Yo Chuck, they must be on the pipe, right
By Right Hand Post
Issue 72, Spring 2006
Well, we beat them. We knocked Man United out of the FA Cup.
I don’t know if that had any bearing on the campaign of disinformation that unfolded in the days and then unbelievably weeks afterwards but as our own Chief Executive was finally coerced into pointing out, a certain amount of gloss was taken off the achievement by the stories that emerged in the aftermath of the game.
I tend to read the papers (or check their websites) far more than usual after an important win. I don’t like the national press and I’m proud to say so but I’m ever keen to bask in the glory of a hard won encounter against one of our biggest rivals so I make an exception on these occasions. The way I saw it, Liverpool fairly comprehensively outplayed a once again toothless Man U and deserved their win. Off the pitch the atmosphere was electric, especially given that it was a lunchtime kick off. Away from the ground, to my surprise, the atmosphere was fairly muted, attributable to the early start and a heavy police presence perhaps. All good, then.
In the parallel universe containing Planet Fleet Street however the ninety minutes were a mere irrelevance compared to the conduct of those purporting to represent Liverpool FC. There may as well have been no winners – for certain the beautiful game was the only loser. The malevolent intentions of the Liverpool fans were evident even before the match took place. The tone was set when notorious fanzine editor Steven Kelly used his public platform to urge some form of physical attack upon a certain Gary Neville in the strongest possible terms. Taking the actual ninety minutes into account Liverpool won and all that but the result paled into insignificance compared to the cruel treatment of Alan Smith who was taunted by rancorous supporters as he lay suffering from an horrific injury – the worst Alex Ferguson had ever seen as reporters were in pains (!) to point out. Though it wasn’t, Busst’s was surely?
The Liverpool crowd, instantly appreciative as to the gravity of the situation, gleefully taunted him in the cruellest manner before affecting to atone for their appalling behaviour by clapping him off the pitch. The taunts were not the only questionable sentiments emanating from those same supporters during the game. Liverpool fans are notorious in media circles for indulging in disreputable chanting particularly at the expense of their hated rivals United. It is, in fact, a notable and much documented feature of every game between the two clubs. On this occasion all kinds of further outrages were being carried out by the Liverpool fans, debauched inhumanities that were duly noted and commented on by reporters as the post match coverage evolved although curiously they were unrecorded by the “all seeing eye” of CCTV.
Worst of all after the final whistle, which saw England’s biggest and second most successful club knocked out of England’s premier competition by their local rivals (who have somehow conspired to win far more trophies than them), poor Smith’s ambulance was subjected to an horrific attack which shook all concerned to the core with it’s unprecedented savagery, although by the grace of God alone the vehicle’s progress was not impaired and miraculously suffered no actual damage. Fortunately Smith himself was unaware of the pandemonium perhaps because he was under medication, a bizarre side effect of which was his impression that he had been treated fairly well in the main by the opposing club and its supporters.
To cap it all Liverpool’s full back racially abused his Manchester United counterpart Patrice Evra. Actually the recipient was at pains to stress afterwards that he never heard any such slur, although he is a newcomer to these shores and is therefore presumably ignorant of the intricacies and grey areas of such vilification in England. Racial abuse of this sort is so ambiguous, isn’t it? Nevertheless as chance would have it two blind (deaf, shurely? –ed) United fans were able to discern exactly what it was Evra missed, although their interpretations were curiously different. Despite this, they were considered plausible enough to denigrate the name of the player concerned.
So there you have it. A damning indictment of the conduct of Liverpool’s supporters and even players, who win or lose are seemingly intent on dragging what is still England’s premier sporting fixture into the gutter. At least, that’s the angle habitually favoured by the Gentlemen of the Press. Eventually the dust settled, as it always does, and the disparity between what was reported in the immediate aftermath of the event and what had actually happened gradually started to emerge, as it always will
Predictably the press coverage was debated at length of the TTWAR forum, with the ambulance story dominating. One poster (Rushian) pointed out that the full statement stressed that the ambulance wasn’t rocked, no overturning attempt was made and that it was hit by one bottle. Rushian’s a regular poster on the site who has strong links with the club and is also accepted as the least likely amongst us to get carried away in the heat of a debate. In short he can be relied upon. I tried to find that actual statement a few days later and for all that I found many, many tales of “extraordinary sieges” and “yob onslaughts” a transcript of even part of it only turned up in one paper, The Liverpool Echo, and for what it’s worth I Googled almost every permutation of “Ambulance”, “Service”, “Merseyside”, “NHS”, “Trust” and “Statement” I could think of to be absolutely sure of finding it.
One bottle. Now, whoever threw it was out of order and should be condemned as such. I went past the King Harry later and heard a lad banged the back of the ambulance as it was passing – it wasn’t stationary – which again is regrettable especially given that these fellers probably weren't bits of kids and would usually condemn any attack on an emergency vehicle or paramedics doing their job in any other circumstances. I also read a theory on the site that they may not have known Smith was inside, but I don’t subscribe to that. I’m convinced that the motivating factor of the little that actually happened was exactly that assumption.
I'll say it again, they're dickheads, but I’ll also say again that the Ambulance Service statement also stressed that the vehicle wasn't delayed and wasn't damaged. Yet the incident for what it was – over almost even before it had even begun – has become embellished to the extent where now it's routinely described as an onslaught. Once again the accepted media story deviates from the facts as it always does with us.
What is an onslaught is what Liverpool fans are subjected to at Old Trafford. Most of you reading this have been in the Liverpool end at OT and had all kinds raining down on you, mostly in the standing era but also following that. Piss? Definitely. Faeces? Well, you always heard stories although it was the usual combination of hearsay, whispers and urban myth. Football fandom’s full of legend and adornment, scan through any example of the “We ran them they never took us” Hoolie Lit genre for confirmation of that. Nothing that has happened at Old Trafford of that nature ever made it to the national press in any case. Yet there would have been a lot of fans in the Upper Anny who were veterans of standing in front of the K Stand, put it that way.
Also Liverpool fans have been attacked outside OT in a cowardly fashion for years, pretty much aided, frankly, by a disinterested police force (at least until it's reciprocated and they feel compelled to “restore order”). That's after we have to sit through the Hillsborough chants which have gradually increased in number and volume, certainly constituting a significant part of the Man U songbook at Anfield the other day (for all that you could actually hear them, they were surprisingly quiet). Not as bad as us pre-Heysel of course, but arguably worse now than we were between ‘85 and ‘89. And ask Wenger what he thinks about United fans’ chants about him. The press reaction year in year out? Nothing.
Yet when they get a bit back in the ground the other week and on Scotland Road after last year’s Everton game it's news.
Gary Fucking Neville, centre of the controversy as ever (I don’t think he contributes much more to the game in general, to be honest) was back at Anfield a few days later. Once again the build-up to an England game was blighted by concerns of how Liverpool fans would spoil the occasion by refusing to let club rivalries aside and would destabilise our boys (The Fear Is… Concerns Are… etc, etc) by vilifying a Man U player. A scandal clearly! Yet where was the concern before the Poland qualifier at Old Trafford, a much more important one for the national team, when it became obvious that Crouch really would suffer the “outrage” that is habitually predicted but never quite realised at our place?
Nowhere to be seen, either because it's one of ours and they're simply not interested or for whatever reason unprepared to raise a concern (ask John Barnes, who in an unguarded moment which I’d pay to see could wax lyrical on the subject) or because even by their standards it would be extremely hypocritical to draw too much attention to the problem when they're fuelling the fire by taking the piss out of the player anyway. Again, ask John Barnes. Or Emile Heskey. Or any of the other national scapegoats who have worn the red and the white.
Either way that is typical of the coverage we habitually suffer. This is what rankles and gets under the skin. We all know the nadir of the press agenda regarding Liverpool and nothing highlighted in this piece comes anywhere near but I essentially ruined any chance of a decent grade in my Politics A Level years ago by turning an essay question about the s*n's influence on the '92 election into a tirade about Murdoch, Kelvin McKenzie and Bernard Ingram. Irrelevant as it was in terms of the question being asked I felt the anger keenly then and I was compelled to write what I did. I still feel frustration about the bias in our coverage now. It has evolved and become more subtle (the press as a whole have by necessity become even more insidious since the Thatcher era, hard as it is to believe sometimes) but it is always there, ever evolving, always detracting, also unique to us.
Now the TTWAR forum is guiltier than most of picking apart every article in search of a perceived Liverpool or Scousers slight and in varying degrees most of us have betrayed a bit of a fixation about this. Not every article that mentions us is automatically insulting and we are also as a club and a support occasionally worthy of criticism. Also, writers can sometimes blithely scorn us without even being aware they’re doing it. Football generates a lot of column inches – it happens. Yet the reasons for our habitual tetchiness are substantial enough and have been given credence once again by the post Man U coverage. I’ve never known an important victory in a game by any other team be overshadowed by such a concoction of half-truths and ham self-righteousness.
Most galling of all is the coverage of the actual rivalry between us and the Mancs. The censorious tone is only ever reserved for us, which has always angered and bewildered me. Daniel Taylor's crack about the lynching in a paper I once believed (years ago, admittedly) was an antidote to crass sensationalism wasn’t that significant in the general scheme of things but once again where's the outrage for the misdemeanours on the other side?
I’ve been a contributor to the forum for a few years since the days when it was jokingly referred to as the decorum forum. Things have changed of late yet however close to the wind TTWAR occasionally sails we’re still an almost quaintly benign old bunch compared to the competition. Contrast our site with Red Issue. A quick perusal on there and you feel like you need a nice bath afterwards. It's incessantly repugnant. Immediately after the cup game there was a link to Google images of Hillsborough. If the likes of Daniel Taylor are prepared to trawl forums looking for off colour remarks to highlight the enmity between them and us surely that is worthy of being put in the spotlight and then some?
The Calm Down Calm Down headline in the Mail on the day of the England/Uruguay game. Shitgate (incredibly making it into print purely on the anecdotal evidence of Man U’s lot – and if they’re unique for anything it’s for being the most deluded and self-deceiving gang of spoofers ever to darken the doors of a football ground). The ridiculous Finnan controversy: drops in the ocean but it's getting to be one vast fucking ocean.
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