World Cup 2006, View From The Bench(Sitter). (By a Football Conscientious Objector).

I was going to write some huge ranting soapbox of a diatribe. Pillaring state and international stupidity. Until it hit me, I don’t actually care. Football, that is. If football were really a religion I would be an agnostic. Agnostic as apposed to atheist, because I know football does exist, I just don’t care. Not even on the level of “if football were Christianity” (crucifixion is too good for them), I would not even class myself as a Buddhist (i.e. preferring rugby, or cricket). No I just don’t care.
Back in the bad old days, yes I do vaguely remember my time at school, I used to hate football. Everyone wanted to play it. Everyone loved it. Not me.

Please picture those endless humiliations, two skinny kids sitting on the bench, standing in the line, the last to be chosen. Never more retched a site seen than the dispossessed, the unwanted dregs, of the Footie team line up squad choosing ritual purgatory.
It starts with the two “I am’s!” the better, louder, more aggressive individuals (self acclaimed “alpha males”), picked by the teacher to be team captains. The first level is the squabble over the “good” players. The “if you have Bob then I want Tim”, thing goes on for a few minutes. Teacher usually has to mediate this level. Then the reasonable players are apportioned off in quick succession, then the mediocre then the bad and finally the line consist of three or four refugees from a mixture of The Bash Street Kids, and Belson. Usually myself (left handed taught to be right handed, I believe, though another subject for another day), and my mate Alex (Brain tumour/blood clot removed from his head during his early teens. Thus a little slow of the motor neurone responses). I liked Alex, a lot of the others used to pick on him, but I found him amusing. Once you got past the slower, slightly slurred way he talked you realised he was possible completely off his head. Not stupid, he ran the staff ragged with his “Oh I feel tired now perhaps it’s my medication” scam, and his infinite understanding of the fact the staff were paranoid his condition may re-occur. Absolutely convinced he was going to take over the world. I didn’t go to school in “Tom Browns School Days” conditions, but they seem to be somewhat harder and slightly more violent than they appear now. Alex used to get picked on. Alex actually promised me ministry of Art when he took over the world, mainly because another friend of ours wanted the position and it amused him (and me) to give the title to someone else. I think that’s why I liked Alex, he was twisted.
Well it would get down to the last few untouchables, and we would be apportioned in the ritual “If we have to have him then you must have the other one” brush off that went so much further to bruise ones ego.
Don’t get me wrong, it was not just the teenage emotional equivalent of lining up for the showers in Buchenwald that put me off of football. That was just the preliminary.
As a child I was reasonably fit, I walked a lot, and practiced yoga. It was not until my early to mid thirties that my job changed from something physical (Bar cellar man) to something more sedentary, and I also didn’t allow for that change in metabolism that occurs in men about that age. So I wasn’t in bad condition, and had much less body fat than I do now, I just had particularly bad hand eye co-ordination when it came to ball sports (this is a masterful understatement, some people are meant to hit things, others are meant to write about them doing the hitting. I have always been one of the latter).
It is when we hit the pitch that the main abomination occured. The “I am’s” run onto the pitch as though it were their day at Wembley, the rest as reasonable kids going for a game of football, and we, “The Untouchables”, bring up the rear like reluctant outcasts, from the extras, from the football match in Kes.
Football has long been a mainstay of British physical education curriculum (at least for Boys) from the point of attempting to engender teamwork, communication skills, and group activity, as well as physical well-being. Never has it been considered from the point of view of the lasting and hideous mental damage it’s implementation causes to those who are less than “good” at it. Reference again the football match in Kes, as to the bullying and mental degradation just inflicted by the teacher, let alone anyone else.
The beautiful game now splinters into two styles of play. The disassociated, running around of the untouchable. Hoping to the high heavens that their occasional shuffling of position, ensures they neither suffer the horror of actually touching the ball, and that the member of staff in charge is to involved in refereeing the game to rarely notice that there are a number of zombies on the pitch trying their hardest to look like the other “normal” children, and hoping desperately that they are not spotted ball dodging. I think we actually kept score amongst the ball dodgers and if you touched the ball in a game you did almost become unclean amongst the lower cast for a week. Many thanks to a particularly sadistic PE teacher who actually, on noticing my particularly well thought out and choreographed version of ball dodging, stopped the match and insisted I have the ball. Please don’t even try and measure the level of ridicule, and disdain, I received.
The other style of football being played by the “Footie Alpha Males”. This was something , even now, but mostly at the time, I could never understand. It is, I truly believe, the whole point behind why we (the English) have done so badly in international football competitions as a nation for the last forty years.
The style I am referring to is the loud shouting aggressive individuals who, in complete negation of the rest of the team, seek the glory for themselves. There are in most professional teams those few tat once they have the ball, rather than actually looking to see how well they can use it to the advantage of the rest of their team, immediately become the focus of the effort and insist on trying to take the thing forward and score the goal themselves. The prima Dona syndrome. How many post match analysis conversations have I had to endure in the PE changing rooms where the “Better” players boast about their exploits and how the team would not have done as well without them. I see it in the professional matches I occasionally watch bits of when down the pub. Give the ball to one person and they have to try and take it forward to goal to get the glory of the goal.
Much like a military campaign. You may have tanks, and planes, and snipers, all with very different skills and weaknesses, but what is the point of putting a sniper forward when they have no artillery and infantry to back them up? The sniper may achieve some strategic targets but the sniper with the rest of the team is much more effective when used cohesively.
Finally Flags, and patriotism. I have no problem at all with an individual displaying their countries flag with pride. I do object to the “Fair Weather” patriotism that is displayed whenever some British tennis player, or football team or any other excuse brings out the jingoistic brow beating flag waving stupidity. A Dutch (Nederlander) friend of mine had Guinness tipped over her head during a previous world cup just because she came from Holland, and was in the wrong pub at the wrong time.
We quake at the pictures of hoards of fundamentalist Muslims chanting and beating themselves in the Middle East. Yet revel in the orgy of ecstasy performed when our world cup team score a goal.
Recently a work college asked me where my patriotism was? I replied that I live in the country and pay my taxes, that’s good enough for me.
I can’t put on the radio, watch television, or eat my breakfast without having the World Cup shoved down my throat.
I suppose the length and complexity of this piece suggests I do give a damn on the subject.
Please do take some time out from your orgiastic revelries to keep an eye on legislation passed in the next few weeks. Paranoid or not the fact that ninety nine percent of the general public are focused on the football, I would be trying to pass some less publicly popular laws whilst everyone has their back turned.

Rant End.

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