I HAVE A VOICE BUT I WILL NEVER BOO MY TEAM

I HAVE A VOICE BUT I WILL NEVER BOO MY TEAM.

 After Norwich City’s recent home match against Fulham, the Canaries’ manager, Paul Lambert, spoke of his disappointment at a small section of the ground expressing their disquiet at half-time following 45 minutes of football which had not met their expectations. The EDP’s Chris Lakey has subsequently written in his ‘Opinion’ column that fans are ‘entitled to have a voice’. Both, of course, have a point; Lambert is right to talk of how far his team have come since the beginning of his tenure whilst Lakey is only too aware that customers who pay around £45 for a ticket have the right to express dissatisfaction.

I wonder, however, if it is that simple or whether perhaps what we are witnessing in grounds across the country is, in fact, football’s version of society’s recent trend towards short-tempered intolerance; the sort of anger-expression we see every day in the school, the supermarket or, particularly, on the road.

There was a time when supporting your team meant just that. It was unequivocal, unconditional and unwavering. ‘Who do you support?’ you would be asked, and your answer (in my case ‘Norwich’) wasn’t followed by the caveat ‘but I reserve the right to boo the team when I feel like it and to hold up banners demanding a change of manager when we lose a few games.’

How times have changed! The arrival of social media such as this blog, message boards and twitter has given everybody not just a voice but a platform from which to shout and now we regularly witness the results of coordinated unrest. Blackburn Rovers’ recent woes might well have tested the patience of even their most dedicated fans but I cannot imagine that twenty, or maybe even ten, years ago they would have responded in the belligerent fashion that has seen their manager, Steve Kean, subjected to particularly unpleasant abuse. I can recall feeling desperate about Norwich City’s plight under Peter Grant (remember QPR away?) and Glenn Roeder but it never entered my head to boo the team or resort to personal abuse. I always felt, perhaps naively, that at least everybody was doing their best!

I also think that a crowd expressing dissatisfaction during a game can only detract from the performance of a team; hardly the role of the football supporter surely? When I trailed around the country as a lad watching Ron Saunders’ and John Bonds’ teams toiling (and often losing) at Anfield, Old Trafford and The Baseball Ground it never entered my head to boo. They were Norwich! They were wearing the yellow and green and that was enough! If they lost, I lost too! I shared their pain, I didn’t add to it! One filthy, wet Saturday afternoon at St. Andrew’s in March 1972 springs to mind. Saunders’ City team, chasing their first ever promotion to the top flight, played Birmingham City in a real top of the table face-off. I sat in rain-soaked misery as we crashed to a dreadful 4-0 defeat. I have rarely, if ever, felt so low at a football match, whether playing or watching. Never once did it occur to me to complain, to criticise the players or to question the manager’s tactics. City had lost and I, like them, had, as managers always now say, to ‘dust myself down and go again’, even if that was  just to school on the next Monday morning! (Incidentally Norwich won the Division Two title that year by one point...from Birmingham City!)

Most people would, I think, as they usually do where modern football is concerned, say that ‘it’s all down to money’. We’ve all heard those callers to the BBC’s 6-0-6 ‘These blokes earn more in a week than I do in two years, Robbie! If I want to boo them when I pay their wages, then I will!’ And, yes, many can rightly sympathise with that view. But, and here’s my point, how does that fit with being a supporter of your club?

Money does seem to have clouded the issue, though. Our consumer society tells us we have rights. If the product we pay our hard-earned cash for does not meet our standards then we can send it back and claim a refund. Football, though, is not like that. It’s a game. Even Manchester City cannot win them all.

As for players’ wages, well who wouldn’t like to earn what they do? But it’s a brief and precarious career and, to be completely fair, they only take what they are offered. It’s all legal.

In an ideal football world players would be paid according to their performance. However, one only needs to read the widely-varying ‘marks out of ten’ sections in newspapers after match reports to realise what a nonsense that would be! Blimey, there’s a bloke who sits behind me at Carrow Road who would have sent Steve Morison to a Siberian labour camp by now!

It’s a huge cliché to call football ‘a game of opinions’ but it is just that. It’s also the people’s game and it’s about clubs and their supporters. True supporters understand, I think, that their role is to promote not denigrate their club.

I always get a little chill when Norwich City run out of the tunnel. Over the years they have given me massive excitement, huge interest and not a little disappointment. Being a Canaries supporter has been an important part of my life. I will never boo them.