Not a matter of life and death: a review of We don't know what we're doing
My friend Joe is a Colchester fan- and I mean that in the strongest sense of the word. He can hardly talk about anything else when a Colchester game is coming up and he is extremely passionate about the team. I met Joe one evening at the dining hall just after I'd arrived. I was sitting next to him at the same table and we were making small talk when he suddenly looked at my plate and said "Hey! How come you got much more sauce than I did?"
"It's because I'm black" I told him "As a persecuted minority I have the right to get more food"
He and James duly choked on their food and after a somewhat confused silence began to laugh uproriously. We've been good friends since then. Joe is a likeable chap- enthusiastic and chatty and with an endless stock of witty anecdotes. He's in a commited long-term relationship which means the cosmos have decided to play a cruel trick on him- poor bastard is having to fight off girls with a stick. However we shall not let those events detain us at this point. Instead, let's press on to find out if somehow I have a point to make in this post.
So Joe's team is in League One which means they are two divisions below the Premier League- and even there they are struggling mightily, flirting uncomfortably with relegation. Needless to say, their games are hardly ever on TV which means he and I frequently find ourselves at the Bar next door at least once a week watching Sky Sports news and the little rolling ticker at the bottom which gives news updates on every football game going on at that point of the evening. Colchester shows up every ten minutes or so, so it's a fairly strange but essential way of keeping up with your team (as Joe himself aknowledges 'Man, I cant believe we're doing this!'). However some of Joe's friends- me included- have now been bitten by the Colchester bug and we squint at the TV groaning miserably everytime we see that they've conceded another goal (and make no mistake- those poor bastards concede a hell of a lot of goals)When Colchester win, we are all delighted and we usually have a celebratory game of pool and beers. We're now in this together- Joe's football troubles have become ours. Next week, we are going to Stockport to watch Colchester versus Stockport and I'm finding myself strangely excited by the prospect of watching that game. The level of technical skill is likely to be low, the pitch will be crap and its going to rain (and you cant drink beer at half-time at the away end- bollocks) but by Jupiter I'm going to have a great time. It certainly beats spending the evening indoors watching The X Factor (Although incidentally I know what the X Factor actually is- its Cheryl Cole. Her stupendous beauty reduces everything and everyone else in the show to mere inconsequentiel props. Chris Martin once said Girls Aloud were the ultimate form of life. I'm not going to discuss that, but Cheryl Cole might be Boddhisattva)
Wait, we're wandering off. Im supposed to review a book right? Let's get to it then. Adrian Chile's book We don't know what we're doing is possibly the most profound look at the psyche of a football fan. Why would Joe support a team that's brought him almost constant heartbreak for years? Why would we, his friends, want to sup from that same bowl of pain? Why would football prey on our minds for more than ten minutes? Why is it so amazingly effective at promoting camaraderie? At what point does it become an obsession? And is there a personality type that makes you more susceptible to catching the bug? Chiles tackles these questions-and a million others-head on and it makes for a very impressive and witty book.
Chiles starts off with some extremely controversial confessions ('They say men think about sex every six seconds. I dont know if that's true, but I know I think about West Brom a lot more than I think about sex')and the book gets even more entertaining after that. It starts off on the last weekend of the 2005 season in which his beloved West Bromwich Albion escaped relegation (I remember that day vividly- I was still at Uni and its the most exciting relegation battle I've witnessed since I started watching football)At the final whistle, Chiles runs up to the Director's box and kisses all the directors and their wives in addition to their guests (including a suitably startled Cyrille Regis- a West brom legend)By this point in the book I was laughing out loud- and I was barely twenty pages in.
After that, Chiles runs a game by game view of the 2006 season but he only reviews the games in passing- most of the book is his discussions with other West Brom fans, most of whom he has never met before. He hunts for them before and during the games and tries to get a sense of why they love the club and what that love means to them and to others. As he very cleverly points out, fans are clueless when they shout 'You dont know what you are doing' at the referee. The referee knows full well what he's doing and furthermore, he's smart enough to distance himself from the whole enterprise. He's going to do his job and go home. The fans on the other hand- well do they know what they are doing? Chiles realizes that they don't and this makes that age-old chant darkly ironic. Support a struggling team and stick by them through thick and thin? Get so involved that every loss weighs heavily on you? Cling to hope in hopeless situations? Nope- the fans dont have a clue, because if they did they'd run for the hills. Fans of the big teams dont often have to deal with this obviously, so Chiles' observations are directed more at teams that know there are going to be a lot more bad days than good days.
And what a bunch of amazing fans he meets. There's the guy who's missed only five games since the end of the Second World war. There's the Indian immigrant whose love for West brom began as a little girl when she watched their fans march past her house and longed to be part of them (she is now a full-blown obsessive). There's 'One legged Kev' whose love for West Brom helped him through the pain of having his leg amputated. There's the girl who's missed nearly every goal conceded by the club because everytime the ball goes anywhere near the West Brom goal, she hides behind her dad's coat (until the day she offered to buy drinks and fate caught up with her as she tried to get back to her seat. She stood there, drinks in hand and unable to cover her eyes as the ball flew into her team's net)There's the German woman who escaped Nazi Germany as a child and became a West Brom stalwart. There's the boy with Lukeamia whose love for the team is one of the few bright spots in the gloom of his predicament. And there's also the man who weaves a West Brom carpet at the end of every season (which inspires the following immortal sentence "Les and Vic, agggregate age 167 one half-blind and the other planning to weave me a carpet make their way into the ground") It's a remarkable cast of characters for what is an utterly remarkable book- it goes beyond football and becomes a very sophisticated and insightful tale about how people interract with others, choose their passions and how they assign importance to those passions.
Chiles talks about his experiences at matches and one thing that comes through is that most fans suffer a regression. The vile abuse, the shouting, the almost mindless camaraderie borne by the temporary tribalism...it's a socially acceptable way for people to become temporary cavemen. As a friend said to Chiles "I knew you were a football fan, but I'm shocked to see what that actually entails." But the book also shows how amazing it is that people so diverse can get together by virtue of football. How else would the Indian immigrants, the World War 2 veteran and the boy with Luekamia have possibly crossed paths? It's a hippies wet dream. One could argue that it seems absurd for people to develop an instant affinity for each other just because they support the same team, but of course we make friends on grounds which are just as trivial. And the fact that West Brom are a poor team and lose a hell of a lot means that disappointment provides a much stronger glue. Sadness and disappointmen turn out to be a much more unifying factors than happiness when it comes to football.
And- as he makes it very clear- true football fans take it very seriously. Chiles hosts the BBC's Match of the Day 2 program on Sunday (Premier League soccer highlights) and is easily the most likeable sports presenter on TV. A West Brom defeat is guaranteed to ruin his weekend and as a result he can barely get through his broadcasting duties during such times. He tells an amusing anecdote about receiving an email from someone working for BBC's Radio Berkshire at the tail-end of the 2005 season. With West Brom heading for relegation, she asks whether he can record a message welcoming Reading to the Premiership to take West Brom's place as they had already been promoted. Chiles' response deserves to be quoted in full:
Laura doesnt seem to understand. This isn't fun. It's serious. I spend a good five minutes staring at the email open-mouthed. It seems she thinks all football emotion is acted out, like some kind of grotesque pantomine. It isnt, Laura- it isnt"
Picking highlights from this book is a tricky affair- its that good. Sadly it ends in tears- by the end of the book, West Brom have been relegated (although they were promoted back to the Premiership this season and are currently doing well) Chiles is resigned to the fact that his team are going to bring him a lot more pain than joy, but he can't get out of it. He has an epiphany that the fans love for West Brom is a distillation of everything, good or bad that they've been through in their lives. This may sound ridiculous to many and that's understandable. The genius of Chiles, is he convinces you that this just might be true and ultimately, you'll be too charmed to care if it actually is.
"It's because I'm black" I told him "As a persecuted minority I have the right to get more food"
He and James duly choked on their food and after a somewhat confused silence began to laugh uproriously. We've been good friends since then. Joe is a likeable chap- enthusiastic and chatty and with an endless stock of witty anecdotes. He's in a commited long-term relationship which means the cosmos have decided to play a cruel trick on him- poor bastard is having to fight off girls with a stick. However we shall not let those events detain us at this point. Instead, let's press on to find out if somehow I have a point to make in this post.
So Joe's team is in League One which means they are two divisions below the Premier League- and even there they are struggling mightily, flirting uncomfortably with relegation. Needless to say, their games are hardly ever on TV which means he and I frequently find ourselves at the Bar next door at least once a week watching Sky Sports news and the little rolling ticker at the bottom which gives news updates on every football game going on at that point of the evening. Colchester shows up every ten minutes or so, so it's a fairly strange but essential way of keeping up with your team (as Joe himself aknowledges 'Man, I cant believe we're doing this!'). However some of Joe's friends- me included- have now been bitten by the Colchester bug and we squint at the TV groaning miserably everytime we see that they've conceded another goal (and make no mistake- those poor bastards concede a hell of a lot of goals)When Colchester win, we are all delighted and we usually have a celebratory game of pool and beers. We're now in this together- Joe's football troubles have become ours. Next week, we are going to Stockport to watch Colchester versus Stockport and I'm finding myself strangely excited by the prospect of watching that game. The level of technical skill is likely to be low, the pitch will be crap and its going to rain (and you cant drink beer at half-time at the away end- bollocks) but by Jupiter I'm going to have a great time. It certainly beats spending the evening indoors watching The X Factor (Although incidentally I know what the X Factor actually is- its Cheryl Cole. Her stupendous beauty reduces everything and everyone else in the show to mere inconsequentiel props. Chris Martin once said Girls Aloud were the ultimate form of life. I'm not going to discuss that, but Cheryl Cole might be Boddhisattva)
Wait, we're wandering off. Im supposed to review a book right? Let's get to it then. Adrian Chile's book We don't know what we're doing is possibly the most profound look at the psyche of a football fan. Why would Joe support a team that's brought him almost constant heartbreak for years? Why would we, his friends, want to sup from that same bowl of pain? Why would football prey on our minds for more than ten minutes? Why is it so amazingly effective at promoting camaraderie? At what point does it become an obsession? And is there a personality type that makes you more susceptible to catching the bug? Chiles tackles these questions-and a million others-head on and it makes for a very impressive and witty book.
Chiles starts off with some extremely controversial confessions ('They say men think about sex every six seconds. I dont know if that's true, but I know I think about West Brom a lot more than I think about sex')and the book gets even more entertaining after that. It starts off on the last weekend of the 2005 season in which his beloved West Bromwich Albion escaped relegation (I remember that day vividly- I was still at Uni and its the most exciting relegation battle I've witnessed since I started watching football)At the final whistle, Chiles runs up to the Director's box and kisses all the directors and their wives in addition to their guests (including a suitably startled Cyrille Regis- a West brom legend)By this point in the book I was laughing out loud- and I was barely twenty pages in.
After that, Chiles runs a game by game view of the 2006 season but he only reviews the games in passing- most of the book is his discussions with other West Brom fans, most of whom he has never met before. He hunts for them before and during the games and tries to get a sense of why they love the club and what that love means to them and to others. As he very cleverly points out, fans are clueless when they shout 'You dont know what you are doing' at the referee. The referee knows full well what he's doing and furthermore, he's smart enough to distance himself from the whole enterprise. He's going to do his job and go home. The fans on the other hand- well do they know what they are doing? Chiles realizes that they don't and this makes that age-old chant darkly ironic. Support a struggling team and stick by them through thick and thin? Get so involved that every loss weighs heavily on you? Cling to hope in hopeless situations? Nope- the fans dont have a clue, because if they did they'd run for the hills. Fans of the big teams dont often have to deal with this obviously, so Chiles' observations are directed more at teams that know there are going to be a lot more bad days than good days.
And what a bunch of amazing fans he meets. There's the guy who's missed only five games since the end of the Second World war. There's the Indian immigrant whose love for West brom began as a little girl when she watched their fans march past her house and longed to be part of them (she is now a full-blown obsessive). There's 'One legged Kev' whose love for West Brom helped him through the pain of having his leg amputated. There's the girl who's missed nearly every goal conceded by the club because everytime the ball goes anywhere near the West Brom goal, she hides behind her dad's coat (until the day she offered to buy drinks and fate caught up with her as she tried to get back to her seat. She stood there, drinks in hand and unable to cover her eyes as the ball flew into her team's net)There's the German woman who escaped Nazi Germany as a child and became a West Brom stalwart. There's the boy with Lukeamia whose love for the team is one of the few bright spots in the gloom of his predicament. And there's also the man who weaves a West Brom carpet at the end of every season (which inspires the following immortal sentence "Les and Vic, agggregate age 167 one half-blind and the other planning to weave me a carpet make their way into the ground") It's a remarkable cast of characters for what is an utterly remarkable book- it goes beyond football and becomes a very sophisticated and insightful tale about how people interract with others, choose their passions and how they assign importance to those passions.
Chiles talks about his experiences at matches and one thing that comes through is that most fans suffer a regression. The vile abuse, the shouting, the almost mindless camaraderie borne by the temporary tribalism...it's a socially acceptable way for people to become temporary cavemen. As a friend said to Chiles "I knew you were a football fan, but I'm shocked to see what that actually entails." But the book also shows how amazing it is that people so diverse can get together by virtue of football. How else would the Indian immigrants, the World War 2 veteran and the boy with Luekamia have possibly crossed paths? It's a hippies wet dream. One could argue that it seems absurd for people to develop an instant affinity for each other just because they support the same team, but of course we make friends on grounds which are just as trivial. And the fact that West Brom are a poor team and lose a hell of a lot means that disappointment provides a much stronger glue. Sadness and disappointmen turn out to be a much more unifying factors than happiness when it comes to football.
And- as he makes it very clear- true football fans take it very seriously. Chiles hosts the BBC's Match of the Day 2 program on Sunday (Premier League soccer highlights) and is easily the most likeable sports presenter on TV. A West Brom defeat is guaranteed to ruin his weekend and as a result he can barely get through his broadcasting duties during such times. He tells an amusing anecdote about receiving an email from someone working for BBC's Radio Berkshire at the tail-end of the 2005 season. With West Brom heading for relegation, she asks whether he can record a message welcoming Reading to the Premiership to take West Brom's place as they had already been promoted. Chiles' response deserves to be quoted in full:
Laura doesnt seem to understand. This isn't fun. It's serious. I spend a good five minutes staring at the email open-mouthed. It seems she thinks all football emotion is acted out, like some kind of grotesque pantomine. It isnt, Laura- it isnt"
Picking highlights from this book is a tricky affair- its that good. Sadly it ends in tears- by the end of the book, West Brom have been relegated (although they were promoted back to the Premiership this season and are currently doing well) Chiles is resigned to the fact that his team are going to bring him a lot more pain than joy, but he can't get out of it. He has an epiphany that the fans love for West Brom is a distillation of everything, good or bad that they've been through in their lives. This may sound ridiculous to many and that's understandable. The genius of Chiles, is he convinces you that this just might be true and ultimately, you'll be too charmed to care if it actually is.
posted by Minzo at 9:50 AM
4 Comments:
Colchester sounds like a dog disease!...a good dog disease( lest you read this comment with Joe next to you)
Reading this makes me want to go and buy that book! Rivetting review!!
Minega, as a regular reader of your blog I would like to know, which place do you prefer to live in of your most recent abodes; Reading, Arusha, Kigali or Manchester?
Kigali-Its home
Hey Minzo, Reply to my Email Dude!!
-Bazi.
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