Sunday 11th May, 20082 years ago, mid-May
Premiership Boring? Ask The Supporters of Halifax Town
Kevin Keegan was wrong to describe the Premiership as boring.
Today Manchester United square up against Chelsea and the winner could be decided by goal difference – the tiny margin between success and failure – and right up to the last kick of the game the season will stay interesting.
All a far cry from Chelsea’s days in the second flight of English football and I remember City would have played off with Chelsea for a place in The First Division back in 1988 had we beaten Middlesbrough.
I also remember Manchester United going to play Halifax Town in a League Cup game at The Shay. United Town took the lead I think but Halifax came back to win and won 2-1. Halifax Town beating Manchester United seems a long time ago today.
Halifax Town are virtually gone from football. A meeting on Friday in Leeds left them with virtually no hope of a CVA or of any sort of a reprieve from the debtors. They are about to go into liquidation very soon and then there will be no more Halifax Town.
Supporters of Town – and there are not many one supposes – will lose the football club they have followed. Football is a strange thing and hard to understand for most. It is a metronome for the supporter’s lives ticking off weeks and years in the same way that any anniversary or regular event does.
I heard once that humans use rituals to mark out time – why celebrate a birthday anyway? – in manageable units and my better half does not really understand how I can recall dates because they fall within certain seasons but I can.
For football supporters that is one of the functions of the game – to allow a common and shared set of events that we use to mark out the paths of our lives. It is not the only one of these things society holds – I remember other things by which albums I was listening to around that time – but they are important and special and for the people of Halifax they are gone.
Today of all days I say this. Today 11th of May 56 people lost their lives watching Bradford City play Lincoln and we mark that tragic anniversary as we mark the joyous, the sad, the silly, the mundane ones around supporting football in a way that weaves into the fabric of our lives.
I doubt that the armchair supporters watching the Premiership “showdown” have even the faintest idea what I mean. I think they think these point of view to be outmoded and old fashioned. I think they look at supporters of clubs like Bradford City and Halifax Town as being part quaint and part dull following the unsuccessful bloody-mindedly as if community and kinship means nothing.
Manchester United vs Chelsea is Coke vs Pepsi. Whichever wins it makes very little to the rest of football which looks to crumbs to live on while at the top table they gorge.
The Premiership – Thatcherism gone to horrific extremes – will be settled today and at some point someone will mention that Chelsea have not scored enough goals despite paying a man £130,000 a week to do that. £130,000 a week as Halifax Town go to the wall.
Kevin Keegan was wrong to describe the Premiership as boring. It is not boring, it is obscene.
At last some more people mentioning how the Premiership is just madness realised.
The money on wages is just sick. I don’t care who you are and how well you play but £130,000 a week is gross. Apart from the fact that clubs like Halifax are going to the wall while this is happening what about the rest of the world?
People the world over are poor, below poor. People are dying and have no food.
Struggling to get by day by day even in our own country and one man is earning £130,0000 a week? What can one person do with all this money? I mean come on I know we can all think of ways to spend it i suppose but a week? No way. It’s all gone wrong. The haves and the have nots.
I have no problem with athletes being paid decent amounts of money to entertain us each week because that’s really what footballers are now, entertainers but it all feels out of control. Like something has gone wrong. I remember the government trying to say something about this when i happened but they just tailed off like they do. No power in their voice. Probably suits them in the long run to make that much tax.
Even they were like whoa. I think this article hits it on the head when it says that it is Thatcherism gone mad because it is. The premier league is boring. It’s full of dull dimwits whose eyes are firmly on the cash prize. I know city are down in league two I am teetering on the edge of sounding jealous but I really don’t know what we as a club now need to aspire to.
It’s great currently having this battle on to climb up the football league and better ourselves but it seems a hollow thing to do eventually if your only reward is the premier league. Watching Beckham et all at valley parade was great. I enjoyed it but its hollow really isn’t it.
It’s just like meeting your fav stars really. That’s all it is. And that’s how it feels afterwards. I don’t know what the answer is but I’ve had it with the premier league.
Ps I read the guardian a bit and i am sick and tired with this other fascination at the moment. the ownership of British clubs and the Premier League. That is the only football they cover. There is so much more out there that it beggars belief. That paper has got it morals all screwed up.