The-Football-Pink-Issue-Digital.Pdf
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
See, O Readers, the statutes and judgments which I write for thine eyes this day, that ye may learn them, and keep, and do them. The Lord our God hath made a covenant with us The Lord made not this covenant with our fathers, but with us, even us, who are all of us here alive this day. Stand thou here by me, and I will speak unto thee all the commandments, and the statutes, and the judgments, which thou shalt keep unto thee, and that thou may do them in the land which He gave thee to possess it. For this is the word, and the word is good. 3. I AM THE LORD THY GOD. THOU SHALT HAVE NO 22. A GAME OF TWO HALVES OTHER GODS BEFORE ME 26. THOU SHALT NOT KILL 7. THOU SHALT NOT MAKE UNTO THEE ANY GRAVEN IMAGE 29. THOU SHALT NOT COMMIT ADULTERY 11. THOU SHALT NOT TAKE THE NAME OF THE LORD 33. THOU SHALT NOT STEAL THY GOD IN VAIN 37. THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS AGAINST 14. REMEMBER THE SABBATH DAY, TO KEEP IT HOLY THY NEIGHBOUR 18. HONOUR THY FATHER AND THY MOTHER 41. THOU SHALT NOT COVET Visit our website http://footballpink.net MARK GODFREY – EDITOR Contact us on Twitter: @TheFootballPink Magazine design by Andy Sanders - [email protected] OR By email: [email protected] Cover artwork by Kevin McGivern You can now purchase a digital subscription of The Football Illustrations: Michael Atkinson, Spudgun, Oxbox74, Pink for your laptop iPhone or iPad (excluding print copies) by Kevin McGivern, Graeme Bandeira, Steph Bourne visiting www.exacteditions.com/thefootballpink COPYRIGHT. All rights reserved. This magazine or any part Writers: Mark Godfrey, Ian Cusack, Steve Kay, Alex Leonard, thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner what- Andrew Boulton, All Blue Daze, Chris Smith, Chris Clark, soever without the express written permission of the publisher Gerard Farrell, Alex Stewart, Gad Salner. except for the use of brief quotations in a review. First published 2015 02 I: I AM THE LORD GERRY FARRELL EXAMINES HOW TRADITIONAL RELIGION SHAPED FOOTBALL’S DEVELOPMENT THY GOD. THOU AND WHETHER IT’S PLACE IN SOCIETY IS BEING USURPED BY IT, AS MORE AND MORE PEOPLE SHALT HAVE NO CHOOSE TO WORSHIP THE SPORTING IDOLS OTHER GODS OF CONCRETE BOWL CATHEDRALS INSTEAD. BEFORE ME he Spanish Conquistadors brought much to South “Manifest Destiny” or the earlier notions of the “virtuous” Crusaders and Central America; a lust for conquest, cannon and of the 11th , 12th and 13th centuries, a “born to rule” mentality. The Spanish steel, deadly European diseases and, indeed, author James George Cotton Minchin when writing on the influence Christianity. But there were things that they found in of the British public school system was moved to speak of “the New Spain that were new to these violent colonisers as Englishman going through the world with rifle in one hand and Bible well. Just picture the scene; a scorching hot day in the in the other” and added, “If asked what our muscular Christianity glorious Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán, surrounded on all has done, we point to the British Empire.” George Orwell, himself sides by lakes and swamps, it is the site of the modern a former Eton schoolboy, was highly critical of what he saw as the metropolis of Mexico City. In a formal cordoned off rectangular space recent and cultish growth in sport, he wrote the following after the beneathT tiers of grey stone steps populated by the masses of the tour by Dynamo Moscow to Britain in 1945 on the topic of “serious city, ordered by social rank, a group of men compete fiercely in a sport” and football in particular: “It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, ball game. The two teams face off, the purpose of the game is to get boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witness- the hard, heavy, solid rubber ball through a circular hoop or goal at ing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting.” Perhaps either end of the field. The players can’t handle the ball but propel it closer to the brutal games of Mesoamerica with their emphasis on with amazing skill with their hips, knees and buttocks. This is sport sport as a proxy war than we might like to admit? but not as we know it today, instead it is part ritual, part religious rite. If the role of team sports like football had a part to play in the Andreas Campomar in his encyclopaedic study, Golazo! on the creation and spread of the British Empire and militarism, and the history of football in Latin America emphasises the sheer importance idea that this had a certain divine authority, then religious organ- of these sort of ball games not just to the Aztecs but to the Mayans isations were also keen to use football to promote the causes of and other pre-Colombian civilisations. For example, thousands of their churches and the social causes that they supported. The more rubber game balls were paid as tribute to kings, the myths of great appealing side to the notion of “muscular Christianity” would be that societies featured stories of ferocious ball games played against these muscular Christians had a duty to protect the weaker and gods and monsters, and most frighteningly of all there was a very more downtrodden in society. real connection between these ball games and forms of religious human sacrifice. There are stories of losing sides in games being beheaded in ritual sacrifice in the civilisations of Veracruz. Stories of racks of human skulls being kept pitch-side displaying the chilling fate of previous competitors, and artworks showing fountains of arterial blood bursting forth from the neck of recently decapitated players. The Christian Spaniards saw these ancient ballgames as forms of witchcraft but the Mesoamerican people viewed them with much greater awe and significance, in many cases the ball itself seems to have had an almost spiritual quality, this circular orb flying through the air in games providing a metaphor for the orbit of the sun and the stars. Another view was that their ballgames were a form of proxy war, literally competitions of life or death or of communing with the divine. While the ancient games of the Mayans were part of religious During the age of industrial upheaval towards the end of the ritual, those who codified the game of football, the British Victorians, 19th century and into the 20th century many saw sport as a way also viewed their sport as having a religious element. Sports were to support the working classes who faced terrible living conditions, part and parcel of the ethos of “muscular Christianity” that found poor sanitation and were excluded from many areas of society. As favour in the public school system of 19th century Britain. Health Peter Lupson notes in his book Thank God for Football many of the and wellbeing, exemplified by the gentlemanly virtues of team sports most historic clubs that make up the top divisions in England today were seen as an absolute “moral good”, taking inspiration directly were founded as part of church groups, whether it was Aston Villa, from the Bible, for example the passage in Corinthians which noted: Tottenham Hotspur, Bolton Wanderers or Everton, whose Goodison 19. What know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Park stadium has a church nestled in one corner between its famous Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your Gwladys Street End and Goodison Road stand. Manchester City own? were formed out of St. Mark’s West Gorton FC, founded by the 20. For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your public school educated clergyman Arthur Connell and his prose- body, and in your spirit, which are God’s. lytising daughter Anna. Concerned about the violence and alcohol While the conquering Spaniards saw the ballgames and abuse that were rampant in the West Gorton area of Manchester, St. customs of Latin American as one of many vices to be expunged Mark’s was established as a way to get the men of the area to focus by colonialization and the introduction of Christianity, the Victorians their energies elsewhere, first in cricket and then later in football. viewed the role of sport in muscular Christianity as a great virtue and There were many such links with church groups and sports clubs to some measure as part and parcel in the manufacture of robust and often with a specific connection to the temperance movement of soldiers and sailors for the British military and hence the creation of the late 19th and early 20th century. the British Empire. The competitive nature of team sport, its focus on From the ancient ballgames of Central America and their reli- defence and attack in unison, and its obvious role in physical devel- gious, ritualistic significance, to the Victorian use of football and oth- opment helped form a generation of officers for the British military. To er team sports to create a notion of the muscular Christian (whether take the most critical viewpoint of this movement would be to say it as soldier and imperialist or as social and sporting evangelists for formed a part of an outlook not dissimilar to the American concept of the disadvantaged in society) we can see how religion and sports 04 were crucially interlinked, however, the point would come when foot- afoul of draconian censorship laws (such as Brendan Behan, Liam ball would move beyond religious links.