Good morning.
The tiresome issue of Club Statements dominates and perhaps the Inter Lull is a useful opportunity for some of us to pull the car over switch the engine off, take a deep breath and have a bloody good long hard look at ourselves. Arsenal fans who for who knows how long suffered abuse actually matched and perhaps even outshone Tottenham cavemen with their own hate songs on Sunday.
As I’ve mentioned previously, even for those with no moral center be they Arsenal or Spurs – no value system worth speaking of – the fact that both clubs have seen fit to issue a statement condemning those with a lust for bullying – and face facts, that’s essentially what this is -that the jig is well and truly up.
I actually think this blog is well past the point of ‘arguing the case’ against the minority of bigots hiding behind the ‘it’s banter/just a laugh’ defense. The notion that somehow buying a ticket to a football match gives one a passport to bully using race, or inferences of homophobia or suggest child abuse is a deluded one.
Yes, banter is good. The sharper, the nastier the better in my book. But sing about child molestation in a supposedly humourous way? Have any of you choirboys got children? Are you allowed near children?
I don’t ’embrace’ the whole politically correct gig. But this garbage needs knocking on the head now. I don’t even understand how it’s still in existence.
BIOYC!
oh, btw, a little oof trak but what is this nonsense about wlshere having a go at hoddle?
1. hoddle has forgotten more about football than wilshere will ever know
2. wilshere was still sucking at his mother’s tit when hoddle was recommending a certain mr wenger to the arsenal board. what a complete and utterly contemptible fool
Every time #Wilshire opens his mouth he just compounds his stupidity more.
I wonder where he gets that from?! :whistle:
East End Spur just crawl back into your gutter and please keep away from the Lane if that is your attitude. It is always the same, you male thugs with an IQ less than your shoe size resort to this kind of abuse. I hope you never have to bring children up, what a role model.
Do your children call you horny helen? :shocked:
@ Horny Helen
I’m bringing up two beautiful daughters.
I hope neither of them degrade themselves by going on a predominantly male website and calling themselves Horny….
She can call herself whatever the bleeding hell she likes…….freedom of speech……
I didn’t say she couldn’t…….freedom of speech.
This one could run and run……
On a side note, anyone see that the pub landlady from Portsmouth that was being sued and lost her case to the Premier League…appealed to the European Court of Justice, and WON!! She was showing matches on a Saturday from 3pm on her Greek satalite dish…The court ruled that the opening sequence with PL logo etc was copyright protected but that the match was not! This could seriously change the way we watch our footy if like me, you cant get a ticket to watch most Spurs matches. Hopefully and end is coming to dodgy streams on the internet :-)
I hate Arsenal, Chelsea, West Ham.
I also have friends who support them. Do I hate them for it? No.. Do I wish them to die because of their allegiance.. No.
I do however wish their club to lose, and take great pleasure in rejoicing in that and will happily chant that their contingent are w@nkers, sex cases, drug users or whatever else in unison with my fellow supporters.
Do the fans who chant this stuff really mean it to the word?. No. No chance at all..
It’s banter. Don’t lose sight of that. Its about giving your team an edge and putting the boot in against rival fans.
Try not to get carried away by what is currently media hysteria about it at the mo.
The adebayor/spurs/arsenal thing has made for a big news day in the sporting pages since his transfer, this is something else that will string it out a bit longer..
Banter of that level has been going on for years and will continue to do so.
Don’t get me wrong, its all about the football for me.. But take away that banter and that edginess from a match day and you’re left with a completely different experience.
The moment a football crowd, becomes a rugby crowd is the moment I stop going.
You obviously haven’t been watching Ireland at the Rugby world cup so…
There’s a huge difference between banter and abuse. I’ve heard some of the funniest and wittest jibes in football stadiums. Peter Shiltons “Tina, Tina” and “Who’se up Mrs Brown?” and the brilliant”Loadsamoney” chants v Newscastle to name a few, were all funny because they were topical,inciteful and above all hurtful. Campbell’s however were the only way we as a mass could express our disgust at this piece of garbage and were acceptable and fitting given the circumstances. But unfortunately they’ve also created a precedent as the banter-jibe has been repaced with personal and viscious abuse, which just isn’t clever or could ever be classed as banter!
The moment a football crowd becomes a rugby crowd is the moment we get our game back from the racists, thugs and bigots, Try telling the Gloucester fans in the Shed at Kingsholm that they don’t know anything about supporting their team and creating an intimidating atmosphere for the visiting team. Yet they do it without hatred or vile abuse and rugby is a game you can still take the whole family to. I went to my first game at WHL in 1963 as a 9-year old but I wouldn’t take any kid to a match now as long as some of the posters on here are exercising their ‘freedom of speech’.
So just where do you draw the line?
Who judges what is and what isn’t offensive?
the easy answer is common folk representing common decency
that does not mean there wont be hard cases that are close to the line (which side depending on the sensitivity of the individual, and we can all come up with teasers. one that occurs to me; if graham rix left the hoddle academy in spain and got a job as, eg hodgson’s asst, wd it be ok to direct the wenger chant at him? he has a conviction. but of course what he did was witha willing girl, and would not have been a crime in many countries, eg france which has a lower age of consent. cleary poor taste, but shd it be banned? expose a chanter to a life time ban?
@Cyril You’re still drawing a line. What is your definition of common folk? I’m sure it will differ from the next man.
Well, once HH gets around to moderating me (no, I don’t mean ratboy’ify) there will be some links to the laws of the land.
But yeah, I think the judiciary should be the judge. A redundant sentence, I know. But that is how it works in a democracy.
No comments awaiting due to dodgy words or otherwise, old bean :cool: