Still Quarrying: Fitba' Crazy!

 1978 was a big year.  I graduated MA(hons), started my studies for the ministry, was married.  And there was the World Cup.  Scotland had qualified and those of us smitten by football fever had high expectations.   The problem for me was that it was taking place in Argentina where a democratically elected government had been overthrown by a military junta and those who dared oppose were being imprisoned, tortured, executed or joined the ever increasing number of the ‘missing’, people who just disappeared.  To make matters worse Scotland played a warm-up match with Chile in a stadium that had been used by the government as a concentration camp.  The folk-singer and activist Victor Jara was tortured, murdered and his body displayed at the entrance to the stadium for all the other prisoners to see.  In an interview the Scotland goalkeeper Alan Rough recalled his shock when he saw the dressing room riddled with bullet holes.  But the game went on.  

At the time I believed that Scotland should withdraw from the World Cup and certainly should never have played in the Santiago Stadium.  I wasn’t alone.   There was a campaign with the slogan ‘Football Yes!  Torture No!’   I wore the badge and was amazed at the hostility it provoked.  Apparently there came a time when all this stuff about human rights had to be set aside and the football enjoyed for the ‘beautiful game’ that it is.  No one enjoyed football more than I but there comes a time when it has to be put into perspective.

One of my favourite books is Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch.  He lays out his obsession with Arsenal FC and how in many ways it has been an enhancement to his life.  But he is also honest enough to admit how much football fandom can mess with your head.  How your life is organised around fixtures, the stupid arguments you get drawn into and your tolerance of the worst kind of behaviour demonstrated by fellow fans.  When I first read the book it was as if a mirror was being help up to a dark area of my soul.   I’ve often wondered if football makes you daft or if you are daft in the first place and football makes you worse.   Remember the old song:

‘Oh he’s fitba’ crazy, he’s fitba’ mad

 And the fitba’ it has robbed him of the wee bit sense he had.

 And it would take a dozen skivvies, his claes to wash and scrub

 Since our Jock became a member of that terrible fitba’ club.’  

It can happen.  Rob us of the ‘wee bit sense’ we have.  I could give you personal examples but frankly I would be too embarrassed.  

And now we have Qatar.  A country with no great tradition of football, an unforgiving climate for football, and that is apart from the dark shadow of her human rights record which has received much attention in the media recently.  Gay rights and the treatment of immigrant workers involved in the construction of stadiums has been highlighted but it should also be said that Christians are only allowed to worship under certain restrictions and missionary organisations are not allowed to operate.  But we are expected to set all of that aside and enjoy the football.   Sorry but I can’t do that.  I have always looked forward to the World Cup.  Most football fans will have powerful memories of the best players on top of their form.  But Bill Shankly was wrong when he said, however tongue in cheek,  that football was more important than life and death.   

Set the darkness aside and enjoy the football?  The fact is, football is not the priority in this World Cup.  It’s another example of the power of money and how in the end it calls the tune.  It will be hard to avoid it completely but I will not be making a point of watching a single game.