Tag: Rangers

A Football Challenge

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Can I blame my obsession with football on love for the sport? Perhaps it’s the love of procrastinating and the ample opportunities the utterly obscene amount of football news websites allow for. Maybe it’s some primal instinct within me that needs to blindly support a tribe, or two in my case. One Scottish, one English. I’m Scottish so it’s allowed, there’s no other reason anyone would support anything Scottish football related. Whatever it is I do spend an awful lot of time with my head in some kind of football related world. It could be that this is inspired by my team losing the derby today against our fiercest and most loathed knuckledragging right wing unionist rivals. Bastards. I think I’ve mentioned in the past that I despise Rangers with a passion and feel angry hatred towards them. This is part irrational and it’s a remarkable thing to experience and recognise within me when I like to think myself so rational and calm ordinarily. Note the like to think there. Anyway we lost and I’m not happy about it. My other team aren’t doing much better. Now may be the moment to do something extreme.

There have been days in the past where I’ve not allowed myself any technology until noon, or none all day at all. In those days I go without, I find by early evening I’ve done so much and been so productive that genuinely I’ve run out of things to do. How technology takes up so much of our day is quite worrying. But it’s not the phone or the laptop because I can make a call or do some work, it’s the things that we allow ourselves to be distracted on with these things. Facebook doesn’t really take up too much of my time but I can easily sit for two hours immersed in all things football; the latest news, gossip and whatever other click-bait I come across.

The idea may have been inspired by me being annoyed at losing but I thought about giving up football for a year. Absolutely no news, gossip or even games. That would be extreme but what I was curious about was what I would do to fill the time that everything football takes up. That excited me. But it’s also perhaps a bit too extreme, and unnecessarily so. Let’s say I only watched the games and nothing else. That would be less than four hours of the week taken up which really is very little. Imagine not knowing anything that has happened leading up to it, whether a player is injured or even whether the coach has been sacked. So perhaps the hour leading up to kick off and the half hour after as the result is digested. Get the team news and find out what’s going on prior to kick off like people did before twenty-four hour everything. Even then that’s a maximum seven hours a week. I am in no doubt that there will have been times that I spent that much time doing football stuff in one day alone.

The thing is that football itself isn’t bad or a waste of time, it does serve a purpose. Everything around it these days seems to be the thing that causes the problems. It has become a soap opera. Who needs Eastenders when you’ve got public rows between players and managers or whatever nonsense the media create and inflame. I don’t know if I’m ready to do it though but I want to. As much as anything I want to do it to see if both I can and what will happen, as in what will the outcome be in regards all that extra time I find myself with. If I can do this blog everyday for over eleven months I’m sure I can challenge myself to a new game of discipline. Which is what it all comes down to. This writing is about finding the discipline to do something while that would be about finding the discipline to deny something, or more positively, to do something else. It’s actually quite an exciting prospect. I’ll need a new challenge once this finishes in about four weeks after all.

Der Fußball

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

And with a bang the football has returned. Well kind of a bang, if a bang was quiet enough you could hear people talking and clapping over it. Football is weird without fans in the stadium. There is just no doubt about it. No debate. Before lockdown when people didn’t really seem to understand much, I was just hoping it would stay going for one extra week because my two teams Manchester United and Celtic were playing Tottenham and Rangers respectively, both of whom are rivals and were in poor form. It was perfect timing. But then it became awful timing. The football was cancelled and lives have felt hollow since. Now today was the first day of the second part of the German Bundesliga and we can all rejoice once more.

Well kind of rejoice because English football is probably a month away still and Scottish football will most likely get cancelled. Saying that Celtic will be crowned Champions for the ninth season in a row and then only one title off the Holy Grail of ten straight titles. If getting nine feels like an anti climax to some, it will be saved up for the ten in a row parties to come. In England Liverpool will win the league for the first time in thirty years. I like to think I’m a semi sensible and rational man but I passionately loathe Liverpool and everything about them, it’s the same with Rangers in Scotland. This is the best possible way for them to win the league, a complete anti-climax with no supporters and no excitement. Fuck them, couldn’t have happened to a more horrible bunch of c***s.

But yes, no domestic British football yet, so it’ll be the German Bundesliga for now. No fans, which as I said is weird but there were other aspects I would never have thought of. The substitutes and coaches are spread out with two metres between. The players can’t celebrate together which looked very disconnected and unnatural. Some did but on the whole it was controlled despite the close contact in every other element of the match. I would like to see how contained they would be if one of them scores a last minute winner in the cup final. Disinfected balls. Ball boys keeping distance. Audible claps and shouts. At least you get the interesting aspect of being able to hear what the players are saying to each other and how they interact. That’s not something you normally get probably for good reason. But it’s returned and while I’m not pushing for lockdown to be eased in an irresponsible way, I would selfishly love the return of football properly. I just miss the thrill and excitement. I can’t even imagine how good it would be to watch a game in the pub with a few pints but I’ll resist dreaming of that for now as I’m just teasing myself. It’s one step in the right direction at least.

Angry Football Fanaticism

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

I’ve just been to the pub. My team lost in the football. I’m feeling a varying raft of emotions. I find this sport absorbing for many reasons and at the same time still find it to be some kind of a dirty pleasure. Watching people at the peak of their abilities is incredible to see. If we could we would watch and be amazed by anybody at the top of their game who can do incredible things. Listen to a genius poet reciting their best poem, the greatest circus acrobat flying though the air catching and balancing people, someone who has mastered parkour bouncing their way across a city skyline, surfers, musicians, intellectuals…it doesn’t matter what it is, watching anyone who has mastered anything is a joy to behold.

At which point we embrace the tribalism involved which is simply fascinating. I would comfortably say I have met many people in my life and I have got on with everyone to a varying level. I can comfortably say that there is nobody out there that I actually genuinely hate, I even find the concept questionable until rival my football teams enter my mind. Being Scottish, or this is my excuse at least, I support two teams. My father supports Manchester United so from about six years old I supported them, it coincided with them winning their first title in twenty six years and then another twelve subsequently, so it was until recently a pleasure to experience their games. In Scotland I support Celtic who also have been winning everything recently but when I started supporting them their biggest rivals where in the middle of winning nine titles in a row, they were an underdog of sorts, socially as well as in sport. As I said I don’t think I hate anybody but without a doubt I hate their rivals, Liverpool for Man Utd and Rangers for Celtic. For me it feels rational, there is something vile and disgusting about these clubs and their supporters, I wouldn’t piss on them if they were on fire as the old saying goes. I really angrily hate them but I don’t feel that in any other realm of my life, and genuinely don’t think I could for any real extended length of time. I also know that there is too much emotion involved for it to ever be an actual rational issue but if I don’t try to think otherwise it feels completely justified.

Why is that though, how does this angry rivalry evolve in people who are not necessarily angry emotive people the rest of the time. There is talk of it being a primitive tribalistic thing, but we have evolved beyond that and I don’t really feel we’re still controlled by our tribal past in quite that way. If it’s going to be argued that it’s a male thing, that would be highly contentious but I certainly see more angry male football fans than female ones, whether that is because they are male as opposed to women that makes them angry and tribalistic is contentious and highly questionable though. So it rests upon whether it’s simply a release and the most socially acceptable version that men have been conditioned to embrace. The vast majority of people have something in their life that makes them unhappy and that is for various reasons but theres nothing quite like spending ninety minutes once a week screaming and shouting for and against a team, it is cathartic and it’s healing qualities cannot be overlooked. Still I suspect theres more, and it’s this knowledge that I lack the answer that keeps bringing the fascinated child back. What football has become is ridiculous but it has still managed to maintain it’s tribal element and people may try to make everyone play fair, nullify the aggression and play it for the sake of the sport but were that to happen I’m of no doubt the game would lose a huge part of it’s appeal. I for one hope that never happens. Come on, lets get excited, swear, scream, get angry, release and get on with it because until anything else comes along, this is all that the vast majority have that keeps them feeling grounded and human.