Sunday, April 06, 2008

Why we are not renewing our season tickets

Here's a tricky one for us. Since our scrapes with knucklehead and potty mouth in the Fraser Eagle stand at Blackburn Rovers, which I first mentioned here, then here, we've watched the last three matches from the Family Stand. Joe can see now that he has some specs and the view is good. It's also been a better shield from the wild weather than the front row.

At the Spurs game yesterday it was us who seemed to cause offence. The mother in a family in front of us thought Elliot was "too young to be here" and "wasn't even watching the game". She also admonished Louis for kicking her son's chair (it was Matt, actually and he was tapping the empty seat next to her son).

Now, she may be right about Elliot, but it was rude to say so. I happen to think visible tattoos on early middle-aged women are trashy, but it's not my place to comment and rightly she would have been offended had I expressed this opinion about her choice of body art.

We've already decided we aren't going to renew season tickets. This was the final straw. We considered relocating permanently to the family stand, but we are not going to. The risk of having to sit amongst people you are likely to offend, or be intimidated by, is a risk of going to football. But doing so every week is just not worth the effort.

We'll still go, but not quite so often.

As for the game, it was another frustrating day. Bentley shone as a player with the most talent on the pitch, but wasn't effective enough. Vogel had a shaky debut, giving the ball away a lot, but playing in front of the centre backs. He reminded me of Barry Ferguson - I could never see the point of him either. Early days to be fair. The best move of the match involved a sweeping pass from Benni McCarthy, quite the most skilfull player, but also the most frustrating.

3 comments:

Scott Thornton said...

It was Reid who played the sweeping pass, not McCarthy. McCarthy wasn't even on the field at the time.

The Family Stand rarely sells out, so I would have thought you could have moved to another set of seats if the woman you speak of was causing you so much distress.

It is, of course, your perogative not to renew your season tickets, however, you seem to have come up with a pretty feeble excuse not to. At a time when the club is bending over backwards to attract new fans and keep their existing ones, it is a shame that you choose to be put off by trivialities such as this. You complain about the intolerance of others but you hardly seem to be a model of tolerance yourself - in fact you come across as a bit of a precious snob. Perhaps a visit to the opera would be more appropriate in the future.

Football is a traditional working class sport where people go to let off steam and release their emotions for a couple of hours. If you feel that this environment isn't suitable for your children then maybe you should wait until they are older before taking them.

Michael Taylor said...

Isn't blogging ace?

It is my perogative not to renew our season tickets and it is not a triviality to have my kids hear someone scream "fucking black cunt". We put up with his tirades all season, asked him to temper his language. He didn't. What he said every week went way beyond "letting off steam" it is foul and abusive language and it is illegal. Like you I sort of accepted the rough and tumble, but when we took some friends who support Everton they thought he was the worst they'd ever seen.

We have moved from the Fraser Eagle to the family stand on a match by match basis and have enjoyed the view, etc.

Tolerance is absolutely why we moved to the family stand. It IS a place suitable for kids. The stand was full of fidgeting kids getting up and hopping about and tapping seats. For someone to be rude just left us exasperated.

Everyone else we've met has been lovely. And yes, maybe our younger kids are too young, so we'll pick our games next season, but that is our choice and not for someone else to make for us. I think the club are fantastic. I really do. And I don't like opera.

And was there only one sweeping pass? I know what I saw.

Michael Taylor said...

I took you up on your suggestion about the opera and went to Old Trafford on Wednesday. Marvellous.