PowerSwitch

It is an eternal soap opera and as trivial as celebrity gossip but still occupies the thoughts of millions of otherwise intelligent adults who really must have better things to do with their time.

My best guesses for why this is:
a. Supporting a team makes one part of a larger group.
b. Combative and co-operative ruleset is similar to warfare, which humans love.
c. It's just cheap entertainment to pass time reading articles and watching highlights.
d. Gives people something to talk about in social situations.
e. Allows people to vent their pent up rage at other teams and players without feeling guilty. (btw most fans I see are vile and will abuse almost every opposing player they can with the worst kind of insults.)
f. Inherited the interest from peers and parents.

I've found it interesting comparing the state of UK football with the general decline of society. For example, many Premiership clubs have refused to pay their staff a living wage:
http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/foot ... 39822.html

Many fans are complete degenerates, I suppose these people are selected from the bottom rungs of the UK ladder, and contribute more than their fair share of obscenities, racism, thuggery and stupidity.

It is good to see that you have risen above all your inherited competitive and warlike instincts and now live in a world of enlightened nirvana where you can look down at the millions of cretins around you.

Unfortunately I can't seem to pull myself away from the soap opera either and regularly check for results and random football news online. It's an addiction of sorts.

Football supporter = Neanderthal. Simples!

Seriously though, It's not the game I mind so much, it's the interminable waffle on the tube about 'how the squad did/are doing this season' from a group of numpties struggling to impress the hard of thinking with their endless, 'barrow-boy' banter. Aaarrrrgh!

Get your own channel (along with the soaps and game shows) FFS and leave the rest of us to view the few intelligent programs that are left. [/Rant]

I have never, ever, attended a football match.

Football is not the enemy.

Some football supporters are mindless neanderthals. But there are plenty of mindless neanderthals who aren't football supporters and plenty of football supporters who aren't mindless neanderthals.

Football itself is a positive, healthy activity, both as a game for people to play and a professional sport for them to attend. It can be a bit tribal, but so can lots of things, and this in itself isn't a problem either. There did used to be a major problem with hooliganism, but a lot of effort was made to deal with that problem in the wake of the Heisel Stadium disaster which saw British clubs banned from European football for several years, and now it is much less of a problem in the UK than it is elsewhere. There's a certain sort of person who just wants to be wherever trouble is, and these days you are more likely to find them on an EDL march than a football match.

The biggest problem is the ludicrous wages and similarly ludicrous ticket prices. It's greed gone mad, and I'd personally support legislation to control it. Well...if I was running the country then anybody earning more than about £500K per year would end up paying most of their additional income in tax, so there would be no point in paying footballers £500K a month.

UndercoverElephant wrote:Football is not the enemy......

Yes to all of that and I say that as a man who finds watching the grass grow on the pitch marginally more exciting than watching grown men kick an inflated pig's bladder from one end of it to the other.
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Cracking game, football. I used to like playing it, and I like watching the International stuff.

But club football seems completely pointless to me: and yes, like most of the rest of the "entertainment" industry it appears to disproprtionately attract the worst in human nature, both in participants and audiences.

Now Ellend Road in the time of Billy Bremner et al...

biffvernon wrote:I have never, ever, attended a football match.

You're lucky. I was taken to one once when I was 7 years old. I hated it and never gave a shit about such 'sports' since.

Veering OT for a sec: no-one, in any sport, no matter what they're doing, should get paid anything. Donations welcome of course but pay? No, never, not no how.

Apart from the premiership nonsense where a massive amount of money is paid out to players, managers, agents etc. Football is a great game that is easy to get into at a grassroots level, all you need is a ball and some space. Both of my children play for local teams (boy and girl) and all coaching / admin is done on a voluntary basis.

careful_eugene wrote:Apart from the premiership nonsense where a massive amount of money is paid out to players, managers, agents etc. Football is a great game that is easy to get into at a grassroots level, all you need is a ball and some space. Both of my children play for local teams (boy and girl) and all coaching / admin is done on a voluntary basis.

Yes. Yes, Yes, Yes.

Great game, keeps youngters fit and teaches them team skills, does not require stupidly complicated equipment.

Never could be bothered with football. Rugby though! I played for 45 years retiring at the age of 45 because my boots gave me bunions and I needed to walk around the farm the rest of the week.

kenneal - lagger wrote:Never could be bothered with football. Rugby though! I played for 45 years retiring at the age of 45 because my boots gave me bunions and I needed to walk around the farm the rest of the week.

Rugby for newborns! How does that work?

careful_eugene wrote:

kenneal - lagger wrote:Never could be bothered with football. Rugby though! I played for 45 years retiring at the age of 45 because my boots gave me bunions and I needed to walk around the farm the rest of the week.

Rugby for newborns! How does that work?

Ooops! Retired at 59!!

My two and a half year old grandson goes to Rugby Totsand seems to be enjoying it

Some lower league football clubs that suddenly surge from nowhere to (for them) attain a really high status in the football pyramid is usually to be applauded. However, if the source of the funding that helped said club achieve such goals is derived from illegal activities then questions must be answered.

A case in point being Crawley Town F.C. who, for a while, emerged from The Conference and were, the season before last, in the top half of League 1 (Division 3 as was!) Last season, the bubble had burst and they were relegated.

This article explains the shenanigans around how Crawley Town came to be financed.

Andrew Drummond wrote:The small town spat however covers a much more serious problem.

There appears to be little doubt that cash into the club has been coming from the bosses of 'boiler operations' in the Far East from scammers who have been targeting the pensions of Britons in the UK.




The transfer of the shares to another director Matt Turner owner of design and PR company has been known about for some time in local circles. It is this cash and the flow of cash from Asia which has worried supporters, much more it seems than directors.