To think ds will be eaten alive if he wears his team scarf to the match?

[BettyBotter]

We live near Blue Town. Ds (15) supports Red City FC but has never been to a premiership match. For Christmas we got ds and the whole family tickets to see the match between Blue Town and Red City when the reds play here.

Ds is insistent that he will wear his Red City scarf and cheer loudly for the reds despite us being seated right in the middle of the Blue Town stands. He thinks because he's only 15 and cute the blue fans won't mind.

I haven't been to a match since 1986 for a while, so have no idea what to expect. Will we actually get out with all our limbs intact if ds does this? Should I ban him from wearing anything red or is football now family-friendly entertainment where the home crowd ruffle the young lad's head and congratulate him when his team thrash the home team?

(For context Blue Town is fairly well known as 'rough' and there were no options to get tickets in family friendly seats.)

Tips, advice and sneering derision constructive comment welcome.

I do wonder if the segregation of fans has created a sort of vicious circle whereby it has now become the norm that opposition fans can't mix at games and which sort of fuels the aggression when the idiots get together. I don't think its something which can ever change now without a lot of work by clubs and fans because the segregation has become such a norm but I do think it could actually make things worse.

I was amazed when I went to a premiership match that we weren't allowed into a pub before the game because the person I was with was wearing a kit for the away team and it was a 'home' pub. As a rugby fan, who has drank in that pub on many an occasion before rugby games as an away fan, I just couldn't get my head around this idea of not allowing people to drink together because they support different teams.

Slightly unrelated but - I live 300 miles from my home town. A few years ago my home town ice hockey team was playing the local team here. So we went to the match. 5,999 fans all cheering for the local team. One fan, literally one - me - for the visiting team. The usual visiting fans on the bus had obviously decided it was too far to travel.

At the start when the commentator asked for a big cheer for the visiting team I stood up and cheered....and 5,999 people all turned and stared in silence...
But unlike football, it was a completely family friendly atmosphere and I didn't feel even slightly intimidated.

'That's just the way it is'
Then it should change, as many unacceptable things have over the centuries.

Sirzy Do you think that if you deleted football from teh world, then rugby would just become the inheritor of that tribal mentality, Sirzy? I wonder if rugby and cricket, even though we love them in this house - in fact, cricket probably more than football - can feel a bit smug because they benefit from the fact that tribal mentalities have stuck themselves to football. Again, I emphasise that we love all three. But I do find the cultural behaviour that goes with sport one of the most fascinating aspects of it!
And yes, I agree that the tribalism has been encouraged to some extent per your first paragraph!

I don't think they would now, perhaps its because the fans have seen what such behaviour (by a minority) has done to football I think generally any attempts to change rugby (and I assume other sports) to the same sort of mentality would quickly be shot down by clubs and fans. Ruby League certainly works very hard to keep encouraging things whereby the fans of other clubs mix, and yes of course there is the odd incident of trouble but they are pretty quickly stopped and more or less universally frowned upon by fans and clubs

Yes, that's an interesting point, Sirzy - there wouldn't be that sense of trying to turn around a massive cultural tanker!

I've been going to watch my team, which bounces between the top three divisions, for decades. The fact of segregation, it is true, has had the effect of magnifying antagonism. But if you're a home fan, there's nothing more annoying than away fans getting tickets in your end. First, because they've deprived home fans of tickets. Second, because you are there to be with people who support the same team as you. But do bear in mind that after the game we all walk to the same public transport along the same streets, often talking to opposition fans quite happily about the game: football fans do not all want to kill each other.

However, at my club, it's not been infrequent to have away fans in the home areas. They are generally borne with with a certain exasperated tolerance – never seen any get assaulted or spat on or anything, even if we're all annoyed they're there. In fact, when our lot have been giving theirs a tonking on the pitch, it can be quite fun having them around to tease.

But people who are complaining about the tribalism of football miss the point. The tribalism is a big part of what makes the experience of going to football so exciting. It's why football fans like going on away trips so much – it's where you get the most passionate support. I've been taking my 10 year old to games, home and away, for four years now. We've never felt in the slightest danger or in the least intimidated anywhere.

I think thats the problem, it has all become some ingrained in the culture of football that it is now deemed normal.

Until you get rid of the mindless minority who use football as a vehicle to have a rumble the only possible course of action for any club is to try and keep fans separate. It IS sad for the ones who can have that bit of banter, who can watch and behave themselves, but it is better to be separated. As to whoever said "it is part of it" - I strongly disagree, force of circumstance has caused it to happen. As you get lower down the leagues, you get less and less segregation of fans.

I was caught up in an incidence of hooliganism 9 years ago. It was the most terrifying thing I have ever experienced - if anyone is interested I'll relay my experience to go some way to explaining why fans are separated. I ended up testifying in court over it to try and get some of the perpetrators sent down.

Whoever said hooliganism is coming back is absolutely correct. Yesterday "fans" of a Premier League club attacked away fans with knives and bricked their coaches.

It is so sad that that is the accepted way of football.

I saw something on TV a while back going over the history of violence at matches, it said that back in the day football was what everyone went to, grandad, dad and son alike so there was respect there because nobody would dare to misbehave in front of all the old men. Then it changed (I think because of pensions etc to the old folk had more money to do other things so went to football less?) and behavious deteriorated because the older generation wasn't there to keep the manners and respect going.

I'm glad to be a rugby family where if the other team scores a great try you can turn round and say something like "great pass, they really deserved that one" before going back to cheering your own team.

Rugby fans in Britain, except for perhaps Wales, really do go out of their way to make themselves look like po-faced, up-themselves tossers.

Though a rugby fan from birth (and from a country where we play real rugby, not England-style hoof-it-and-hope bollocks), I have to be a football fan when in the Northern Hemisphere. Football is the only sport played and supported with any passion.

Give me ninety-plus tense minutes of keeping schtum in the opposition end at a football match over eighty minutes beside wanker rugby fans who would probably have an aneurism if you raised your voice at all.

Passionless toads.

maltesefalcon

I think (I hope) that such behaviour would not translate to rugby or cricket fans. As a sweeping generalisation, fans of a sport are/were usually players of that sport so they pick up the characteristics of the sport.
Cricket is not a physically aggressive game. Yes, there is bodyline type stuff but there isn't rough and tumble. Games are also long - you can't sustain a fever-pitch of hate for hours on end. It's too exhausting!
Rugby is a team game. Everyone knows that you can't win a game through a few prima donna; it needs all fifteen to operate in harmony. There is a place for everyone - the small one, the tall one, the fast one, the big one, the thinker. Differences are valued, not polarised.
As said above rugby fans can peacefully co-exist in the stands, despite having a drink in their hand. It's a shame the football fans can't too.

What a strange post, maltese. It is possible to be a passionate fan but still be a good sport, you know. That Shankley "more important than life or death" stuff is bollaux.

matlese - you've clearly never been to a rugby league match.......we do have two codes here, do keep up.

By the way, the worst behaviour I've ever seen from sports fans on their way home after a game was rugby fans, after a Varsity match at Twickenham. But because they were posh, it was "high jinks" - it was like 500 members of the Bullingdon Club in one place. Had it been football fans, the train would have been stopped and they would all have been removed. Class plays a big part in "official" views of sport.

Football is unique in that the crowd are viewed as the 12th man - their support is an aid to the team – which is why hostility to the opposition (expressed non violently) is such a big part of the game. When our team's hugely successful local rivals came to our ground two years ago, they lost – in part because they were so taken aback by the atmosphere in the ground. They were unprepared for it. Plenty of people here would clearly have though it was disgraceful, that we should have been applauding politely. Well, no – we were delighted we'd played our part in getting a hugely unexpected win over one of the biggest clubs in the world. You can't get that kind of feverish intensity if everyone is patting each other on the back. And all those who go to football, who support a club, recognise that, and cherish it.

Apologies. We usually call rugby union just "rugby" where I'm from, Fleta. I am not disparaging English rugby league (which we generally call "league") as I understand the fans of the latter as normal, working-class types who don't prefer self-congratulation and condescension to, I dunno, watching an exciting game. You're right, I've never had the good fortune to go to a league match in England.

Lots of football fans are cricket fans too, senua, so your implication that the latter are a better class of people doesn't hold water.

A lot of classist ignorance on this thread.

As for the thugs, I'd refer you all to the words of Ted Croker, then chairman of the FA, when asked by Margaret Thatcher what he was going to do about "his" hooligans.

"We don't want this made public, but these people are society's problems and we don't want your hooligans in our sport, prime minister."

AllFallDown, nice posts. That's how we feel about rugby (union) where I'm from.

Thanks maltsese

There's some absolutely fabulous rugby league matches, I've seen some belters over the years. And taken my small daughter to them as they're so family friendly.

Are you in Australia?

Wash your mouth out. I'm a New Zealander. :)

I support my home team. There is one rival team that causes a load of shit when its time for us to play them. I don't mean that team and supporters, I mean both teams and supporters.

The train station is guarded by many police. Pubs only allow either home or away team and never both. In the stand it is totally separate.

Police are all over the city when they play. I even think they try to get away team off coaches and in stadium then straight back on coach.

I have been when white played reds and I was on the wrong side. It didn't stop me celebrating. I did get the most terrible looks though

My teen brother plays for an academy and even they have "enemies".

Posted too soon. Thanks, Fleta, you have given me a New Year's Resolution- to take my small daughter to an English rugby league game while she's still small.