STAND: Against Modern Football - Latest Comments

Re: Digital Subscriptions

John Grogan — Wed, 04 Dec 2019 08:30:00 -0000

United We Stand! Join The Shirts, Become a Cultra!
Cultras hope to become a movement and a voice for football fans. It is opposed to the modern game being awash with money from, players, owners, FA & Fifa officials, referees, they all come and go, lacking the fundamental quality of a football fan which is that of loyalty! It's our game lets own it!

Watch out for Cultras in January, membership will be free, there will be a blogg where you can express your opinion, we will not be publishing magazines but simply creating a forum and encouraging fans to join in and show their allegiance through wearing a Cultra shirt in their teams colours. Hopefully one day we will become a voice to be counted and listened to. www.Football-cultra.com, check it out in January, alternatively contact me at john@football-cultra.com.

Re: The Issue With Academies

Dr Stephen Fletcher — Fri, 24 Feb 2017 09:03:03 -0000

Dear All

It has been interesting to read the comments that have been
made about the release process for young players. My organisation, The Occupational Psychology Centre (OPC) is undertaking some key national research with a football coach and scout into the release process for young players. We want to find out:

How Academy/Clubs release their young players and how effective the process is
What young players think and feel about the release process

The aim is to identify the strengths with the release process and potential areas for improvement.

The OPC are funding the research. We have prepared a short survey for young players/parents/guardians to complete. It can be found at https://www.surveymonkey.co...

We aim to share the results and findings with the profession with recommendations on how to improve the release process.

If you would like to take part then please click on the link above. It will take about 10
minutes to complete.

Thanking you in anticipation

Dr Stephen Fletcher

Re: Irons out: West Ham fans should ditch the #AMF Arena and form a breakaway club.

Andy Gibbon — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 19:06:02 -0000

You reap what you sow....

Re: Irons out: West Ham fans should ditch the #AMF Arena and form a breakaway club.

kumbdotcom — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 17:20:20 -0000

FYI, here's a link to the website in question that the author failed to mention:

http://www.kumb.com/forum/

Re: Irons out: West Ham fans should ditch the #AMF Arena and form a breakaway club.

Jonathan Lock — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 12:16:00 -0000

I'd be happy to help get this going from a Brand and marketing capacity...
I'm a very disillusioned season ticket holder.

Re: B-Teams in the EFL Trophy is insulting, unsporting and worst of all, thick.

Mjfjo — Fri, 02 Sep 2016 04:27:48 -0000

Wasnt there a very well respected reserve league called the Football Combination, which if memory serves was always a prized competition to win by some of the big clubs. It would allow young players to get game time against hardened pro's, and teams like Chelsea with their 400 signed up players could put several teams in there?

Re: Torquay United : This is the way the world ends; not with a bang, but a whimper.

Hayden de Nooijer — Wed, 24 Feb 2016 12:20:55 -0000

Great read, but I think you mean our average gates dropped by 33%, not 50%, as I don't remember us having an average gate of 3600 since League One. The drop is calculated from the original gate, not the new one. So, if we went UP to 2700 attendances then it would be a RISE of 50% from gates of 1800, but to go down from 2700 to 1800 is a DROP of 33%. Sorry for being a pedant! :/

Re: The Issue With Academies

studs1965 — Tue, 26 Jan 2016 09:02:40 -0000

Remember that most of the time you are dealing with Children, and their parents. The clubs and responsible parents have got to manage expectations. Just because you're good at something doesn't mean you are going to be in the top 1%. When at the youngest age these talented children can enter into academies, the prospect of becoming a pro is hugely improbable. The expectation has to be managed. Within the inner circles the philosophy has been described a throwing enough sand against a wall and using only the little bits that stick, to take to the next stage. Now obviously it has to be good quality sand in the first place but without proper expectation management every child that gets hurled against that metaphoric wall will expect to stick and be amongst the chosen few. For most, football should be a game that they might be lucky enough to excel in their local leagues, integrated with a fulfilling balance of school, family, friendships and other leisure time. Going beyond is a perilous journey where perhaps the academies should take more responsibility to plan the wellbeing of the unfortunate majority who are rejected. I am the parent of an Academy trialist and despite the fact that I know all of this its a real struggle not to get carried away when he scores and plays well. But it really is important to keep a lid on your hopes for your childs football career. In all likelihood I know he and most of the other lads he is training with wont be doing so in 12 months time.

Re: From Issue 16 – FCUM & Salford City in the FA Cup

Ian Cusack — Fri, 08 Jan 2016 13:23:52 -0000

if you would like to read any more of my work, my blog is http://payaso-de-mierda.blo... & copies of "The Popular Side" are available via PayPal to iancusack@blueyonder.co.uk for £2 inc P&P

Re: Benham’s Brentford – From Issue 14

Phil Coates — Sun, 20 Sep 2015 13:03:16 -0000

Excellent article! I had to live through all of this horrible pillaging and the previous near loss of the club to QPR and the earlier terrible sales of Ron Greenwood, Jimmy Hill, Billy Dare, Tommy Lawton and Bill Slater during the fifties which ripped the core out of a very promising and talented club. More power to Matthew Benham and the Bees!

Re: Who is Shaun Harvey?

gojogo — Mon, 02 Jun 2014 04:43:55 -0000

How the hell did he get into that position?
Who was responsible for that?

Re: Who is Shaun Harvey?

LincolnWhite — Sun, 01 Jun 2014 16:34:31 -0000

If only The Sunday Times would do an in-depth investigation!! As a starting point, it would be good if fans other than ours, and those in Bradford, appreciated something of the nature of the beast.

Re: The Issue With Academies

Catch Them Young — Mon, 07 Apr 2014 16:33:33 -0000

its a great article. but we are here in africa and we need improvement to develop our football here so we can start catching them when they are young and also teach them the basic of education so one they realise their dream it will be very easy for them to know what this game of football is all about. we have to ballance the down side with the benefit.

Re: ViaGoGo: The return of the ticket tout

john — Sun, 23 Mar 2014 04:34:14 -0000

booorrriiinnnggggggg yawn

Re: The Tottenham Three

Richie — Thu, 20 Feb 2014 20:20:18 -0000

As a Jew (not a Spurs fan. Orient, if you must know) my feelings on this are:

Claiming that 'Yid' is used as some type of badge of honour by Spurs fans is disingenuous and ignores the fact that there is a big old world outside of football where no-one EVER uses the word to mean "Spurs fan".
If you drop it into a conversation with me about football, I may understand the context you use it in...but it still makes me bristle and I'll still think you're an ignorant tosser who doesn't know any better.

It seems that those Spurs fans who defend it tend to liken their use of it to the appropriation of the "n" word by the black community, where its now ok to call a fellow black person (at least under 35) a 'nigger', but woe betide any white person trying to use it in a similar way. So, how many Spurs fans who use 'Yid' are actually Jewish? Its the same thing; you can try to appropriate a word that doesn't even refer to you, but those it does refer to will think you are either very stupid or just plain crass.

Trying to suggest that official efforts to limit the use of highly defamatory language in public places is somehow an "attack on freedom" would be funny if it wasn't so ill considered. So it is all irrelevant if anyone else is highly offended by the word? Fine, then we'll all just follow the words of Stephen Fry, that well known fat Yid queer mental case. Hey.. no offense intended of course, Stephen!

Consider this scenario, based entirely on the logic in the article: me and a group of my friends, all white, decide we are angered by the continual references to Asian owned small business in the area as 'Paki shops'. In a display of communal solidarity and defiance, we take it upon ourselves to march up and down the high street chanting "Paki Army!". People complain about us and many Asian people complain a lot.

And they'd be well justified to complain. Or don't you really get it?

Re: CityTicketX: Viagogo Campaign

Colin Hendrie — Sun, 02 Feb 2014 04:44:56 -0000

The difference between touting, which is illegal and Viagogo, which is not, is that the latter have been authorised by the club to be secondary sellers of their tickets. The actual process that turns a secondary seller from a tout into an authorised secondary seller (and thereby an illegal activity into a legal one) is the provision of a letter from the club giving the secondary seller that authorisation.

The Viagogo operation depends on fans using it and that should depend on the club having sold all its tickets.

Their operation failed at Old Trafford because tickets were only available through Viagogo for the games no-one really wanted to go to, so no-one bought them and weren't available for the games that they did, so there were none to sell. That left Viagogo with no business so they closed up shop and moved on.

The terms and conditions for United tickets have since been changed and now allow season ticket holders to lend out their tickets to family and friends - which undermines the sole reason why touting is illegal for football matches but not for other activities such as concerts etc, i.e. that of maintaining segregation between rival fans, since there is no-way of knowing if 'family and/or friends' support the same club as the owner of the ticket (it also means that the club have no real idea who is sitting in each seat, which is one of their main objections to safe-standing but that is a different matter ...).

The advice to those thinking of setting up informal ticket exchange schemes is to contact their clubs asking for the required authorisation.

If the club refuse it becomes easy to show that their motivation for supporting Viagogo but not fans' informal schemes is financial and not their desire to provide fans with a service they would not otherwise have.

Re: The Tottenham Three

jambreck — Fri, 24 Jan 2014 12:25:12 -0000

Who is in a vocal minority? Spurs fans who sing the word "yid"?What polls have you conducted to determine your.....ahem....."findings"? Which independent market research organisation oversaw it all? Hmmmm?

I'm not going to make any claims about who is or isn't in a minority. I will only speak from my own experience. I have found that a large majority of Spurs fans that I know or who I have encountered or who I have seen and heard comment on this issue (on the internet and elsewhere) are proud to call themselves "yids". I will go further than that................a majority of Jewish Spurs fans that I know or who I have encountered or who I have seen and heard comment on the issue are proud to call themselves "yids".

You want logical debate? Perhaps you will deserve it when you behave in a less aggressive and indiscriminately accusatory manner. Nevertheless, I'm happy to oblige you.

You are familiar with the legal principle of mens rea, I presume? Intent. That is the only thing that really matters in this debate. You're suggesting that White Hart Lane could be a heaving mass of anti-Semites hiding behind the expedience of a nickname, secretly revelling in the freedom to chant a hate word with impunity? Have you any idea how preposterous that sounds?

But let's leave that silly notion behind for a second and look at the actual word; this so called hate word. It isn't actually inherently a hate word at all, is it? Nope. It's an Ashkenazi Jewish word. It originally had a neutral or positive meaning, denoting friendship or even respect ("Reb Yid"). It was only in the early 20th century that it began to be used as a hate word. But it was no more used as a hate word than the word "Jew" itself. Do you want all mention of the word "Jew" banned as well? In the 1970's and 80's, anti-Semitism by opposition fans escalated. The authorities did nothing to prevent it. It was only after Spurs fans - both Jews and Gentiles - had had enough and took on the word "yids" (or "yiddos") for themselves that the bigots' sting was drawn and the anti-Semites went back under the festering rocks from which they had crawled.

Ever since, Spurs fans have referred to themselves as "yids", meaning only "Spurs fans" or, possibly, "Spurs players". It became woven into the identity of the club. It has been that way for forty years and it's utterly bonkers to try to change it now - unless you want to create an almighty schism within the club.

Words change meaning. Language evolves. Trying to stop it would be as foolish as trying to stop the waves from rolling ashore. The word "yid", when sung by Spurs fans at Spurs games, is a badge of pride and belonging. It now means something entirely different to what it originally meant and to what the anti-Semites tried to make it mean. Its intent, in the context of Spurs, is entirely positive.

There is no ownership of words. History proves that over and over again. There is no exclusivity of meaning. If someone is offended by the use of a word but then has its positive context explained to them and still chooses to be offended, then they have no one but themselves to blame. There is no inalienable right not to be offended. Where would we be if there was? No one would ever say a thing for fear of offending someone.

So I'm sorry to have to point out to you, bokonon, that it is your arguments (as threadbare as they are) that don't bear scrutiny.

Re: The Tottenham Three

terracetalk — Fri, 24 Jan 2014 12:11:41 -0000

Bokonon your on other site with you outbursts...funny but the majority don't seem to agree with you on the internet. As a season ticket holder, born in Tottenham and supported since 1967 I can tell you the majority of paying support don't agree with you either.
As for hidden agenda's, do you not like the fact the solidarity creates atmosphere at the Lane....are you a Gooner with a hidden agenda maybe ?

Re: The Tottenham Three

bazza — Fri, 24 Jan 2014 01:42:50 -0000

PS bokonon, I forgot to add, I have been a spurs fan a damn sight longer than your 1976 time, I began my spurs love when Bill Nick, Alf Ramsey, Ted Ditchburn, etc WORE the white shirt (green in Teds case) and I knew and respected our Jewish connections way back then, so please respect my views in these modern times as I do yours.
9

Re: The Tottenham Three

bazza — Fri, 24 Jan 2014 01:32:08 -0000

bokonon, obviously you have your own personal views on this delicate matter, that I respect. So please, will you show us supporters of the Yid army who mean NO offence the same respect. The big C word is certainly uncalled for in a debate such as this, and there you are calling for, I quote- a proper logical debate. Nice one Mister?? In my reply to article above, I stated the MAJORITY of the Jewish community were not offended and I certainly stand by that comment. You need to remember that the Yid army originally started as a defence, against OFFENSIVE actions by mindless morons which concerned horrific happenings at ALL ww2 concentration camps. Hang loose Mister and see the whole picture before putting words into print like the big C, that makes you no better than the mindless morons I mentioned, DOES IT???????

Re: The Tottenham Three

bokonon — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 21:25:12 -0000

apologies for my previous aggressive reply to you. i'm just getting very frustrated that you and our ilk wont accept that you are in a very vocal minority and your arguments dont stand up. i'm also very suspicious about the true motivation behind the "sing what we want" movement and would welcome a proper logical debate on the subject (may be to be organised by the THST?)

Re: The Tottenham Three

bokonon — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 21:07:04 -0000

it has nothing to do with football and is causing distress to other human beings. did your ancestors die in auschwitz you ignorant c u n t

Re: The Tottenham Three

bokonon — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 21:02:35 -0000

i find it very offensive and i've been a spurs supporter since 1976. how do we know that some members of the "yid army" aren't secretly members of the NF? are we meant to take their word for it? your argument, like Luis Suarez', taken to its logical conclusion, would allow anyone to use the words yid & nigger with impunity so long as they said they "didn't mean to cause offence

Re: The Tottenham Three

Marthfc — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 18:09:51 -0000

Great article, I recall the days at train station when groups of Chelsea, West Ham and others waited to attack us yids and the solidarity turning the association of the word on its head. We are Spurs supporters we are Tottenham Supporters we are Lilly whites we are yids.....everyone else get used to it it will never change.

Coys yids

Re: The Tottenham Three

bazza — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 17:37:22 -0000

Excellent article, says it all. Anybody with an ounce of sense can see there is nothing offensive with the Y word when used in the context as it is by Tottenham fans. Even the majority of the local Jewish community living in nearby Stamford hill do not find it offensive!!!