Perhaps a deathless document is needed to proscribe the limits of fans' rights in a civilised footballing society
Instinct suggests Saturday's 2-2 draw with Swansea will not permanently silence the booing Wolves fans ? or rather the Molineux boo-boys, to use the formal newspaper argot. By now you will be aware that a section of the club's support have been reacting to the calamitous run of form by booing the manager, the players, and very possibly the groundsman. As an exercise, this would seem to be as pointful as Basil Fawlty thrashing his Austin estate with a branch, but as always in the case of a club's supporters turning on the players or manager, it has sparked discussion. Have the Wolves fans ? have any fans ? the right to boo their team?
My esteemed colleague Barry Glendenning declares that the purchase of a match ticket entitles its holder to watch a football match, nothing more. On the opposing side are the likes of the fan who tweeted me to posit that "if Mick McCarthy had to shell out his own cash to watch Wolves, he'd boo as well". Oh crikey. I can't help feeling both these truths seem self-evident. Which brings us to the wider question: what are the football fan's inalienable liberties? Is it not time we came up with a supporters' bill of rights?
These are anxious days, after all. We hear so much about the iniquities of football governance that perhaps it is time to draft a deathless document to protect the fan against them, as well as proscribing the limits of said fan's rights within a civilised footballing society.
Alas, this is a subject which makes the right to bear arms look like the least contentious idea in history. Once you bring football into the equation, an amazing number of truths cease to be self-evident. There are evidently some who judge that the mere purchase of a match ticket means they are perfectly entitled to bellow the hope that a player's kid gets cancer, or to participate in the tribal bonding ritual that is the musical commemoration of an air disaster or the sonic simulation of Hitler's gas chambers.
Some people who hold the Human Rights Act in utter contempt would doubtless believe their right to call Ars�ne Wenger something ghastly should be enshrined in perpetuity. Who can forget the hilarious spectacle of erstwhile TalkSport shock jock Jon Gaunt ? an implacable enemy of the Act and all he imagined it stood for ? falling back on it for his legal defence after being sacked from the station for calling some councillor a Nazi.
Meanwhile, we have the bleeding-heart end of the conundrum to deal with. Does a supporter have the right to claim to be anti-Rupert Murdoch if they subscribe to Sky Sports? (I have a sheepish suspicion they haven't. If it helps, I do forego the movie channels.)
It is clear that money flooding into the game has warped fans' sense of entitlement, as well as players. In some quarters, the rising cost and commercialisation of football has ushered in a school of thought which holds that because players earn such immense wages, principles like respect and manners have become hopelessly antiquated.
Does paying more for tickets mean you are "owed" something qualitatively different by your club then you were in more innocent days of yore? What are fans' moral rights? If only we had John Locke on hand. (He ended up living in Essex. Perhaps he'd have been an Upton Park regular.)
Perhaps the best way to get even a fragment down on paper is to start from a position on which we could all agree. But even that's tough. I initially thought an absolute banker would be the right not to get low-level food poisoning from a burger or pie van parked outside one's ground. But in my heart, I know this is misconceived.
Every week, countless supporters swear never to give in again to these purveyors of bunned or gravied pathogens, before finding themselves back there the very next Saturday. Won't get fooled again? Yeah you will. The fan's relationship with a dodgy burger van is basically a microcosm of their relationship with hope. You can't legislate for it.
So I am hereby throwing open the doors to a fan consultation. Write me, email me, tweet me ? the choice is yours. But send me your suggestions for the football fan's bill of rights, and I shall attempt to codify them in a document which will be presented in this space next week for your ratification or rejection.
Note that we are looking for general principles as opposed to club-specific creeds ? the Magna Carta, as opposed to what one of my correspondents rather brilliantly called the Sagna Carta.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2011/oct/26/football-supporters-bill-of-rights
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