AFC Norbiton and other various chants yesterday
Such amazing wit and humour from some of our fans on the left side of the terrace today, chanting AFC Norbiton what seemed like every 2 minutes. And I'm also reliably informed that these lads are SO fun at parties. I can definitely believe that given their top rate sense of humour. Unfortunately I have developed my mental faculties to a level beyond that of a 12 year old, so I recognise the inconsistency between singing anti-Franchise chants 2 weeks ago and then ridiculing Wimbledon for their situation yesterday.
Seriously though, lets be honest. These are the same lads who were chanting 'fvck the EFL' periodically throughout the match yesterday too. Don't they see how the AFC Norbiton chant undermines their credentials when it comes to supposedly being protesters against the EFL? Probably not. Unfortunately this all too common in the age of the internet and politicians like Trump (particularly amongst the simple minded folk), where mindless trolling is seen as being much cooler than having any principles about anything.
But it gets better. I had the misfortune of walking to the ground from the station behind a bunch of Wycombe fans, who can't have been any older than Year 11. Out came the 'when I was just a little boy' chant about kicking someone's head in. I have to say, it really just isn't that menacing when it's sung by scruffy, scrawny 16 year olds in knock off Stone Island gear. They're not exactly the Millwall Bushwackers. Judging by the physical stature of some of these lads, they would probably get turned over by Wycombe and Hazlemere Chess Club.
In reality, to anyone with more than two brain cells, all of these lads are just a bit cringe and embarrassing. Please stop it.
Comments
Didn't you hear though, it's all just banter, which gives them a free pass.
Yes, they were happy to **** the EFL, but when someone tried to start the 1 minutes applause on 27mins in unity with Bury none of them joined in.
They also didn't seem to see anything odd in asking if AFC were MK in disguise.
As for the constant abuse of Wally Downes for no reason other than being there, I cringed.
I'm pretty sure their parents would be ashamed to hear them swear constantly for 90 minutes, but it's what the yoof do.
@Twizz said "As for the constant abuse of Wally Downes for no reason other than being there, I cringed". Whilst not defending these fans, the abuse that Gareth gets from the AFC Wimbledon fans always astounds me. No matter where GA has been, he never gives anything less than all he has & is still revered by fans of former clubs, so why AFC fans choose to abuse the man, I doubt I will ever fathom.
If /when Gareth leaves our club, I will always applaud him for everything he has done for us as a player & manager.
PS: it will be a very polite but muted clap if he went to the north of the county.
This seems a somewhat prudish and overstated argument. Being stood on the left-side in the second half, I can report a good-natured and highly supportive environment.
There's not much to criticise about the "AFC Norbiton" chant unless you take strong objection to gentle belittlement of opponents at football matches. There's nothing inconsistent about consistently making fun of opposing teams. It's a football match, not a philosophy tutorial. It's not to my tastes, like the "we all hate Col U" chant that plenty here are comfortable with, but ho hum.
I didn't hear anybody anywhere in the ground clapping on 27 minutes and I was nowhere near the left side then.
I heard very little indeed directed towards Wally Downes and, as @EwanHoosaami says, far more from the AFC fans towards Gareth, containing far more meanness of spirit.
Young football supporters let themselves down a bit by singing stupid songs on way to football match? Excuse me if I hold the front page until I hear it was crowds of hundreds, barging pensioners off the pavement as they did so. Desirable? Not at all. Emblematic of a serious problem among our fan base, even the young one? Not at all.
If my parents knew half of what I'd got up to since I left home, they would be shocked beyond measure. I'm a work in progress, like these kids.
Part of the problem is it's definitely not just kids partaking.
They can sing AFC Norbiton if they wish. But you can't sing that puerile nonsense while pretending to be some brave freedom fighters championing the cause of lower league football clubs at the same time.
I don't share your nonchalant attitude on this I'm afraid. I am seriously embarrassed when I hear a group of our fans chanting about kicking heads in. Especially as 75% of them look like they couldn't fight their way out of a paper bag. But even if they could, is this the sort of behaviour we should accept and tolerate from the supporters of our club? A supposedly family friendly club? Walking to the ground yesterday I couldn't help but feel that we must appear like a laughing stock to other teams. Not intimidating, not cool, not funny. Just embarrassing and pathetic.
@HCBlue, if you didn't hear the constant appeals for Wally Downes to F*** O** from the 2 or 3 fans just behind me that was to your advantage.
I've nothing against finding the opposition's soft spots and applying some witty chants to exploit them but to simply repeat every couple of minutes "F*** O** you C***" doesn't take much of an IQ nor does it make me proud of them supporting WWFC.
If you don't mind that, so be it.
Nice accurate reference to Wycombe and Hazlemere Chess Club - the name reflecting an historic merger between two clubs. By coincidence club nights resume tomorrow evening - all welcome.
If their physical prowess is of no consequence to the criticism you mean to make, why make reference to it twice, @2au7pusb, except to diminish the people you decry? And who are these would-be brave freedom fighters you suggest populate our fan base? Do you seriously think these (largely) callow youths have a carefully-considered position on the constitution of football that they mean to thoughtfully express from the terraces through Wildean satire?
I don't care for that sort of thing at all, @twizz. Not at all and I don't remotely understand it, just as I fail to understand why you would sing rudely on the high street in the terms @2au7pusb describes. It is coarse and unfitting for anyone wishing to think themselves as worthy of respect. I imagine you might be consoled to know this sort of behaviour is not confined to our supporter base and, thus, that we are unlikely to be a laughing stock on account of it, though I share your wish that it should not take place at all. What I meant by my original post was to counter the implication that the Wycombe terrace yesterday, or the left side of it, was a hotbed of festering hatred and crudeness. It was largely not, with the behaviour properly decried here being considerably outweighed by positive and vocal support. One learns, does one not, as a football supporter to acknowledge that not everyone who goes along to watch your team has quite the same level of decorum and keen intelligence as oneself and to make the necessary allowances. It's a trade-off I'm willing to make so long as the good moments outweigh the bad.
If you are on Twitter, you would have no doubt seen the pile-on on the Chairboys Central account yesterday from certain sections of our support. There was no reasonable discussion about the issue at hand whatsoever, just low level ridicule - 'I bet hes fun at parties', 'you are boring' etc...
You can make an intelligent point against the behaviour of these people, but they are completely incapable of engaging on that level, so they won't listen to you. The only language it seems that they understand is ridicule. And lets be honest, if there is any fragment of our support that provides so much ammunition for ridicule, it's this lot that have clearly watched Green Street too many times.
The question is about what kind of culture we want to cultivate amongst our support. I have watched much football around the world, and there are teams who manage to create a very good atmosphere while avoiding the lowest common denominator kind of behaviour. Unfortunately there are few examples of this in England, but does this mean we should tolerate things that are quite obviously wrong?
@2au7pusb I binned the tweet in the end, it's just not worth the aggro. Social media should be a force for good but too often isn't - just like it should facilitate intelligent, if sometimes heated, debate but rarely seems to.
If you described me and my faculties the way you described these people in your posts, I'd be unlikely to engage with you either.
Start with the proposition that it would be good to discuss how it might be possible to improve the general tenor of discourse and rival fan interaction and I'm right with you. Start with comments about the intellectual and moral deficiencies of the people saying the things you don't like and I'm not, rather like @chairboyscentral found yesterday I suspect from my pretty reasonable (and very unsweary) son's somewhat dismissive reactions to their posts on the way home y'day - they seem to have deleted the discussion now so I cannot make my own judgement.
I think if you chant certain things - especially if you're old enough to know better - people are within their rights to make certain judgements about your character.
@2au7pusb
To even remotely suggest that the behaviour you find "appalling/unappealing/distasteful", (select whichever or add), can be stamped out by any full time FC, quite frankly is about as likely as me winning the lottery & I don't buy a ticket. To be quite frank, like it or not, youth are the future of our club, painful as it may be to us old dinosaurs. With youth comes immaturity, (it's as sure as the sun rising the next day), trust me & @HCblue on this, as we deal with youth a lot. Unpalatable though some of their behaviour is, as long as it is a very small minority and is very diluted, which it clearly was, it is something that I at least am prepared to tolerate or at least move on to another area of the ground when I can't.
Ah - it's you!
Looking at the tweets that are there, you seem a fair-minded fellow and I sympathise with your frustrations about your experience. I agree that Twitter could be a place where reasonable exchanges take place fruitfully but, in many arenas other than football talk, it just often isn't. Perhaps the reasons for that and for people's willingness to chant and shout horrible things at football matches are related - the fact that one is relatively anonymous in both places and separated from those to whom one is speaking, out of sight online, means that one feels emboldened to say things or speak in a way one would not dream of doing were one face to face with the person. It is a weakness of human nature, is it not? Not necessarily one that cannot be challenged, mind.
Judge away and see how much the people you are judging care about what you think and are minded to rethink their behaviour because of it!
@HCblue I think it's probably pretty futile, but what's the harm in trying to help make society a little bit better? That applies to everything, football or otherwise.
Chairboys Central did not describe these people in such a way, and yet he was still met with the response which I outlined. He made a reasonable point about why it's wrong to chant AFC Norbiton, followed by a tweet criticising the 'Ainsworth I'd let you sh@g my wife' song'. (a song which I'm ambivalent about, but I still think he raised a reasonable point nonetheless and yet was ridiculed of instead being dealt with on a serious level)
Do you genuinely think if I spoke with niceties and handled it with kid gloves that it would have a more positive effect than the approach I'm taking now? To be honest, I'm pessimistic about the chances of changing things either way. But I think it's high time that more reasonable Wycombe fans started to condemn and distance ourselves from the kinds of people who are singing these songs in our name...
Absolutely try, @th100. That's how things change and you should keep trying if you feel change is necessary. I would enjoy matches more if people were more positively focused (which is why I don't especially dislike the "wife" chant, btw, since it's cheerful and upbeat - it's not meant to be taken literally!).
I guess the conversation I've started with my dissent to the original post here is about the way in which one seeks to change and the need to recognise that one is dealing with fellow humans, even if they don't seem it to one by their actions at times, and they are thus not likely to respond positively to being denigrated.
I suspect the perpetrators include those who call Bayo a fat c***. It's a real shame.
I have no meaningful objection to either song that you name. Am I unreasonable?
I am not aware that you've made any practical attempt to have a material effect on the matters you describe unless I've missed something but it's unlikely that, if you did, you would do worse by expressing your views as positively as possible.
I had replied to this but for some reason it disappeared. I am in my young 20s, a similar age to Chairboys Central, even though I don't know him personally. Whereas I have seen people much older than me singing the kind of chants which I have criticised. I'm not so sure that this is an issue of young vs old...
This paragraph from this New Statesman piece feels quite relevant:
"Cricket, rugby, athletics, tennis and many other sports are flexible enough to embrace inclusivity. But as the world changes around it, football is suspended in a hormonal state similar to that of a fifteen year old boy: sexually inappropriate, confused, unable to drink in public without vomiting on someone’s shoes and dismissing offensive language and ideas as just “banter.”"
I have already said that I don't have an opinion one way or the other on the Ainsworth chant, so no, I don't think that you're unreasonable on the front. I could also understand why that chant might make some uncomfortable though.
I feel strongly that the AFC Norbiton chant is wrong considering recent history. It is a retort frequently used by Milton Keynes fans and for those reasons, it doesn't sit right with me to use it.
Bluntly, @th100, those other sports are watched by different, much more reasonable, people. It's nothing to do with flexibility or, heaven help us, being open to inclusivity.
Whereas I don't feel the need to read that much into it. It didn't make me laugh like "Is this the Emirates?" did at WHL but I see no harm in it. Some jokes are funny to me, some are not.
@HCblue I think most other sports - although perhaps not all - are much more inclusive than football. Football still has huge problems with racism, homophobia and the like, and if it can't combat that then it's not going to combat anything lower level. Appreciate I'm maybe going a bit off topic here!
I agree it's an interesting social phenomenon that there is such a different form of expression in the different sports. It seems to me that football is taking steps to address the racism etc. you mention and I expect that will eventually have a significant effect - in fact, it already has. It just takes time.
I think we've got a hell of a long way to go - just look at the racist abuse Tammy Abraham and Kurt Zouma have received lately, for example. Unfortunately, like with so many things, I imagine it comes down partly to insufficient funding for the bodies (such as Kick It Out) who do so much good work in fighting that fight. Of course, it's also a serious societal problem, nor restricted to football.
If you were my age, you'd appreciate how far things have moved on!