Article: Who or when was it decreed that Football was.... | Football Southampton

I know someone who struggles to pay bills and once asked me how I could afford to order steak when I went out for a meal. Meanwhile, she upgrades her computers continuously and always has latest iPhone and once paid over £500 pounds (yes, you read that right) for a handbag. When I was first married (me with a science degree and my husband with a PhD) we had second hand furniture, a rattle trap of a car and a rented flat...and we were happy. We certainly didn't feel hard done by because nothing was new. No one has patience these days and even worse think the world owes them a living.

 

Indeed a very sweeping generalisation but not far from the truth. Credit is to blame however take 2 people to sign that contract so cannot lay the blame solely on the banks.

Again I agree. This is why my Dad took early retirement a couple of years ago after 45 years of service with the DHSS/DSS/Benefits Agency/JC+. The latter 10 years of service was him constantly complaining that he wasn't allowed to do his job anymore, and when he reached 61 what did he and my Mum do? prioritised things in order to take early retirement with the pension reduced. 4 years of lving on a budget before he can enjoy the full on retirement he did that 41 years service for. However that was what they decided on so they survive on a meagre budget until he reaches 65

I don't understand how we can say our country's football is not a working class sport anymore due to other countries watching habits? Other countries youngsters aspire to be 'Western' in all but nationailty and aspire to live the 'western life' and are consequently interested in all things 'Western'.

Yes it is as much the 'investment' the 'western' countries make in 'developing' these countries (or rather using moral areguments whilst concentrating on opening markets for their own benefit) but you can't say that other countries' inhabitants having those interests or aspirations means in this country the game is not working class.

If I give up my smartphone (I haven't got one but say I did) that would give me £30 a month for 1 game. If I gave up my wife's smartphone (she does 'need' one) that would give me another £30. 2 games just by removing 2 phones. Reduce the broadband from the XL package I have to the small and that will give me a bit more and give up the sky (I don't have Sky but say I did) and now I can watch every Saints home game and possibly an away game too.

(If I lived in or near Southampton. )

 

Its all about priorities for some. I have a rattle trap of a car, and we are renting as house, and we have have a mish mash of odds and sods that make our house look great. Well it will when we move in soon from our flat. Its not a problem. But, slightly guiltily, I have Sky, but not for football, basic package! This allows me to avoid advertising, as most TV I watch is recorded (decent box set stuff, documentaries) and then adverts are fast forwarded.

 

Lol. I already sold the car last April ( I don't drive, wife used it but lost her job.) We bought it new and sold after 5 years. Wife nearly divorced me but at least she's got food on the table and I have XL broadband and eat bread and dripping plus water to afford it <---The last statement is an exaggeration.

 

My family have season tickets in the Itchen, and I'm not sure I'd call any of the people who sit around us 'working class'. We used to sit in the Kingsland a few years back and were in the same row as a group of doctors who travelled through from Sussex (incidentally, they disappeared as soon as we got relegated from the Premiership)

Its interesting as well that a lot of youngsters who have come through/are still coming through our academy are very middle class - Walcott, Oxlade-Chamberlain and Ward-Prowse spring to mind, but there have been quite a few others as well. I also found a list once of all the privately educated professional footballers in England - a list which included our very own Dan Harding!

 

I have worked most of my life, drawing benefits for only 6 weeks when I left uni, and a short gap when my son was a baby. I have lived ok, but never luxuriously. The first holiday my son and I had was after an aunt left me a couple of thousand and I blew it on a holiday in Florida which I could never have afforded otherwise. I now work part-time in a shop and draw a pension, but have more free money because I live alone and have finally paid off my mortgage. I will apologise to no one that I now have 2-3 holidays a year and am in my second 'teenage phase' as I have no responsibilities and life is generally about me (apart from acting as bank of Mum). Incidently I still have a rattle trap of a car because I have never cared about them.

 

I hardly think 1bn tune in because they aspire to be western. They tune in because they adore the sport. Anything that is so popular must be classless surely?

 

My Mum's a retired head teacher. She told me she was working class. I said I thought she was middle class and she was offended. She said I go to work. I am employed not an employer. I am working class. Same with my Dad

I remember that program on class with John Prescott where he said he was working class whilst living in a huge house and sipping their pimms and showing off the Sunday Best China. He met a couple of 'very young' single mothers and he asked them what class they thought they were. They looked puzzled so he said 'I would say you were working class'. One of them replied 'We aren't working class, we don't work' .lol

The problem these days is while governments and 'PC do gooders' tell us there is no such thing as class anymore that the actual public aspires to be a class and people who would once have been a 'professional working class' now refer to themselves as middle England!!!

On the news last week after the budget there were families in this area (Lincolnshire) saying that they were struggling to pay the bills, that their young families were not able to have days out et al. Their family incomes were in the mid 30k region which in this region is pretty good. I have rarely had a family income as high as that yet even if the tax credits were not there I would survive.

My kids would enjoy just what I enjoyed. The Park is free, Going for a single pint with Dad (me drinking lemonade of course) whilst Mum cooks the Sunday Roast costs just the price of the pint and Lemonade. Football training and Scouts were a simple pound each week. That was 2 evenings an afternoon and a dinner taken up all for the price of £2, a pint and a lemonade. Such is life families now think their kids MUST go to things that cost money and not being able to go means they feel they are neglecting their children.

My children don't have to endure the heart, kidneys or liver on their plates that I endured and hated (but ate.) 'You eat what you are given and be grateful for it'. Many will chuckle nostalgically at that last comment. Something many of us have heard many times.

Granted mid 30k family income is not worth as much in more expensive parts of the country however prior to the tax credits and bank credit for all started we all had to prioritise. Those who have a backlog of credit are in exactly the same boat as the indebted football clubs we are constantly berating. They live for the present with no thought to the future.

Someone will pop on in a minute saying they only had a hoop and a stick however whilst I may seem to be a grumpy old man I am simply a sensible mid thirties moaner.

 

OMG. I had almost forgotten the "rubber-bands" which I had to remove from the liver, when my Mum cooked liver and bacon. "Bleedin orrible "

They don't know they're born today..............

 

I really didn't think that any sport had been classified or labeled into any class. Certainly not in the sense of it being Working, middle or upper class. Certainly up until the early 50's, most sports men/women came from college if not university back-grounds. It is true that some football players were discovered at school and progressed through the schoolboy networks. Football in particular became the winter national sport just as Cricket became the national summer sport, so for me it would be hard for it to be classified as any class. Being a national sport I cannot see how it could be. It is true today that the venues for youngsters to be "discovered" have increased enormously since the fifties with numerous clubs forming at under 8 level and above. The number of adult leagues have increased over the years as well. Certainly through my life time I have never felt that the class system ever existed in any of the sports that I have played. Football, Cricket, Field hockey and in my youth gymnastics. The one exception where perhaps a class system may have existed, although not any more is golf. As I only took that up when I retired I really do not have enough experience to talk about that particular sports history.

 

Check out the excellent book "Beastly Fury" for a history of the game and it's class origins which deals with this is a very clear and entertaining manner. Effectively football's origins lie in both the middle classes (especially Public shcool environment) and in the working class where the sport evolved from "village football." There are some interesting inconsistencies insofar that the sport was originally dominated by amateurs such as the likes of The Wanderers, Royal Engineers and Old Etonians before working class teams from Lancashire started to dominate by the 1880's. The first shock to the system was when Blackburn Olympic won the FA cup by which time the tide had started to turn and working class teams began to dominate. It was these Northern teams that first started to employ "professional" footballers (at first, in some very underhand arrangements and even corruption in the case of Preston NE) but this actually resulted in a schism within the came that saw the likes of Cornithians emerge who wished to see the preservation of amateur ethics. Professionalism quickly won over and the working class actually started to take "ownersip" of football quite quickly in the 1880's. Southampton was the first team to turn professional in the Southern League, I believe.

I would argue that football is largely a working class sport and has been for the best part of 130's years. However, the cost of the match tickets / season tickets has greatly changed this and I agree that it has procluded a lot of less wealthy people. I think about 10 -12 years ag the average salary of a Chelsea season ticket holder was over £50,000 pa. Don't know wat it would be now. Not helped by the fact the players are multi-millionaires who no longer have to look for part time employment during the summer months!

 

While the origins of the game where arguably the same as Rugger, it is undeniable that soccer became a working class sport. (probably when attendances reached their peak post war) Rugby Union was always an amateur sport and contested by pretty exclusive clubs. Yes there where clubs in the west and wales but they where equally exclusive in there own way. Cricket was incredibly classist (working class players using different changing rooms). Rugby League was exclusively working class.

For me football has always been a game for the masses and as such was derided by those that felt themselves better than others by right. It was not a football fan that declared "Rugby is a beastly game played by gentlemen; soccer is a gentleman's game played by beasts"