I (like to) believe that ordinarily, I am a fairly reasonable and rationally thinking man. I can handle stressful situations, express opinions coherently and interact with others in a regular manner all about as well as your average 19-year-old.
However, during the ninety-minute period I spend in the stands watching my beloved West Ham each week, I turn into an overly emotional and wholly irrational mess. I am incandescent with rage at every mistake, scream with joy at every goal and proudly sing adoring songs about individuals I never have and never will meet in real life.
Football is a world that exists alongside, but also distinctly apart from, the normal world within which we all operate during our day-to-day lives. What takes place over the course of a Saturday afternoon at the London Stadium, Villa Park or Old Trafford is all-consuming and intoxicating, but once the drama has had its curtain call, and we’ve all had our last pint of (lukewarm) post-match lager, the emotions and fervour should be left and held in place to be picked up on the next game day as we all get back to our conventional existence to tackle the real problems and challenges in our lives.
Most of all, serious issues from the real world should not be brought into our football grounds and weaponized amongst the competitive fervour of the game.
Yet unfortunately, such an action appears to be something that a small minority of football fans are intent on carrying out. An ugly phenomenon known as ‘tragedy chanting’ – whereby fans sing relentlessly offensive songs about tragic events that have happened to individuals associated with an opposing side – has reared its head once again within the game.
While such a pattern is nothing new, with chants about the Munich Air Disaster – in which a number of Manchester United players were sadly killed in 1958 – from supporters of the club’s various rivals dating back decades, the issue has particularly come to the forefront over the past season and a half due to a number of high-profile incidents at games and the anonymity social media has cloaked individuals with to make vile remarks.
A recent incident would be that which took place in November 2022, when chants relating to the Hillsborough disaster – where 97 Liverpool supporters were killed by a fatal crush in the stadium – were directed at Liverpool supporters after their game against Tottenham.
Such malevolence very easily translates to the online world as was seen just before Leeds’s game against Millwall last month when the prevalence of references to the fatal stabbing of Leeds fans before their game against Galatasary in 2000 was all too clear on social media platforms such as Twitter.
Until now, no incident has truly brought home the disgracefulness of tragedy chanting quite as much as the mocking of the death of six-year-old Sunderland fan Bradley Lowery to cancer in 2017 by two Sheffield Wednesday fans, during the Championship match between the sides on the 27th September.
To all lovers of what is – the vast majority of the time – the beautiful game, such an instance must serve as a severe wake-up call that this behaviour must be stamped out of our sport.
In essence, what I believe tragedy chanting to represent is a blurring of the lines, a crude crossover between the fantastical spectacle of football, and the real world, where hard-hitting issues that are not to be taken lightly really do exist. Furthermore, it stands as a sad reminder of the small minority of vitriolic individuals who are present in our game.
Therefore, as football supporters, I argue that we should work to ensure that the line between real life and the beautiful game remains clearly defined and guarantee that real-world issues are not forced into the sphere of sporting competitiveness in such a hurtful and unconstructive manner.
