MASARYK UNIVERSITY BRNO FACULTY OF EDUCATION Department of English Language and Literature The Milestones In British Football History: Players, People, Place . Diploma thesis Brno 2006 Supervisor: Written by: Andrew Oakland, M.A. Tomáš Niederhafner Declaration I hereby declare that I wrote this thesis myself and that all the outside sources of material have been cited. Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor, Andrew Oakland, for his support, patience and help. The thesis would have been unlikely to arise without his guidance and encouragement. TABLE OF CONTENTS 0. Introduction to all sections.............................................. 4 1. Players............................................................................. 5 1.1 Introduction.............................................................. 5 1.2 First payment........................................................... 6 1.3 Freedom of transfers............................................... 10 1.4 Loosing the English player..................................... 12 1.5 Football and the media............................................ 17 1.6 Conclusion.............................................................. 19 1.7 Cited sources used in section ‘Place’...................... 23 2. People.............................................................................. 26 2.1 Introduction.............................................................. 26 2.2 British football and racism....................................... 27 2.3 Hooliganism and the trio of tragedies...................... 40 2.4 The terrace culture.................................................. 47 2.5 Police and the crowd................................................ 49 2.6 Conclusion .............................................................. 51 2.7 Cited sources used in section ‘People’..................... 53 3. Place.............................................................................. 56 3.1 Introduction............................................................. 56 3.2 The Hillsborough Tragedy...................................... 56 3.3 The Taylor’s Final Report and its outcome............. 61 3.4 Conclusion............................................................... 65 3.5 Cited sources used in section ‘Place’...................... 66 4. Conclusion to all sections.........................................… 68 5. List of sources.............................................................. 70 6. Resumé......................................................................... 77 0. Introduction to all sections The text of this diploma thesis is divided into three sections, every section deals with one of the participants in the football game. First section focuses on the player and the introduction of professionalism. Further on the first section explores the top football and the close connection to sponsors and money in general. The involvement of money and its reflection on modern football will be studied. The second section is about the spectator. The section 2 tries to depict the hooligan phenomenon. Various opinions on the cause for the disorderly behaviour will be mentioned. Short biographies of first black players who helped to challenge racism to good effect are also included in the text. The campaigns against racism are listed in second chapter of section 2. Spectators’ racist manner of former decades is examined together with far right wing parties transmitting their propaganda by football fans. The section 3 describes the place playing passive but an important role in football event: the stadia. Mainly the safety is dealt with. Several football tragedies are stated to show examples of neglected safety levels in 1980s in Britain. The important change of the stadia to all seated in the top league is indicated as one of the milestones in reaching the appropriate level of safety at football grounds. The diploma theses will try to give an answer whether the standing terraces should disappear for good from the top football. The goal of the diploma thesis is to present all the important events in the history of the game on The British Isles and show their reflection. The diploma tries to be acquainted of the contemporary British football also, mainly via the Internet. I have chosen the football theme for my dissertation on the British football because I have been playing this game since my childhood and I saw the possibility to study the positive and the negative elements within the history of this game on the British Isles. The work is based on compilation of electronic sources and books. 4 1. Players 1.1 Introduction This part of the diploma text is focused on the actors of the game itself. Important dates of the football history will not be listed complete. This part rather focuses on the relationship between a player and his club. The view is the one of employee and employer. This section should present you with the beginning of professionalism until now. It is the matter of three last centuries. The constant development of professional football has changed the possibilities for both sides. Present football players are no more restricted in the way they used to be considering their contracts. The struggle for freedom of transfers is also dealt with in the text. The close link of top football to the media and advertising industry will be demonstrated. The revenues paid by the television channels are mentioned to be the crucial payments together with money paid for the sponsorship of the entire league, the clubs, or individual players. Consequently we will be looking at the image of modern football which has been changed during the last decades because of the great sums of money involved in the top leagues. We will discuss a picture of modern football player as an individual element on the football market co-operating with his agent. The common spectators and their relationship with the home clubs they have been supporting for years will not be forgotten ; we will demonstrate that the prices may exclude some social classes from full passive enjoyment of the sport. The conclusion tries to sum up all the important facts and declares the modern football to be a big entertainment industry with a inexorable fight for a paying consumer and its anticipated impact on the British football. 5 1.2 First payment 20 October 1863 FA came into being and soon after the FA Challenge Cup was found. Clubs belonging to FA and Scottish clubs were invited to join in. Most of the clubs which took part in the Cup recruited from industrial areas up North and Midland. Around the year 1877 crossbars, throw-ins, free-kicks, linesmen and referee could be seen in a match lasting 90 minutes. Football was transmitted by lower classes to Scotland from other regions and became popular north of the border thanks to Glasgow club Queen’s Park. In 1972 England played the first international match right against Scotland. The Scots produced a high quality football different from English point of view and in a sense revolutionary. Their contribution was the passing style. The match between Queen’s Park and Wanderers played in England attracted a lot of people, who were eager to acquaint with the short passing style. The tactic of English team was predominantly consisted of kicks and rushing through the middle of the field with a great help of dribbling. The Scottish footballers were very effective and prepared to eliminate the system favoured by most English players and clubs. The Scottish players were, understandably enough, highly wanted. Every good playing Scott was a great contribution for the team playing in England. The scouts were therefore travelling all over the country offering a skilful footballers a position in a team south the borders. The first football teams ‘seeking’ players this way, were mostly from rich region of Lancashire. Since the players were nearly all working men there had to be offered a compensation for losing the particular job in case of moving. They were enticed into going down south to play football and get another job with a little extra money. This amount of money was the very start of first payments, which, in fact, was just a compensation in the beginning. It should be pointed out that these players were still not professionals, because the league and the FA itself was an amateur organisation and the paying notion was absolutely the counterpart of the amateurs’ view of the sportsmanship as they highly valued the participation just for the fun of football and the exercise. However, the most wealthy teams in Lancashire started to pay this extra and illicit money to attract highly skilled players ( Encyclopædia 6 Britannica , 2006). Imported Scots, coming down south to play, were known as Scotch Professors. In 1870s in one of the finals of the FA Challenge Cup Darwen played against Old Etonians. Darwen had two Scots playing for them: Fergus Suter and James Love. They were among the first professionals playing south of their border. Illegal payments had been a public secret until the losers began to complaint. Accrington was the first club disqualified and fined. They had to pay a fee after beating Blackburn Park Road in season 1883/84. The thread of disqualification because of illegal payments brought some clubs to rather not win the match. Bolton Wanderers preferred to draw than to risk the possible protests from the opponents side. The protests were fixture of the clubs’ strategy these years. The Clubs were making formal complaints about the goals , the