Robert Hampton

Alan Davies is in trouble after making comments about the Hillsborough disaster on a podcast. He criticised Liverpool for refusing to play matches on the anniversary of the tragedy. A clip is on YouTube here, if you want to judge his choice of words.

I don’t for a second think that Alan Davies is an offensive person. But get a man to talk about football, and for some reason common sense goes out the window and angry nonsense seems to be the default level of conversation (check out the comments on the YouTube video I linked to, which make normal YouTube comments look like the Frost/Nixon interview).

I kind of get the nation’s obsession with football, but there are lots of things I don’t get. For example, I don’t understand why rivalries get so nasty and personal. I don’t understand why Liverpool and Everton fans are such a volatile mix that police feel it necessary to enforce segregated pubs in London for the FA Cup semi-final on Saturday.

I don’t understand how a stall in Clayton Square Shopping Centre thinks it’s amusing to sell baby-grows that say (paraphrased) “I’ve only just been born but I hate the red shite”.

I blame Sky Sports for hyping up every match they show as being the most important event in the world ever (clip below is a David Mitchell spoof, but scarily close to the real thing).

I don’t understand. Someone explain it to me.

I pre-scheduled this post before I left for Tallinn on 3rd May!

The new issue of Attitude is out now and features an interview with two newly out sportsmen – cricketer Steven Davies and footballer Anton Hysén.

Every article I’ve seen about him makes me like him even more, because Hysén consistently comes across as a thoroughly decent, down-to-earth man. He speaks eloquently in interviews. His sexuality is a non-issue: to his team-mates and his manager, he is just one of the lads. He has experienced some homophobia from the terraces, but seems to be taking it in his stride.

He was born in Liverpool while his dad Glenn was playing for LFC, and he still supports the team (in the Attitude interview he reveals that his role model is Steven Gerrard). He currently plays for a Swedish 4th division team but hopes to develop his career. And that is the great part – he is coming out at the start of career, a move that would have damaged his chances of success not long ago.

It’s so refreshing to see someone so totally at ease with himself about being gay and what that means. In the second decade of the 21st century, sexuality is no longer the barrier it once was.

The full article, which is well worth reading, can be found in the Summer 2011 issue of Attitude. It is out now at all good newsagents (and some bad ones as well, probably), or you can buy a digital copy for computer or iPad.

Anton Hysén plays for the lower leagues of Swedish football, but he has made headlines around the world after coming out as gay earlier this month. Two weeks later, the subject is still a talking point.

There’s a wonderfully positive article in today’s Daily Mail, of all places (as usual, ignore the comments). I love this little nugget of information:-

He was born in Liverpool during his dad’s time at the club and is still an obsessive fan, bellowing out You’ll Never Walk Alone in tiny clubhouse showers, emerging with a Liverpool towel and speaking of his admiration for Steven Gerrard.

There’s also a brief piece on Hysén over on the BBC Sport blog, accompanied by a good, frank report where he talks about the response — generally, positive attention from all over the world, marred by the odd piece of hate mail. He seems determined to treat the whole thing as no big deal, which it shouldn’t be, really. Overall, he seems remarkably happy with his position in life.

Mind you, I would be happy too if I was standing next to this man:-

The main theme of a lot of the articles I’ve read is: when will a British player follow suit? It’s difficult to know what the reaction would be – the Guardian’s secret footballer believes that fan abuse would still be rife. On the other hand, the Professional Footballers Association has pledged to support any players who do take this big step.

It will be a brave man who decides to be the first. However, the fact that people are talking about it openly means that the taboo has been slightly broken, meaning it is much more likely that we will see a gay footballer in the English leagues within the next few years. And in a world where football players are idolised by millions, hopefully he can be a much needed positive role model.

A very important news update:-

Snoods have been put under any other business for when football’s lawmakers meet on 5 March and, to the horror of some stars, may be banned.

Excellent news – footballers should wear fewer clothes, not more. Except Wayne Rooney, for whom a full burqa would be appropriate.

July brought big changes to the newspaper industry, as The Times started charging for access to its web site. This was supposed to ensure a steady income stream for the newspaper, putting it on a secure financial footing for the future. However, it also resulted in the Times being completely removed from the online chatter of the blogosphere, as its news coverage and columnists were no longer accessible to the internet hoi-polloi. Still, I’m sure this decision made sense to someone somewhere.

The Supreme Court ruled that gay people facing persecution are entitled to claim asylum in the UK. I welcomed the decision, although my blog post is curiously vague about precisely why I welcomed it. Hmm…

In other gay-related news, I reviewed, with sadness, a booklet from the US Military discussing its anti-gay don’t ask, don’t tell policy.

Elsewhere, health and safety went mad as one person suggested banning rugby scrums. I felt uncomfortable on a train full of Orange Lodge marchers and I defended the traditional sitcom from an onslaught of criticism from trendy TV reviewers.

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Football has never really piqued my curiosity. The offside rule? Penalty shootouts? Meh. But one aspect of the modern game does interest me: when will we see an openly-gay professional football player?

It’s a question that nobody seems to want to address. The FA tried to follow up their successful anti-racism campaign with a similar one against homophobia earlier this year. It fizzled out after no major player would support it. When BBC Radio Five Live tried to survey Premiership clubs about attitudes to homosexuality, nobody answered.

Simon Barnes in the Times pointed out, back in 2006, there is a certain irony that a sport which relies on such close contact between men seems to have an entrenched homophobia. Yet it is there everywhere you look.

The precedents for gay men in the sport are not good. Justin Fashanu came out in 1990, the first (and so far, only) player to do so. Eight years later, with his career in tatters and disowned by his family — he committed suicide. Twenty years later, gay people are accepted in almost every walk of life — but still not football.

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There’s very little that I can say about Hillsborough that hasn’t already been said far more eloquently by other commentators. In fact, I feel almost fraudulent writing this; I’m not a football fan and never have been. However, I’ve come to realise that what happened in the Leppings Lane end on that fateful day is, at its heart, a story that every human being can empathise with: that of lives cut short in a brutal manner and the resultant outpouring of shared grief and community spirit, even in the face of grave injustice and outright lies.

My own memories of that day are hazy. I was six years old and even at that early stage football didn’t interest me. Even so, I knew something was amiss that afternoon when my Dad suddenly decided that he didn’t want to watch Grandstand any more, and took me and my cousin to the local playground instead. I also couldn’t understand he was so evasive when the aforementioned (football-mad) cousin kept asking what the score was.

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Extracts from Network Rail’s log from Manchester Piccadilly station last night (reposted from here):-

And there’s nobody to blame but pissed up football “fans” and a culture that indulges them.