Peace In Our Time, La
At lunchtime tomorrow hostilities will be resumed with our friends from down the M62. On the pitch the spotlight will no doubt fall on Gary Neville after his infamous skip down to the away end last season, an event that many of the Scouse fans there assembled found so traumatic they haven’t been able to work since. Off the pitch we can expect levels of rancour to be cranked to ludicrous heights. Venom and vitriol will spill from every stand on to the heads of the Liverpool fans, much in the way more liquid and material forms of filth were deposited on the United end at Anfield last season.
A couple of years ago Greater Manchester Police deemed this fixture so innocuous that it was allowed to be played at 3:00pm on a Saturday. I recall a torpid game – Murphy’s spot-kick deciding matters - with an atmosphere to match. How far away that seems now. Just why has the degree of enmity raised to such a pitch that some last season were speculating that it wouldn’t be too long before the fixture claimed its first fatality and needed to be played out behind closed doors? It can’t all be Gary Nev’s fault. In fact I think we can trace it back to that dark night in Istanbul.
I remember the warm glow of satisfaction I felt at half-time. Having fluked their way to the semi and meeting the most supine Juventus side in history, Liverpool were finally, magnificently, being shown just how out of their depth they really were. 2-0 already, though it could easily have been more, visions of utterly humiliating scorelines danced before my eyes. I couldn’t wait for the second half to begin. And then the world turned upside down, and it soon became clear that this was going to be a bleak night for United fans.
The following season as they hymned their glorious triumph, our travails on and off the pitch left us nothing, bar references to a treble that had never felt more distant, to hit back with. The only way was down. And so it proved. Old wounds were ripped open and salt liberally inserted. Heysel. Hillsborough. I half expect to hear the old one about ‘Bill Shankly lying on his back’ to be exhumed tomorrow. With perfect timing Michael Shields has been back in the news this week as he’s coming home to see out his sentence. We can expect our finest songsmiths to be furiously composing a couplet to mark the occasion as I write.
Last season a Liverpool supporting work colleague asked me, genuinely baffled, why United fans were lowing ‘Murderers’ at her and her 6 year old daughter. ‘Heysel,’ I mumbled, half embarrassed, half apologetic. ‘But that was years ago,’ she challenged and, aware of the fact that all efforts to claim the moral high ground were doomed to fail, I could offer very little by way of comeback. ‘And why do you sing it when you’re not even playing us?’
It has to be said, she had a point there. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve felt embarrassed about the fact that United fans can think of no better way to get behind the team than sing ‘Without killing anyone…we’ve won it 2 times.’ With such a wide repertoire of songs, isn’t it slightly odd that we should resort to singing about Liverpool quite so often? Just like all those ABU sides used to be when they sang about us so much, we’re becoming defined by the thing we hate more than the thing we love.
The Leeds obsession’s equally bizarre. Leeds United are little more than a flea living on United, an irritant that we bark at and scratch, but that essentially wouldn’t actually exist without us. Apparently Leeds still do play football games and sack their manager every now and again, but if we didn’t sing about them every bloody week they would simply fade into obsolescence. But we just can’t help ourselves.
Even at FC United where, on my infrequent visits, I’m forced to marvel at the inspired nature of the songs, you still hear Michael Sheilds song get too many an airing. Is it, and I’m loath to write this, that too many United fans are basically stupid? I’ll defy any sentient human being to watch JimmyMcGovern’s film about Hillsborough and then sing ’96 is not enough,’ which can only lead me to conclude that the ignorant and stupid are starting to outnumber the rest amongst United’s support.
In this morning’s paper – The Guardian in my case, as if that wasn’t obvious from the sentiments above – Ferguson is appealing for both sets of supporters to show respect for each other tomorrow. I expect his request to seem fairly forlorn by ten past one tomorrow. So let’s change the record and remember, ‘Without singing about nothing but Liverpool, we won it two times…’
posted by Royton Red @ 12:24 PM
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