Staring at the rude boys...

After conversations about Sunday’s match and the coin-throwing incident with mates and in work, my thoughts have turned recently to hooliganism. There’s a really good article in the Guardian today about the ‘literary’ genre glorifying football violence, aka ‘Hoolie Porn’. An example of this relevant to City is Soul Crew, a book detailing the activities of the hooligan ‘firm’ (what’s the correct collective word for a group of twunts?) that was associated with Cardiff City. I’ve not read it, as I have no desire to give money to the scum who glorify this kind of behaviour, but from what I’ve heard it’s of dubious literary merit at best. Anyway, I thought the author of the article today came up with a pretty good description of why hooliganism still exists:

“Hooliganism will be around as long as men like wearing nice clobber and battering the crap out of each other and there will always be an audience for a blueprint [for books] comprised of label fetishism, rucks and battle stories”

That’s about right isn’t it?

I mean there are genuine sociological arguments around hooliganism and associated forms of violence to do with masculinity, identity and class politics, tribes and neo-tribes which I won’t go into detail about here. But for me it boils down to old guys who should know better and grown out of this trying to organise a load of kids (generally 15-19 year olds) who think that because they are City fans then they should be hooligans, because that’s what being a City fan is all about. When quite obviously it’s not.