Toby Green: Drastic measures needed to curb fights
It may come as no surprise to learn this, but as a Tottenham fan the Carling Cup ruckus has pushed its way up to the top of my table of most enjoyable moments of the season, which is more a damning indictment of Spurs’ season than any particular fight-fetish on my part.
It had everything that a jealous onlooker ever needs to feel morally superior about their squad. The ‘fight’, and I am using the term in its loosest definition, included slaps, arm-waving and even a tussle between Lampard and Fabregas that looked as if they were fighting over who got to eat the last Turkey Twizzler. Wayne Bridge even pre-empted the critics blaming the Johnny Foreigners on the pitch for being jessies in a fight by doing his best impression of a London gang victim after being lightly tapped on the back of the head by Eboue. The physio’s response to such a serious injury? Lightly dripping water on his forehead. Not that you can really blame the guy: ancient methods of torture seem to be the only way to stop footballers recreating the beach scene in Saving Private Ryan (you know, the one at the start where you sit there praying Tom Hanks dies so you don’t have to spend the next two hours watching his misshapen head. As many have said before about the Normandy landings, what a waste…)
Moving on, the way in which every player on the pitch, and even the managers, felt compelled to pile into the melee as if their sole presence was going to have the calming effect required made me think how different it was when I was a sports-playing schoolboy. Although my career was hardly showered in glory, I did play for quite a few different teams, and competitive sport is competitive sport, even when you’re struggling to beat St Jonathan’s School for Quadruple Amputees at darts (don’t worry about the safety implications, they were armless. Sorry.)
Yet at that point, the level of aggression was remarkably low. You could say that kids’ matches have less conflict than professional ones because what’s at stake is vastly less prestigious, yet social commentators constantly talk about the impressionable state of young minds, which would suggest they are prone to copying their idols.
The moment of conflict-causing contact that remains most prominent in my mind was an incident in a football match, when we were at that age where you’re starting to develop on from a ‘let’s all run at the ball at once’ mentality and learning about the subtler points of the game, such as passing and positions. I was concentrating on marking this one tall kid at a corner, who happened to be causing us a lot of problems in the air. He started to get annoyed as I stuck close to him, diligently following my manager’s instructions, until he turned round to me and said “If you keep standing so close to me it means you’re gay.”
Now it’s a sad fact of life that at that age this was probably the worst insult you could say, yet there was no rally of teammates piling in, prepared to fight for my honour (although perhaps that reflects more my standing in the team than the self-discipline of an under-elevens football team). Imagine if this happened in a Premiership game. Henrik Larsson, frustrated at John Terry’s close attention at a corner, turning round and saying “If you keep marking me it means you’re a bummer” would initiate a hell of a riot, or at least a lot of grown men writhing around on the floor holding their face.
Another reason that our Sunday league matches often passed without incident was that there was always one notorious kid playing for the opposition. You would hear rumours about this guy a week before the match: whispers about him being expelled from school for stabbing another kid or that his dad once beat up a linesman for flagging his son offside too many times. When it came to the game no one would dare tackle him, let alone start a fight within a two mile radius.
I think the FA could be onto a winner if they followed through with this one. Imagine Brian Barwick releasing special agents into dressing rooms across the country, spreading rumours such as Ivan Campo stealing the pocket money from a Girl Guides troop; or that Craig Bellamy likes to attack his team mates with a 9-iron (hang on…). Fabregas and Lampard would certainly think twice if they thought there was someone playing who could dish out horrifying violence behind the changing rooms as a punishment. This may be the only way unless we feel we can continue to put up with the insults to the word ‘punch’ that are currently being examined at FA hearings.
It’s either that or they’ll have to start dishing out homophobic insults after incidents such as the scenes we saw at the Millenium Stadium. Perhaps a renaming is in order for the offence itself: how many average half-wit footballers would wish to be done for ‘inappropriate touching’
