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A BIT OF BETTER BANTER

3:08pm Thursday, 29th October 2009

It's rare to hear footballers speak plainly and honestly about their lives as players whilst they are still playing. Once retired of course, some will tell it like it was with directness and gusto (and possibly some embellishment) at after dinner speeches and as commentators on various media. But those who still run onto the pitch every week usually prefer to say little, and what they do say is often so carefully (self) censored as to be hardly worth our attention.

This week was marked on BBC Radio 5 by some very frank discussions amongst current players about the kind of stuff which rolls down off the terraces these days by way of 'banter'.

Strange word that one: 'banter'. It appears to cover a huge range of verbal exchanges, from the friendly joshing and mild ridicule of the dressing room to the kind of insults that would start a fight in a monastery.

How bad would things have to get at your workplace for someone to shout at you: 'I hope your kids get cancer.'? But that's what happened - more than once - to David Beckham after committing a rash foul against Argentina in 1998.

This week Robbie Savage and Craig Bellamy spoke about some of the things they'd endured both on and off the pitch. Savage has been spat on by fans; had coins thrown at him; windows broken in his home and death threats. Bellamy recalled the time - a few days after a family funeral - when some West Ham fans were shouting 'How's your dead cousin?' as he warmed up on the pitch.

Is all fair in love, war and football? Hasn't it always been like this? For players, it seems, the 'ordinary' insults which come down from the terraces are part and parcel of the job (though racist comments are these days universally condemned); it's when it either invades the pitch in the form of a fan or when it streams into ordinary life and touches home and family that most draw the line.

Hurling insults may have been part of the professional game since it began but something has changed in the last decade or so. These days people in general 'rage' much more openly and fiercely, in shops; from motor cars; with neighbours, and at football matches. Traditionally, for fans, the saving grace was usually humour. The crowd could get away with heaping enormous embarrassment on members of the opposing team if it was funny.

No one who was there will ever forget the Liverpool v Man Utd game in 1977, played shortly after it had been publicly revealed that Utd's manager, Tommy Docherty, had been having an affair with Mary Brown, the wife of the Club's physio. The Kop couldn't resist, and sang almost incessantly, to the tune of Knees up Mother Brown, a ditty that left very little to the imagination.

But the greatest impact of fan aggression towards players has been delivered by television. With the Premier League now beamed round the world to hundreds of countries, Adebayor's recent provocation and the Arsenal fans' vitriolic response gets beamed around the world too. One of the reasons why the PL is such a global commercial force is the intensity of the crowd's involvement. Despite all the fireworks and the 'choreography' of the Italian terraces, it all often takes place in half empty stadiums and doesn't appear even vaguely close to the action. The 'rage' of the English crowds comes over as 'raging passion' for the game, and helps sell the product far and wide.

There is something else too. Football is now 'showtime' and the crowds' relationship to it more like children at a pantomime where the baddies get booed and the goodies cheered. Unfortunately, unlike the panto audience, some fans seem to forget that when they leave the theatre, 'Baron Hardup' - or Robbie Savage - becomes just an ordinary bloke with a wife and kids, and spitting at them in the supermarket is unforgiveable.

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