>From a Reading supporting mate of mine ... and we thought we had it bad!!!
It is a truly warped mind which can't rest after a defeat in the Carling
Cup, but after an abortive attempt at sleep I find myself turning Ben
Hamer's goalkeeping over in my head as well as apparently more pressing
concerns about needing a new boiler and pending appraisals with my team at
work ("you've put here 'strengths - accounting'. That's your job though,
isn't it?").
Quite why I thought that watching Reading play would improve another dire
day spent at work after battling across Berkshire on First Great Western's
tardy and expensive service, dodging lycra-clad oxf*rd with fold up bicycles
in the vestibules is beyond me. At least at Reading I can tell everyone in
no uncertain terms what I think of their wretched performance as opposed to
work where I spend the best part of 8 hours a day keeping my tongue. And now
the more I think about it, the more things trouble me, for instance:
- Why did I spend £350-odd on a season ticket to commit to watching Alex
Pearce slice desperate clearances at 45 degree angles to his kicking foot
and Jem Karacan donate the football to the opposition as if they were
collecting sports equipment for flood-ravaged Pakistan? It's not as if I
didn't already know back in the summer that these two - and a good many
others on our books - are pretty absymal at football. It should be about £4
to get in to watch a football match really, tops. I blame Liverpool fans and
Northern Rock.
- Why do we have a failed ex-Slough and Woking manager in charge? Don't get
me wrong, I like Brian. He's quite clearly a thoroughly bloody nice bloke
which is at least an improvement on his predecessor.
- Why is our best player Icelandic? Iceland is to football what, erm, Bejam
is to Cricket.
- Why is my own personal favourite player - also Icelandic - a 34-year old
who is slower than a mini-bus full of Chelsea fans with a flat tyre? Are we
otherwise so devoid of quality and excitement that watching a man apparently
made from granite smash foolhardily into the opposition is the most
entertaining thing on offer?
- Why do I hate Adam Federici? Is it because he is seemingly the only
Australian who is crap at sport? Or because every post-match mistake-denying
interview is delivered in that chirpy accent after he has spaffed a couple
of low, near-post dollies under his fat belly?
- When will Brian Howard ever make a tackle? He likes a physical challenge
about as much as Walter the Softy does.
- Why is it a £3.50 return fare from Reading station to go and watch this
sh*t? What am I getting for my money, a film showing en route? You f*cking
crooks.
- Why (when we have the spackiest, most simperingly middle-class fan base in
the land) do we have probably the jobsworthiest stewards in the entire
country, who themselves are dictated to by an ex-fireman with a speech
impediment? And why don't the stewards make themselves a little more
jobsworthy outside the ground rather than erecting a safety fence to keep
250 gibbering Scunthorpe fans at bay and sending the home supporters off to
walk all the way round the ground to get to their cars parked at a bargain
£7 in Worton Grange.
- Why is it only at football that £7 for 2 hours parking is deemed an
acceptable price? At least Dick Turpin wore a mask.
- Why do I have to mind my p's and q's at football anyway? F*ck me, there
are 8,000 empty seats most weeks; can't we sit all the kids in families in
some sort of enclave with a sound-proof safety fence? At football, people
shouldn't be thrown out for swearing, they should be ejected for doing the
EA-SAY clap or for wearing face-paint or a jester's hat; these things are
far more offensive.
- Why does modern football disenfranchise me so? Preening Premier League
fancy-dans getting paid far too much and taking themselves too seriously.
Sadly, in the Championship we seem to see the second-tier of this kind of
c*nt which in a way is worse. SKY Sports News in HD bringing you the news
that Barnsley have banned Vuvuzelas for next season. I hope all 92 league
clubs go bankrupt, yes including Reading. It's all your fault, Jimmy Hill.
- Why, after 30 years trying, haven't I been able to find a more fulfilling
hobby than watching a crap football team on a far too regular basis? Yes,
there is another choice of hobby of course, but much more of that kind of
thing and it'll fall off in my hand.
Oh well, at least this has stopped me thinking about the boiler for 5
minutes. And I suppose the biggest WHY here is WHY did I bother writing all
this when I hold at least 90% in massive contempt anyhow.
Follow-up:
Beautifully put, Floyd.
This and more is precisely why I no longer watch Reading. Nearly thirty
years of season ticket attendance and away games, and for all the reasons
you've stated and many more, I couldn't give a flying f*ck if I never see
another 'professional' football match again.
Every time I'm drawn back for any reason, I feel almost sick. However, the
game now has the fans it deserves. A set of true idiots whose idolisation of
'players' as they watch them flounce around in silk or get on and off
air-conditioned coaches wearing earphones while sulking borders on
cretinism.
I can just about stomach an away game watching Reading now, preferably in
London, so you can disappear and do something else completely removed from
football or even pretend you hadn't gone to the game at all, or somewhere
distant and shabby in the North, so that one sense of abject misery might
outdo the other. Either occasion doused in alcohol so not much of it all
filters in.
Each time I remember the days of my football youth it seems that the game
was at the very least reflective of a more mature society and life. Players
were men, and looked like men. Now they are either metrosexual or so far up
their arses and financially cushioned and protected you'd think they were
mincing Berlin pouves. Fans were ribald, great fun and were held in some
regard, if not respect. Now it's a crock of manufactured and over-priced
sh*t.
The dearth of talent on the pitch is in direct comparison to the steroid
world of money perpetuated by the behemoths of 'entertainment' such as Sky
and is only a step away from the same gibbering mentality of sh*t like the
X-Factor, a true emblem of how infantilised and f*cking weak-minded the
general populace of this blighted country has become.
The money men know this and love the 'new audience' with its desire for
enforced drama, play-offs, phone-ins, and laugh at all those that still fork
out the best part or more of thirty quid to get into a plastic, homogenous
sh*t-house of a stadium that was always previously called a ground, knowing
what simple-minded, consumer fodder they are. The fact that these idiots
compound that with paying the rest of the exorbitant rip-off that goes with
it either confirms they are truly thick, or like the preening faggots who
ply their trade as footballers these days, they've just got too much money.
The same goes for Sky, who have single-handedly ruined the game in this
country with money. Their executives will, I am pretty certain, rub their
hands and laugh at the thick wad of proles who sign up to their 'services'
gated on to the back of the lure of watching 'footy' from your armchair
listening to barely literate mongols try to string sentences together about
'games' taking place in places that now resemble outdoor equivalents of
'Gladiators', whose sponge-handed audience used to have an average age of
five, which is about the average mental age of the modern day football fan.
Going to the Madejski resembles an open-day at Fairmile.
I look at players now and know that a lot of them remind me of the wannabe
rock stars in John Niven's wonderful book about the music industry 'Kill
Your Friends'. If some of today's pampered footballing nonces weren't
earning sums of money that make them supremely rich in obscenely short
spaces of time they'd be back on the estates breaking into cars or selling
crack or running in gangs.
Everything about modern football is wrong. Everything. Not just a little
bit. I don't buy the 'benefits for the younger fan or family' bit. What was
once a passionate and brilliant sport played out in thrilling, slightly
dangerous arenas is now an 'experience' leached of meaning of any kind at
all. It's absolute, utter garbage and I do not miss it one iota at all.
I used to love my club and I used to love the 'sport' of football. But it
truly does not exist, just as the rest don't any more. They sold themselves,
whored themselves out and became what whores are, badly dressed, far too
expensive for what they are, soul-less plastic voids to spunk your money on.
The people who run football now have no perception or conception of what
once made the sport as a professional spectacle great. None. And they never
will have. It is f*cked, forever, and always will be.
Stick your jester hat up your rectum, football, is what I say.
Anyway Floyd, you are right on every count. Post of the millennium (cue
Gladiators post-goal music and rhythmic stands-based dancing by sixteen
thousand spastics). I'm glad a night's sleep didn't soften your ire.
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