiling over as a bastion of morality.

I'm a huge fan of both sports (would want to be given the prices the IRFU are charging for this months matches) and my point is not to villify Rugby but just to illustrate how tired I am as a football fan of the lazy villification of "modern footballers" when the reality is they are no different to any other sport (except golf) where the players involve will bend/break the rules at almost every chance if they think it will help them win.

lokaku · 03/11/2010 10:28

YABVU you can't beat watching your team win. When your watching them you feel like they are your family. Like your family I'm a spurs fan and last night was the best night I've had for ages.

Chil1234 · 03/11/2010 10:33

My take on football is that it's like a soap opera i.e. the characters, the plots, the who's up, who's down etc. and that you can only care about it once you let yourself get absorbed in the full story for quite some time. Start from childhood and you're in with a chance. But try to get interested in league football when you don't know the names or the back-story and you don't particularly care who wins & it's like walking in half-way through an episode of Coronation Street for the first time...you've no idea what's going on, no reference points, and it's completely baffling.

International comps are easier to get interested in because they're finite, the list of characters is limited and you generally know who you want to win.

Oblomov · 03/11/2010 11:57

Lots of people don't get ....football, cricket, rugby, whatever. Thats fine.
I get football. I have always liked football. My dad played and my yiungest brother was good.
When I firat met dh, more than 10 years ago, he was impressed thta I knew the offside rule. He was impressed at my knowledge on football. I love watching Brazil, some of the Italians and Spanish play. Their footabll is so very skillfull and fluid and really beautiful to watch.

Dh is a spurs fan. Thus I must be too, and our 2 ds's love football. WE got intot he Champions League. Last night we played the champions Inter Milan. We played superbly for the whole 90 minutes. Made them look like school boy. To INTER MILAN. And we beat them 3-1. But it was the style in which we played that made me impressed.

I enjoy watching Spurs play. I also enjoy watching match of the day where you see all the teams and all the goals. My love of football is rounded and general.

What can be wrong with this ?

Lots of thing are grotesque. Rooneys greed etc. But all in all, If you don't get it,OP, thats fine. But don't complain. Lots of people don't like theatre, or classical music.
But don't berate those that do.

Chil1234 · 03/11/2010 11:59

It's hardly 'berating' for the OP to say that they don't get why people are so excited....

Ormirian · 03/11/2010 12:04

No.

I don't much. i quite enjoy watching matches but I can switch off afterwards which my DH and others I know can't. And I do appreciate that for them it is hugely important part of their lives.

Agree with newwave about reality TV. Would rather watch 10 matches than X-Factor or BB.

byrel · 03/11/2010 12:07

I love football and think you can't beat the excitement that a match can generate. I'm a Spurs fan and was also elated with last nights game.