“Football’s not a matter of life and death. It’s much more important than that.”
It started off as a throwaway joke and became a party piece used to shock and delight in equal measure. Ultimately, it detracted from Bill Shankly’s humanist legacy. The Scot’s quote is still often used by football’s enemies to damn the fanaticism that surrounds the game.
Yet as Fabrice Muamba lay on the turf at White Hart Lane on Saturday, surrounded by the doctors and paramedics who fought to keep life in his body, another, more accurate portrait of football emerged. Horror, fear and panic was etched on the faces of the Bolton Wanderers and Tottenham Hotspur players alike.
Concern radiated from the stands. Spectators looked on in silence and the anxiety was palpable. No one in the ground cared about the result. For all that the tribal hordes who fill stadiums are willing participants in the hysterical slapstick that is football, they are not mindless. They know tragedy when they see it.
The outpouring of concern will have astonished those who wish to depict players as overpaid pantomime villains. Twitter is often a platform for the deranged and overwrought but it has given footballers a direct conduit to the world. The sheer number of players who tweeted in support of Muamba illustrated the kinship of those who kick a ball for a living. Team-mates, rivals, superstars and journeymen flooded on to the social networking site to express their fellowship.
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While the medical staff at White Hart Lane were the true heroes on Saturday night, the game as a whole conducted itself superbly. It is an important message to send out, coming at the end of a week when we were reminded again how easily supporters can be demonised.
On Thursday, leaked official documents told how senior Merseyside policemen had briefed Margaret Thatcher that the Hillsborough disaster was the fault of Liverpool fans. That the officers concerned were not in Sheffield on that awful day in 1989 did not seem to matter.
Many rank and file officers from Liverpool were present at Hillsborough as supporters and the Merseyside Police Federation was quick to respond to the accusations about the cause of the chaos at the match. The branch secretary said that his phone was “red hot” with colleagues seeking to “redress the balance” of “ill-informed comments based on hearsay rather than evidence”. Yet the reputation of football fans in 1989 was such that plenty of people were happy to believe that supporters would break down gates, steal from the dead and urinate on bodies. Some still cling to the misapprehension today.
Instead of asking why the dead, dying and injured did not get the same sort of treatment that Muamba received on Saturday — more than 40 ambulances were queued up outside Hillsborough — those at the highest levels of Government spent their energy making villains of the victims.
The waters were so muddied that, 23 years on, the families of the 96 who died are still searching for the truth.
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Those who think that this is ancient history are wrong. A look at the Football Supporters’ Federation website is an eye-opener. People attending matches have to suffer assaults on their civil liberties on a weekly basis. In almost any other walk of life, these restrictions on individual freedom would cause a national uproar.
Despite arrests at matches falling by nine per cent in 2011-12, there are a raft of restrictions that apply only to football. Dare to drink a beer in view of the pitch? You can be banned from all grounds and forced to surrender your passport. Rugby union fans would bring down the Government if such draconian rules were applied at Twickenham. Just as well, then, that a Football Banning Order (FBO) applies only to one sport. And the imposition of an FBO does not even require a criminal conviction.
Sell a ticket outside a ground, even to a friend, even for face value, and you could find yourself in court as a tout. It would not happen outside the National Theatre. There would be uproar on the South Bank and beyond.
Take a coach trip to the match and stop off for a pint? You could be subject to Section 27 of the Violent Crime Reduction Act 2006. The police can pack you back on to the bus and escort you home. Even if the landlord is happy to have you. Lucky punters en route to the Cheltenham Festival or Aintree would not be subject to such treatment.
These sorts of measures are enforced despite 70 per cent of games taking place without an arrest. The troublemakers need to be singled out and punished, but too often innocent supporters are on the wrong end of draconian policing.
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The stereotype of drunken, marauding hooligans was challenged at White Hart Lane on Saturday. It was proven to be a lie by the huge number of wellwishers who are still praying for Muamba. The image of players as filthy rich, lecherous dilettantes was undermined. Yes, there will be exceptions, but they are more rare than the sport’s detractors will admit.
Football should be life-affirming, like a Shankly quip. It should not be taken too seriously. It should make you smile.
So get well and come back soon, Fabrice. The good people of football are willing you on. And the vast majority are good. They really are.