Football’s Last Taboo
Posted by Ben Riley-Smith in Uncategorized on June 18, 2010
“Where do you go if you want a loaf of bread?” Brian Clough once asked Justin Fashanu in 1982, having heard rumours of his recently signed striker’s homosexuality. “A baker’s, I suppose” replied a confused Fashanu. “Where do you go if you want a leg of lamb?” “The butchers” replied Fashanu again. “So why do you keep going to that bloody poofs’ club?!”
It would be easy to dismiss Clough’s incredulity at the idea of a gay footballer as simply a product of a bygone era. That was the 1980s, Thatcher’s Britain, a time when fans were expected to riot and defenders knew how to tackle. But the truth is homophobia appears to be every bit as prevalent in football today as it was 30 years ago, a reality illustrated by the tragic legacy of Justin Fashanu. In 1990 Fashanu became the first professional player ever to come out as gay. 
A decade later he would be dead. Disowned by his brother and England player John, increasingly alienated from football and embroiled in a sex-assault scandal in America, Justin hung himself in 1998. “I do not want to give any more embarrassment to my friends and family” the suicide note read. Not a single British professional footballer has publicly come out since.
The stubborn persistence of homophobia in football remains somewhat of an enigma. With around 1 in every 10 males in the UK being gay, there is no doubt that some of England’s 2,500 or so professional footballers are homosexual. Why, then, has so little advancement been made? The fight against racism has achieved remarkable progress since the days when any John Barnes England appearance would trigger waves of bigoted crowd abuse. Equally the rise of female commentators and officials, as well as a booming women’s sport whose major tournaments receive terrestrial television coverage, suggests the strength of traditional gender stereotypes in football is weakening. Why have these advances in race and gender not been mirrored in attitudes to sexuality? More worrying still, why have the recent high profile revelations of homosexual players in equally ‘macho’ sports – Rugby’s Gareth Thomas and Hurling’s Dónal Óg Cusack – failed to be matched in football?
To discuss some of these issues I met with the London Falcons Gay Football Club. The Falcons represent a fascinating phenomenon, perhaps the most radical grassroots change the sport has seen this decade: the emergence of gay-friendly football clubs. “The motivation was for gay men to be able to play in a non-threatening environment” explains Kevin Latham, the Falcon’s 1st XI player manager. “There are gay people who are put off from playing at this level. We don’t really get any homophobia because we play against other gay clubs”. They compete in the Gay Football Supporters Network National League. Created in 2002, the GFSN National League’s increasing popularity has made it the largest LGBT-friendly 11-a-side league in the world. The Falcons were crowned 2009 / 2010 Champions in May.
the truth is homophobia appears to be every bit as prevalent in football today as it was 30 years ago
Support, however, is by no means unanimous within the gay community. “There is a lot of opposition to gay football” says Ian Kehoe, the club’s captain and chairman. “Our sponsors, FitLads the dating website, have forums on there. Often you’ll see someone who is obviously gay posting ‘why the hell are you lot separating yourself from the wider football community? Why do you have to have an exclusively gay team?’ I’d say one of these posts is started every day just on the topic of gay football.” The justification, as Ian argues, is that of positive discrimination. “You’re taking an unprincipled step back in order to take two forward. Maybe gay football is a step back. But it’s getting a lot of gay people who wouldn’t otherwise play to step into the game. From there they might then filter out into regular teams”.
Talking to the players about their personal experiences outside of the Falcons, it’s hard to deny the legitimacy of Ian’s rationale. Homophobic abuse, says one goalkeeper, is too often the norm. “For one team I played for in the past, coming out would be absolutely out of the question. The team talk would be ‘you’re playing like a bunch of fucking queers’. If I’d come out they’d have told me to fuck off”. Having joined the Falcons recently, the keeper continues to play for a semi-professional club, a club at which he was recently ‘outed’. “It’s shit”, he states, “it’s just not what you do. On the first day of everyone knowing I was gay a couple of people gave a bit of banter, but some others were like ‘nah’. I was on the bench and one of our strikers got taken off – he was one of my better friends there. When someone jokingly asked if I fancied him he went ‘don’t even fucking answer that, I hate this gay business’”. In the face of such hostility, he has since decided to leave.
Similar stories could be found right across the team. Many players had hidden their sexuality from teammates at former clubs. Others had actively pulled girls on post-match nights out to negate suspicion. Some simply stopped playing altogether. Yet while the problem is plain to see, the solution is less clear. One point on which all the Falcons appear to agree is the need for an openly homosexual professional player. No other single change could have the same immediate power in challenging homophobic stereotypes. The revelation would force the country’s press and public to face the issue head on, thrusting football’s unspoken problem under the spotlight of national debate. Yet two major barriers continue stop this from happening.
The first is crowd abuse. “Football has been traditionally a very working class game” manager Kevin explains, “on a social ladder it is definitely one rung down from Rugby”. Today, despite being banned, homophobic chants are commonplace on the terraces. “Do clubs do anything about it? Not really. I’ve never been anywhere where the stewards give a crap about anything that happens. I’ve looked at stewards and suggested they do something but they don’t. If you were a steward on the minimum wage would you go up to the burly man? Is it worth your while?” The experiences of Graham Le Saux and Sol Campbell, constantly taunted after allegations of homosexuality, show a glimpse of the hostility an openly gay player would face. With the FA doing little to curb crowd homophobia, most recently pulling a hard-hitting advertising campaign aimed at this very issue, things are unlikely to change soon.
For one team I played for in the past, coming out would be absolutely out of the question. The team talk would be ‘you’re playing like a bunch of fucking queers’.
The second barrier, and perhaps the more worrying, is this: there is a clear economic incentive for clubs to discourage players from being openly gay. Falcons captain Ian recalls talking to a senior FA spokesman about the Premier League’s gay footballers. “She suggested that a lot of players would have something implied in their contract that the club would certainly prefer them not to come out because their transfer value might be affected, their potential for merchandising might be affected”. “It would seem rational and logical to do that” Ian continues. “I couldn’t dispute that from an economic point of view, I would absolutely hate for one of my players to come out. If they’re assets, I don’t want my asset to depreciate”. As football clubs increasingly become businesses, and as players increasingly become marketable brands, such market forces are rising in influence.
There is a self-perpetuating nature to all of this, a catch-22 of sorts. The level of homophobia in football discourages gay players from publicly coming out. Yet it is this very lack of openly gay professional players which means football’s homophobia remains unchallenged. Without any focal point for discussion, the issue stays undiscussed. Will this cyclical silence be broken? Can we realistically expect a player to come out in the near future? If so, it is likely to be an older player, free from the uncertainties of a youngster making his way and familiar with crowd hostility. It is likely to be a player nearing the end of his career, no longer pressurised by a club’s financial motivations or constrained by the need for future transfers. It is also likely that the media could play a role, forcing the pace with a ‘jump or be pushed’ moment. Yet these remain ifs and maybes, lacking any kind of certainty or inevitability. For now, there is only one thing we can say with confidence. That until a professional player comes out, English football’s last taboo will remain unspoken, unanalysed and, ultimately, unchanged.
Breaking Stereotypes
Posted by Ben Riley-Smith in Uncategorized on January 24, 2010
“I don’t have an issue with sexism.” It’s not a statement you would expect to hear when interviewing Jacqui Oatley, Match of the Day’s first ever female commentator. For many, Ms Oatley is a modern feminist icon. When the BBC televised her commentary between Fulham and Blackburn on April 21 2007 she entered a world which for five decades has been monopolised by men with sheepskin coats and questionable facial hair. Yet despite thriving in a career dominated by gendered stereotypes, Oatley has no particular issue with sexism. “It’s just prejudice, and if people are prejudiced, then good luck to them. That won’t bother me.”
Then again, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. After all, if she did have an issue with sexism, Oatley would never have got to where she is today. Just type ‘Jacqui Oatley’ into Facebook and see what comes up. “I press ‘mute’ when the female commentator is on Match of the Day” — 1872 members. “Get that commentating tart off Match of the Day” — 332 members. “Make MOTD female free….f**k off Jacqui Oatley” — 681 members. “I’m sure you know your stuff sweetheart, but leave MOTD to the professionals” — 114 members. These Facebook groups are rife with testosterone-fuelled condescension, laced with a hostility that is usually reserved only for groups about Margaret Thatcher. To handle such aggressive yet vague criticism — the argument of most of these groups can be boiled down to ‘she sounds a bit different’ — takes thick skin, and Jacqui’s skin is thicker than most. “That’s life,” she shrugs, “you’ve just got to get on with it.”
Determination and a strong resolve featured prominently in Jacqui’s sporting childhood. “PE at school was the biggest thing in my week,” she recalls. “Even if I was physically sick in the morning with some kind of bug, I’d hide it from my mum and pretend I was okay because I couldn’t bare the thought of missing PE.” Soon her sporting focus turned to football, when one day she stumbled upon a live match on the telly. “I just thought to myself: ‘I love this sport.’ that was it. I was addicted. I went out and bought football magazines and read them literally cover to cover. Suddenly I had footballers all over my wall instead of pop stars.” It was less easy to convert this interest into action. With her all-girls school refusing to teach the sport, Jacqui would have to wait until attending Leeds University to have her first proper training session. While theoretically studying German, it was football that took up most of her undergraduate time, as she mixed an intensive playing schedule with her religious support of Wolverhampton Wanderers.
All the female reporters I know can’t think of anything they would like to do less than commentate on Match of the Day.
Despite her love of sport, sports journalism was never an option Jacqui considered upon graduation. Working as an account manager for an intellectual property company in London, she was happy to separate her football interest from her working life. Playing for Chiswick Ladies Football Club throughout the week was enough. But on September 10 2000 this all changed. “It was the first game of the season away at Egham in the Greater London League,” Jacqui recalls. Bursting with enthusiasm after a bright start, she tried to control a wayward ball on the right side of midfield. “I overstretched trying to keep the ball in play and my left knee bent the wrong way when I was stretching on it. My knee cap slipped out to the side of my leg,” rupturing numerous ligaments and leaving her “lying on the ground screaming into the turf.” Tendon realignment, knee reconstruction and ten months on crutches later, Oatley faced the damning reality that she could never play football again. Her sporting days were over.
As horrific as the injury was, Jacqui remains philosophical about the whole incident. “If I hadn’t had that injury then maybe I wouldn’t have had the impetus and motivation to go on and change career.” Faced with a life without sport, Oatley decided on a radical change in direction. Quitting her job, selling her London flat and relying on the generosity of her friends for accommodation, Jacqui decided to use all her money to fund evening courses, work experience and eventually a full year’s education in sports journalism. And so began the slow climb up the commentary ladder. First came hospital radio – “all the old people who had requested Frank Sinatra got quite a shock” – then the non-league sports bulletin for Leeds radio. Her lucky break came when she was asked to commentate on Wakefield & Emley versus Worksop Town. It went badly. Having been up since 3am for her daily sports bulletin Jacqui faced the challenge of talking about players with no names or numbers on their shirts from a poorly positioned press box with only Wakefield’s injured captain by her side to help. “It was the hardest thing I’d ever done in my entire life.” As tough as it may have been, she was clearly good at it. It would not be long before she would be recruited for BBC Radio’s Five Live and eventually for Match of the Day.
Working in such a male-dominated world, surely there would be hostility from some quarters inside the profession? Not according to Jacqui. “I’ve never had any problems because nobody thought I was trying to jump the gun. They saw I wasn’t coming in, fluttering my eyelashes and trying to get work that way. I was willing to do the very basic jobs, to shadow people and learn absolutely nothing while I was doing it.” Similarly, Jacqui rubbishes the suggestion that, given that she and Gabby Logan are the most prolific female football broadcasters, only attractive women make it to the top. “I don’t think that for a second, in fact I think it probably counts against you. When they are cutting to you on a Saturday afternoon to give an update on Derby versus Southampton the last thing anybody is thinking about is whether you’re blonde or not.”
1872 – Number of members of the Facebook group “i press ‘mute’ when the female commentator is on Match of the Day”
How, then, does Jacqui explain the reality that women have gone into space and 10 Downing Street sooner than they have commented on BBC’s Saturday night football highlights? She suggests that it is a problem of supply, rather than prejudice. “The most important thing is that I don’t know anybody who’s ever wanted to do it. It’s not like I’ve come through the last few years and found all these women desperate to commentate but not getting a chance. I’ve never seen that. All the female reporters I know can’t think of anything they would like to do less than commentate on Match of the Day. You’re putting yourself up there to be shot at and that’s not something people naturally want to do.”
For Jacqui this is not a problem. Throughout her life she has pursued her interest in sport despite the hardship of what society deems ‘normal’. “I am a proper weirdo!” she freely admits. “I haven’t really done anything conventionally in my life”. Yet the biggest complement you can pay Oatley is actually to highlight her normality. Take out gender and her career is identical to most other successful commentators. She rose from the bottom, progressed through the ranks of local radio to Five Live where, like all commentators on BBC’s national football radio show, she is chosen occasionally to cover the less important Premiership matches for Match of the Day. As you talk to her it is undeniably clear that she has the sporting knowledge and analytical ability to rival even the sharpest pundit. This fact highlights the sad reality – that it is only the presumptions and prejudices of society that make Jacqui Oatley’s career abnormal.
Cambridge Disunited
Posted by Ben Riley-Smith in Uncategorized on January 24, 2010
Originally written 03/08/08
It’s not been easy being a Cambridge United fan. I’ve been supporting Cambridge’s biggest football team for ten years now and, well, things really couldn’t have gone much worse. After the joy of promotion in 1999, the rot set in and soon the slow, agonising descent towards anonymity began. Strikers got fatter. Defenders got older. Gradually our mid‑field transformed from a creative and competent unit to one with worse vision than Stevie Wonder. Of course, it wasn’t all doom and gloom. We won things. In 2000 we were officially crowned the club with the Best Bacon Butties in all the Football League. As you can imagine, the celebrations were wild. But sadly our culinary dominance was not mirrored on the pitch, and it wasn’t long before the club’s problems came to a head in the disastrous 2004-2005 season. In the space of 12 months, Cambridge suffered the most unfortunate of hattricks – bankruptcy, relegation and the selling of their stadium. After 35 years in the Football League, Cambridge United were sent to the Conference.
Today, interest in the club from Cambridge University students is close to zero. Only a handful of Cantabrigians have any awareness of the stadium that lies just north of the Grafton on Centre. In some ways this isn’t surprising; even the Cambridgeshire television news has given up showing the results of Cambridge United. This is, after all, a club who plies its trade in English football’s fifth division. What will come as a surprise to most students, however, is just how close Cambridge came to playing in England’s top division.
It was the early Nineties. The FA had just announced an audacious branding project to rename their top division ‘The Premier League’ for the 1992-1993 season. And it was Cambridge United – yes, the very same Cambridge United who in a couple of years time would be known only for making a bloody good bacon roll – who were in the hunt for promotion into the new Premier League. Finding themselves in Division Two after back-to-back league wins, United entered the 1991- 1992 season with confidence. Inspired by their effective striking partnership of Steve Claridge and Dion Dublin, both of whom would become Premiership regulars (and, for Dublin, an England international), Cambridge exceeded all expectations. Throughout the season they never dropped below 7th place and come the summer of 1992 found themselves in the play-offs. Their football was certainly not ‘sexy’ – manager John Beck later admitted that throughout the season he ordered Cambridge’s groundsman to grow long grass in the corners of their home pitch to help his long-ball tactics – but it had worked. Now victory over two opponents was all that stood between them and a place in what today is widely considered the best footballing league in the world. How did they react to this opportunity? They choked. Humbled 6-1 by Leicester City over two legs Cambridge failed to become a Premiership team. The next season they were relegated, and so started the beginning of the end.
Manager John Beck later admitted that throughout the season he ordered Cambridge’s groundsman to grow long grass in the corners of their home pitch to help his long-ball tactics
When you combine this near success with the fact that Cambridge reached the quarter-finals of the FA Cup in both 1990 and 1991 it becomes clear that the club has a rich football heritage. Equally clear, however, is quite how badly things have gone since then. From pushing for the England’s top league in 1992 to fighting against relegation from its 5th league in 2006, Cambridge’s fall from grace has been unrivalled in modern English football. As I was saying, being a fan hasn’t been easy.
In recent times, however, a new and unfamiliar feeling has been growing among the fans and staff of Cambridge United – optimism. Last season the U’s earned a place in the Conference play off final facing Exeter at Wembley. While they were narrowly defeated 1-0, it was the first time in a decade that Cambridge had seriously challenged for promotion. Could this be a sign of things to come? Has the club’s luck finally changed? Gary Brabin, 
Cambridge’s new manager, certainly believes so. Having joined over the summer the shaven headed Brabin, a former hard tackling central midfielder, says the foundations are in place for future success. “A club this size is a League club and that’s where it belongs,” he confidently declared on his arrival, and there is certainly evidence to back up his claim. With a stadium that can hold close to 10,000 spectators and attendance figures that are one of the highest in the Conference, it would seem that Cambridge have the infrastructure needed for the next level. More importantly, the board has recently declared that its finances are in the best shape they’ve been since the turn of the century, in part due to a five-year deal which saw the Abbey Stadium renamed the Trade Recruitment Stadium. Such solid foundations bring legitimacy to Brabin’s declaration that “over a number of years, I can move the club forward.”
Nothing short of promotion is expected this season and already, at this early stage, Cambridge look like fulfilling their potential. Winning their first four matches saw United sitting pretty at the top of the table. A recent slump in form, blamed on a string of first team injuries, has seen them slip into the play-off positions, but Brabin believes the Us remain on target. “I think we should definitely be a top six side all season and pushing for promotion” he stated recently, continuing “I’ve set my sights straightaway and I want to win.”
So maybe, just maybe, the trough of Cambridge’s long slump has past. Perhaps, after a decade of shivering on the terraces, shouting at linesmen and consuming those delicious bacon butties I will finally see the rise that must surely follow such a staggering fall in United’s fortunes. Yet, for all the ifs and maybes that lie ahead, there is one thing I can say with certainty; that for the first time in a long time Cambridge United have, to use a Barack Obama phrase, the audacity to hope.
Simon Says
Posted by Ben Riley-Smith in Uncategorized on January 22, 2010
“Sport tells us how we are.” This is the heart of Simon Barnes’s sporting outlook. It’s clear within moments of meeting The Times’ Chief Sportswriter that he holds a unique view of the sporting world. He talks of sportsmen as “super human creatures”, cricketers as “mythical beings performing their mysterious stuff”, and FA Cup finals as “a thing of wonder and beauty”. Advocates of Barnes would say this is his finest quality; the ability to make sport relevant to a wide audience by tying developments on the pitch to the broader concepts of beauty and glory off it. But can you really compare George Best with Vincent Van Gogh, or a World Cup qualifier to the Battle of Dunkirk? Is this not simply over-intellectualising a meaningless athletic pastime?
“Sport is an essentially trivial pursuit,” Barnes freely admits. “But I don’t think the search for excellence can ever be entirely trivial.” The example he lives is that of Yelena Isinbayeva, the Russian pole-vaulter who propelled herself an astonishing 5.05 metres into the air to break the World Record and claim gold in Beijing. For Barnes, Isinbayeva’s feat reminded him of the 1970s feminist movement which had been so prominent during his adolescent years. “Yes, jumping over a stick is trivial, but the freedom of women and the changing of society aren’t. And one is a symbol of the other… That is something worth watching, worth experiencing and maybe worth writing about.”
In a world where hard facts and objectivity remain the watchwords of sports journalism, it is unsurprising that Barnes’s intellectual prose have met hostility in some quarters. Private Eye have led the barrage of abuse, attacking Barnes’ “posturing narcissism” and the fact that “he isn’t joking or mocking his own vanity”. He scoffs at such misguided criticism. “Apparently stupid people like sport,” Barnes responds, “and therefore an intelligent person who likes sport can’t possibly be intelligent…Occasionally I’ve come up with some high floating notion and somebody will say ‘what if Private Eye got hold of it?’ I say ‘well, fuck them. Let them get hold of it. I’m setting the bloody agenda here not these guys’.” Yet for all his valiant resolve, Barnes is well aware of the impact such personal attacks have had on his reputation. “It’s cost me a great deal in the industry, and probably a great deal of money.” Whether legitimate or not, this stigma of pretentiousness has meant that many sports editors simply won’t go near Simon Barnes.
Perhaps one reason why Barnes has such an unusual writing style is that, unlike most of his colleagues, he never was an avid sports fan. With parents whose interest in sport was limited – his Dad’s only athletic endeavour was “playing Rugby of the kind where you’d go have three pints in the pub and then throw up over the touchline”, it was writing which caught the young Simon’s attention. This passion for words eventually led him to Bristol University, where Barnes promptly starting reading every book he could get his hands on other than those on the syllabus. The result was a third class degree but a first class literary knowledge that Barnes would come to constantly incorporate into his prose.
Having decided that “working in a menial job and writing great works of literature in the evening” was not a feasible post-uni plan, Barnes took up journalism. Starting out on news, there is a certain irony that it is the same aggressive criticism of his sporting prose he receives from some today that caused him to turn to sport in the first place. “I was hated, loathed, and told I was complete crap,” says Barnes as he recalls his days at Wimbledon News. The final straw came when he was put under an editor who “was told to lick me into shape, which he took as a license to persecute and bully”. Deciding to take the next vacancy that appeared, whatever the field, Barnes found himself covering sport. “I thought ‘God, that’s kids stuff. I can’t bloody do that, it’s pathetic’.” Yet early scepticism soon turned to fascination as Barnes warmed to his subject, one that has become his focus ever since.
What was it that caught his interest? “Sport gives you a wonderful narrative,” he replies. “If you’re writing about politics or business then you’re writing about people who are covering up the whole time. An athlet ein competition is stark naked in front of you and you cannot help but be involved. They create the stories for you. They are the heroes of their own mythologies.”
If you’re writing about politics or business then you’re writing about people who are covering up the whole time. An athelete in competition is stark naked in front of you.
By applying his literary academic background to sport, Barnes has risen to the top and, despite dissent from some corners, has become an overwhelmingly popular writer. Twice crowned Sports Columnist of the Year, a title he currently holds, Barnes has mixed feelings about such accolades. “It’s not like winning a gold medal, like being Usain Bolt and being faster than everybody else. You win it because everybody on the committee happened to think you were alright that year. Of course it’s really great but if you think it actually means anything you’re deluding yourself. I don’t hang them on my wall.”
Such modesty is admirable, but don’t let it fool you. Simon Barnes really is a remarkable writer. His ability to interweave life’s larger concepts into sport has gripped readers across the nation. At least, by employing this method, Barnes has successfully injected some much needed abstract thought into an area of journalism so monotonously dependent on cliché. At most, Barnes’ unique prose has revolutionised the way we look at sport. Either way, just as “sport tells us how we are”, we should count ourselves lucky that we have Simon Barnes to tell us ‘how sport is’.