Why I Hate Football

I trained as a Social Worker. When you train as a Social Worker one of the things they do is enourage you to "park" your "issues". They often have a special piece of Flip Chart Paper just for this purpose. Participants are encouraged to "park" their 'issues" by writing them up on the paper. For everyone to see.

Social Workers have a lot of "issues". Funny thing though I never saw many of them "parked". I certainly never did it. I didn't have any issues - not that I was willing to share with the world anyway.

This post, however, is for just that purpose. It is where I am going to "park" all the things I hate about football. And there are quite a lot of them.

Please excuse me a moment while I become that Social Work student again.

Right. So the reasons I hate football are as follows:

• I went to a predominently boys' school between the ages of 7 and 11. They played football. I walked up and down the sideline with a flag. It rained. I walked up and down the sideline with a flag. It was cold and windy. I walked up and down the line with the flag. And when something happened I was supposed to be watching. Only I wasn't because it was boring.
• My first boyfriend used to take me to football matches. There were some things I liked.The singing. And some of the chanting was funny. And some was racist and offensive. And some was aggressive and threatening violence. It was at once exciting and frightening. But it was also boring quite a lot too.
• It is always on the television. People I don't know. Teams I don't know. Just running about. And they are all men.
• It is a male dominated game. They tell me it is our national game. My national game. Says who? Where was I when that vote was taking place? Must have nipped out to the loo because I don't remember that debate. And how can we have a national game that represents less than half the population? And lots of blokes don't like it either. My dad for one.
  
• I thought the roots of football were in the local. I thought it was supposed to be a way of communities coming together to defeat others in fun. How come players get bought and sold and moved about? And why do people support clubs they live nowhere near and never have? And how come they act all loyal as if it was their own community. It is a complete conumdrum.
• The whole thing gets used by men to exclude women. Like knowing about football means entry to some boys' club. Shows you are a lad. And girls who try to do football get laughed at. Called groupies and hangers-on.
  
• The world stops functioning when there is a big event on like the world cup.

This list is not exhaustive. It covers the main ones though.

As you can see I have just cause to hate football. It is a loathsome game on all fronts. In fact I feel like giving up right now. Why should I bother with this ridiculous blog. Then again why should I let football get the better of me.

So that's it then. Onwards and upwards. "Issues" "parked".

Next post - how I'm going to learn to love football.