News from the Underbelly

Past the beach of Dover and the English channel, a 94-year old Catholic man is on his deathbed in Glasgow, his possessions diminished only to one last wish. He asks for a Minister to be called minutes before his death bed, and has himself converted into a Protestant. Everyone in the neighbourhood and his family stand around the bed, thrown off by what he has done. The man drinks his last glass of water, sets down the cup and says, “If I die, lads, that’s one less bastard Proddy Rangers fan to worry about.” In the other side of Glasgow, near Ibrox Stadium, the limp body of a 41 year-old Muslim man named Abdul Rafiq is being dragged away on the streets handcuffed by the local police, as he screams, “When James and all his rebel scum/came up to Bishop's Gate/with heart and hand and sword and shield/we'll guard old Derry's walls.” The first episode of the podcast established a timeline of football club histories, and how a game of eleven men tossing around a ball intertwined itself with identity, politics and class-based rivalries. That these realities have often intermingled with the game remains a modern day truism. The Celtic-Rangers rivalry is only a lesser-known anecdote; almost all of our modern day football clubs have been created, experienced or have been born out of the struggle for purposes of identity. Being a fan of one club means being expected to hate at least one other. But isn’t it just a little bit arbitrary? Who told you that you have to hate United or City? Arsenal and not Spurs? Then again, who told you that you have to hate anyone at all? Why does supporting one football club even have to mean hating another? In other words, why do we as football fans choose our rivals? And more to the point – how?