I am a football fan, I don't apologise for it, I don't ask for any forgiveness. I am a football fan. That means, I am biased, fickle, intolerant and a cheat.
We are all biased, fickle, intolerant and cheats. Obviously, we will not admit that, because we are biased cheats. I am a season ticket holder at what is probably one of the greatest football clubs in England if not Europe that currently play in the second tier of English football. (Biased remember).
Every other Saturday I go to watch my team with my son. We marvel at how great we are and how the future looks so rosy when we win, and despair at the incapable management team when we lose. Each and every time we go to the game, we live the great living soap opera that unfolds before us. So there is the problem, Football is a sporting soap opera, and like all good stories, it needs villains!
This is why the cheats are essential to the game. My team is my team, the good guys, the shining knights, the saviours, the winners (well, sometimes). For the cast list to be complete, we need the baddies, the villains, the wicked witch type character. Now, if the opposing team turn up, all proper gentleman sprouting some kind of fair play ethic, where would that leave us fans?
I don't pay good money to start applauding the other team for doing the refs job for him. There is a certain protocol that opposing teams are required to follow. They are to try to convince the ref that they have been fouled in the penalty area when they have not. They are to try to convince the ref that every throw in, goal kick and corner should be awarded in their favour, and they are duty bound to attempt to have all of our goals disallowed for any reason they see fit.
I have been very concerned recently with members of the written media who have been calling for an end to such behaviour! Do these 'sports journalists' not know anything about the game! Do these fools not have a team of their own. Obviously not, if they did, they would know the great entertainment value that they would rid us real fans of if they succeeded in their idiotic pleas for fair play.
Deprive the football fan of their villain to jeer and ridicule on a weekend, and you take away his purpose in the game. How would it be possible to express the real passion for your team without an opponent to belittle?
With the underhand work of these non football terrace educated morons, it has given me great pleasure to see the outstanding contribution to permanently provide a villain by the games referees.
Only recently I was watching a game when our opponents won a penalty fair and square in the appropriate manner of having an attacker scythed down inside our penalty area, I mean, who can we blame on their team for that? However, in this instance, the ref came to the rescue. Instead of awarding the penalty, he gave us a free kick and booked the forward for diving. Well, that's just win win for us. Not only do we not concede a certain penalty, now we have an opposing player we can jeer and call a cheat every time he touches the ball.
That ref gets it, he was playing to the crowd, extending the drama, writing the script himself. And unbelievably, he was only marked 4 out of 10 in the Sunday sports pages for his performance! It is time for the real fans to claim our game back, let the bias blossom, let the cheats prosper. And let the sports writers know, when we boo the players for diving, we don't want them hounded out of the game. We want them to be more involved in the game, get more touches, just so we can yell more abuse at them.
Unless they are very good at diving and win many penalties, in that case, we want them to sign for our team.
