Football, fathers and masculinity

[Nefertiti2]

My Stepfather Became My Dad the Day He Took Me to My First Football Match

Nice piece by Tom Williams on football and fathers

My Dad didn't like football. But going with my son has been very important.

[Patrick Thistle]

Episode 17 of Welcome to Wrexham covers this. Bromance, fathers, men needing to love and be loved. I was surprised what a good episode it was.

Made me think of my dad. Got me a bit.

[Satchmo Distel]

Mothers should not be left out. Mine took me and my sister to our first Barnsley games.

[Nocturnal Submission]

Mothers should not be left out. Mine took me and my sister to our first Barnsley games.

Absolutely. My mum was the big football fan in my immediate family and it was actually my sister who took me to my first game at Stamford Bridge, though that was mainly a treat for her kid brother than any love for the game.

It's an interesting subject though. As someone not overly-inclined to show physical affection to other men, I'm always rather shocked to find myself bear-hugging the complete stranger in the next seat after Chelsea score a goal, or save a penalty, as has happened on many an occasion.

[Nesta]

My Mum has always had more of an interest than my Dad in football, but it was my Dad who took me to games as a kid. My mum's an unapologetic armchair fan, although as a youngster she did go with my uncle to St Andrews a couple of times and once to Molineux (my uncle is 8 years older than my mum, bet he loved bringing his little sister along)

[ad hoc]

My mum was the football fan in my family too, and as a girl/teenager was a regular at Hillsborough with my granddad. But it was my dad who took me to my first game there. I have been to a couple of Wednesday away games at the Abbey in Cambridge with my mum, but never to Hillsborough together.

[Giggler]

The dedication to my first book was To my dad Graham, who first took me to Gigg Lane in 1988, and my mum Bridget, who's had to put up with twice the silliness ever since.

Saturday nights from 1988 until about 1995 can be defined by me and dad getting home at about 6pm, mum poking her head around the kitchen door and asking "Was it a good game?" and my dad going upstairs to invariably sulk. Tea was eaten in silence half an hour later in front of Big Break/The Generation Game then whatever the Noel Edmonds vehicle of the time was, before dad spent the rest of the night sulking and me and mum watched Casualty.

[Nocturnal Submission]

My mum was the football fan in my family too, and as a girl/teenager was a regular at Hillsborough with my granddad. But it was my dad who took me to my first game there. I have been to a couple of Wednesday away games at the Abbey in Cambridge with my mum, but never to Hillsborough together.

As I know I've written on OTF before, the first game I went to with my mum was the 1988 Alan Cork Testimonial at Plough Lane when virtually the entire Wimbledon team mooned the crowd from the halfway line at the start of the second half. I think she rather enjoyed the spectacle.

[Nocturnal Submission]

The dedication to my first book was To my dad Graham, who first took me to Gigg Lane in 1988, and my mum Bridget, who's had to put up with twice the silliness ever since.

Saturday nights from 1988 until about 1995 can be defined by me and dad getting home at about 6pm, mum poking her head around the kitchen door and asking "Was it a good game?" and my dad going upstairs to invariably sulk. Tea was eaten in silence half an hour later in front of Big Break/The Generation Game then whatever the Noel Edmonds vehicle of the time was, before dad spent the rest of the night sulking and me and mum watched Casualty.

I'm getting a strong Barnstoneworth United vibe here.

[Giggler]

I'm getting a strong Barnstoneworth United vibe here.

Barring radiograms being thrown through the window, you're not far wrong. My uncle hurled his season ticket out of the car window one Saturday night as we sped along a dual carriageway.

[steveeeeeeeee]

My dad took me to lots of Liverpool games before he got Ill ,when I was about 9. I just didn't appreciate it enough, I also hated it when he pushed me under turnstiles, rather than pay, but hey ho, different times.

I do get sad/envious when I see grown men with their fathers at games. How lovely that must be, to sit and talk as adults at a game, United by a love for a sport and team.

[Artificial Hipster]

My dad had long since stopped going to Maine Road by the time I was born so I got into matchgoing fairly late. I'd like to think though that the boy will one day look back fondly on his visits to West as well as the many other grounds we've visited together, even if I'm never going to grant him his current wish for a season ticket to the Etihad (we really must get to a Norwich game again soon!).

Lovely article Nefertiti2 thanks for sharing.

[slackster]

Unless you count an occasional trip over the local Dog Track (usually Walthamstow), my Dad - nor Mum -wasn’t interested in attending spectator sports much, so I missed out on those potential bonding sessions. Neither did either of my parents ever take me or come to watch me play football or any other sports for school/youth teams - but in those days that wasn’t that unusual.

My Dad’s brother half-heartedly tried to get me hooked on Spurs - there’s a photo of me as a 10yo in a white football shirt with a cockerel badge sewn on it - but failed.

So I had to find my own path, which after initial unaccompanied walking-distance visits with schoolmates to non-league Ilford during the early 70s dog days at Lynn Road and being forbidden from going to my preference of Upton Park as a young teenager cos of big crowds and hooliganism, ended up taking the Tube over Brisbane Road because there’d be less chance of trouble there. Ironically, my first Orient match was v Man U in their Div 2 season, where it was kicking off big time both inside and out of the ground and you had to keep your wits about you to avoid a slap, but they suckered me in for a lifetime of (mostly) lower league disappointment on the pitch.

[Patrick Thistle]

Unless there is some kind of estrangement, I don't think there's ever much question that boys have affection shown from their mum. But a lot of people don't have affection shown to them by their dad.

I was lucky that my dad would show affection and would tell me he loved me. But I know other people who have never heard their dad saying something like that to them.

Sport sometimes offers an opportunity for closeness for many men who don't usually express emotion, even if they feel it.

(And before we get into a discussion about how this doesn't represent our lived experience or attitudes, let's remember we are a self-selecting rather odd bunch on here.)

[Amor de Cosmos]

Our warm hearted intra-family rivalry — Mum (Burnley) Dad (Sheffield United) is a fond and lasting memory. I went with Dad several times to Bramall Lane on family visits, and to Watford, Luton and elsewhere when the Blades were visiting and it was driveable from Stevenage. He wasn't a demonstrative fan, normally confining himself to tuts and groans when things went wrong, and satisfactory puffs on his pipe when they went well. But it was just me and him. Together. It didn't happen often, but it was so important.

Hitchin were my choice of team when I was old enough to travel on my own, and had the price of admission. My Dad never came with me, but my Mum did a few times. She was surprisingly quiet, not at all like her.

[My Name Is Ian]

I talked to my dad properly about football a couple of weeks ago, and I don't do that often. He started supported Spurs in 1946 and only stopped going every week when his job required him to work Saturday mornings outside of London. Getting back to Tottenham for a 3pm kick-off was a bit too much of a stretch. Getting back to Enfield wasn't. I should interview him and record him really.. The man's a walking time capsule.

It's been our common language for more than forty years, though. Every conversation we have on the phone is 70% how Spurs are doing at the moment. Now I don't often work Saturdays, I should get up there and take him to a game. We haven't done that in five or six years.

Increasingly, I think about how the stages of my development were marked by relationship to him and football. In the first place, he took me to a bunch of games at Spurs of which I have practically no recollection. In the second, we went to Enfield and I stood next to him. Then we went together and I went and stood behind the goal. Then I went on my own.

I think about the little details a lot. One FA Cup game against Wimbledon it was bitterly cold and he got us tickets in the stand with a Thermos of Bovril. It was so cold that people were keeping their hands in their pockets and stamping their feet on the wooden floorboards to show their approval. I'd never heard a noise like it before, and I'm not sure I have since. They won 4-1. I think about him trying to teach me to keep goal in the style of Ted Ditchburn, about the race to get back to the car in time for the Sports Report music.

And nowadays I waste far too much energy thinking about my own kids and their lack of relationship with it. They're 7 & 5, and have still shown little to no interest in the game, though they're both a little on the young side for it to really glue. I'd have liked to have shared this World Cup with them. Those are the things that form memories worth keeping in the mind. But I don't really think that's tenable, this time around.

["Hold on, buddy!"]

My own dad was never especially that bothered about football. He grew up in literal spitting distance of Oakwell and his own father took him to a few matches, but for some reason, freezing cold 1950s era football of an evening failed to take with him - whereas trips with his mother to the cinema to see mainly westerns did take, and started on the path of him being a lifelong devotee of films, theatre and classical music.

I never had any interest at all in football until Italia 90, and afterwards dad would keep up enough of an awareness as to be able to hold a conversation about it. Towards his final years, he also enjoyed going to a few matches - one that sticks in the memory is of Barnsley smacking around Alan Stubbs's brief, useless version of Rotherham 4-0, and the absolute joys of trying to escpae the top car park at Oakwell. I also remember the first game I watched in full on the telly was the 1990 cup final at my grandma's (my dad's mum).

My eldest has just been through to inform me that "The Qatar World Cup starts today", although I think that his interest in it mainly stems from the fact that it feeds into his love of geography, statistics, and being able to fill his wallchart in, although it's in marked contrast to his reaction to the previous World Cup - "Not football again!"
With the exception of one, his main group of friends show no particular interest in the game, and given the amount of time and money it hoovers up, and in spite of the sheer joy the game's given me over the years, I have to admit I'm glad.

[DCI Harry Batt]

What is "masculinity"?

[ad hoc]

He grew up in literal spitting distance of Oakwell

Obviously I have no idea where he grew up but is this really true? People can't spit very far at all really. Single digits in terms of metres. A stone's throw, I could easily buy. But literal spitting distance?

[Sean of the Shed]

There are houses directly opposite the ground on Grove Street. I reckon with a particularly craggy phlegmy lump of gob and decent projection with a back wind you might hit the red wall opposite.

Screenshot_20221120-093156_Maps.jpg

[Sporting]

Obviously I have no idea where he grew up but is this really true? People can't spit very far at all really. Single digits in terms of metres. A stone's throw, I could easily buy. But literal spitting distance?

I thought I was the board expert in pedantry!

[DCI Harry Batt]

There would be a few contenders, I reckon.

[NickSTFU]

What is "masculinity"?

A construct that weak, insecure and not too bright men talk about to make themselves feel better.

[ad hoc]

I thought I was the board expert in pedantry!

I tried to resist but it's the word literal (or literally) that gets past my self constructed defences

[DCI Harry Batt]

Literal has had a figurative meaning for hundreds of years, mind.