Questions about Wrexham for new fans

[CanuckWrexham]

Having trouble wrapping my head around the tribalism of teams in the UK. Is it just football or all sports? Is it beyond sports and extends into business? Is it due to the bloody history of the UK, or did their fans start some sh*t or... why would they? Nothing like it here really. There's rivalries but we don't extend it much beyond a friendly fist fight.

 

[Wrexham Can]

Having trouble wrapping my head around the tribalism of teams in the UK. Is it just football or all sports? Is it beyond sports and extends into business? Is it due to the bloody history of the UK, or did their fans start some sh*t or... why would they? Nothing like it here really. There's rivalries but we don't extend it much beyond a friendly fist fight.

When I lived in the UK (up until 1991) it was absolutely just football where tribalism descended into violence.
Rugby and Cricket are probably the next 2 big sports and fans intermingled with no problems at all even though they were proud supporters of there own teams.
I still go back to the UK a lot, and follow issues there probably at least as much as I follow Canada ones. I would say that my 1991 experiences still hold true although those living there can give a truly current home experience.
I will just add that from our NL experiences (Ughh just thinking about it now ) the football violence generally stop at L2. Smaller crowds may be part of that but there tends to be no segragation at games and fans intermingle at pubs too below L2.
Werxham v Chester, or indeed other ex EFL teams in the NL like Tranmere, being exceptions. So length of rivalry in the EFL transcends a lot too.

 

[Footballfan1862]

Having trouble wrapping my head around the tribalism of teams in the UK. Is it just football or all sports? Is it beyond sports and extends into business? Is it due to the bloody history of the UK, or did their fans start some sh*t or... why would they? Nothing like it here really. There's rivalries but we don't extend it much beyond a friendly fist fight.

It’s just football. Rugby (league and union) and cricket have never had any problem. But football is far far more popular, almost everyone has a football team (even if they only take a passing interest). Hooliganism is very complicated so I’m going to dumb it down a bit. Traditionally football was the working man’s game and teams were based around factories then the occasional church or boys club but all very local. It’s always had an element of tribalism trying to intimidate and one up your neighbours and local rivals. the hooligan thing was always there even back in the beginning but it really had its day in the 1970s and 80s when there was a lot of political discontent (strikes and working class towns suffering loss of traditional industries factories closing etc). There was more violence around and the passion/tribalism that goes with supporting a football club meant fighting on and off the pitch which was very violent. Now I’d say it’s more tribalism than violence. Those that are interested in just having a fight really have no interest on what’s going on on the pitch. People move around more now and football is more visible. I think it’s impossible to have the same feelings of belonging, mixed with anger and pride that originally led to football violence if you’re not part of that community.

 

[Quay Red]

Having trouble wrapping my head around the tribalism of teams in the UK. Is it just football or all sports? Is it beyond sports and extends into business? Is it due to the bloody history of the UK, or did their fans start some sh*t or... why would they? Nothing like it here really. There's rivalries but we don't extend it much beyond a friendly fist fight.

Was never a problem pre 70's. Lots of grounds were open and supporters used to change ends at half time exchanging "Greetings" as they passed each other. The odd fight broke out that was over the top but in the main the fight was on the pitch. Even when we played chester. The 70's brought a more aggressive rivalry as more fans travelled in numbers and gangs / firms formed. That brought in segregation and the "banter" became more aggressive between supporters. Most fans avoided trouble but as the old adage goes, if you look for trouble, you'll find it and many did. Close proximity of rival clubs also contributed, something that doesn't exist in Canada.

 

[Wrexham Can]

Was never a problem pre 70's. Lots of grounds were open and supporters used to change ends at half time exchanging "Greetings" as they passed each other. The odd fight broke out that was over the top but in the main the fight was on the pitch. Even when we played chester. The 70's brought a more aggressive rivalry as more fans travelled in numbers and gangs / firms formed. That brought in segregation and the "banter" became more aggressive between supporters. Most fans avoided trouble but as the old adage goes, if you look for trouble, you'll find it and many did. Close proximity of rival clubs also contributed, something that doesn't exist in Canada.

Good point about the ease of affordable travel being a bit of a spark.
I'd place the start point a little earlier because I remember going on away coach trips around 1967/68 which could be very intimidating and stories of bricks through windows. I never experienced the windows being broken myself, but having the bus being surrounded by aggressive home fans was definitely real.
Happy days being able to walk from the kop to the tech end at HT too.

 

[Lods]

New Canadian fan making the trip for the Shrewsbury game. Wondering how hard it will be to get into the Turf Friday evening and again on gameday?

Probably not too difficult Friday evening. Saturday it'll be packed, expect to queue for a while and be sardined in there when you actually do get in.

 

[Wrexy]

New Canadian fan making the trip for the Shrewsbury game. Wondering how hard it will be to get into the Turf Friday evening and again on gameday?

No problem Friday - just go with your drinking head on.

Assuming a 3:00pm KO you'll get people queueing for when it opens. By lunch time it will be rammed, hot and sweaty and really stuffy. I guarantee somebody will have really bad BO.

Get your pics early and then go to the Maesgwyn over the road for some air and a Wrexham Lager. You'll thank me.

 

[Wiltshire_Red]

Was never a problem pre 70's. Lots of grounds were open and supporters used to change ends at half time exchanging "Greetings" as they passed each other. The odd fight broke out that was over the top but in the main the fight was on the pitch. Even when we played chester. The 70's brought a more aggressive rivalry as more fans travelled in numbers and gangs / firms formed. That brought in segregation and the "banter" became more aggressive between supporters. Most fans avoided trouble but as the old adage goes, if you look for trouble, you'll find it and many did. Close proximity of rival clubs also contributed, something that doesn't exist in Canada.

I’d agree in the main it was in the 70s and 80s, although I remember in 1966 going to watch Wrexham at Port Vale and getting a brick through one of the bus side windows when leaving the ground and then a brick through another window a bit later when travelling through the town.

Any English league clubs playing in Europe also had to put up railings around the pitch to keep fans penned in, something we had to suffer at Wrexham for a number of seasons. This was one of the main contributors to the Hillsborough disaster in 1989, if there’d been no fences the fans would have just spilled onto the pitch, instead they were trapped in cages.

 

[Yeoman204]

Having trouble wrapping my head around the tribalism of teams in the UK. Is it just football or all sports? Is it beyond sports and extends into business? Is it due to the bloody history of the UK, or did their fans start some sh*t or... why would they? Nothing like it here really. There's rivalries but we don't extend it much beyond a friendly fist fight.

Heh, you've probably got subjects for PhD theses in half a dozen different subjects to cover all that off!

Others have given a pretty good overview on football rivalries/hooliganism, so I won't rehash that too much other than to say things came to a head on the violence side in 1985 with the Heysel stadium disaster (https://www.history.co.uk/article/remembering-the-heysel-stadium-disaster). UEFA actually banned English teams from competing in Europe for several years (and Liverpool, whose fans were responsible, were initially banned in perpetuity). That turned a 'football problem' into a political one, and led to a major government clampdown - most of those laws are still in place (such as 'drinking alcohol within sight of the pitch' that Charlie Day was unaware of...).

To broaden things out a bit though, football rivalries in the UK do vary a bit depending on where they are. Some of it is nationalist (such as the Wales-England stuff we get), sometimes it's sectarian such as Rangers-Celtic (Protestant vs Catholic), sometimes just weird regional history (Liverpudlians & Mancunians don't necessarily get on, which may or may not go back to Manchester funding a ship canal to bypass the taxes & duties the port at Liverpool was levying on imports). Occasionally you'll get a random one that's down to something that happened in a game between two sides.

Even wider than that, there is a bit of a tradition of our 'tribal' (for want of a better word) nature being really quite localised (down to the level of individual towns and villages sometimes). There was some interesting work done a few years ago around accents across the UK - apparently ours are far more localised than other places (particularly compared to places like the US). It is possible to tell where someone is from (down to the part of town or village) based on their accent - if you tie that to football clubs being parts of their communities, there's always going to be a certain amount of personal identity tied up in that, and we're already tuned to identify people in the 'out group' to a decent level of granularity...

There are a few more general rivalries too - in England there's North (industrial, working class) vs South (middle class shandy drinking w*nkers), everybody else vs London (the capital such an centre of gravity it skews the whole economy towards the South East), Yorkshire vs Lancashire, etc. Wales has a North-South divide too, but that's more a political one these days (the Senedd is in Cardiff, and there is a perception that South Wales gets preferential treatment compared to the North). While none of that is football specific, it often serves as a useful excuse for some friendly p!ss-taking at games.

(Wow, that was a bit of an epic in the end, and barely scratches the surface of ways you could take that question...)

 

[Red-C]

Some interesting ideas here about the intense nature of football fandom but it is intriguing that the more unsavoury aspects of football culture do seem to have appeared independently from each other in different parts of the world (even in days before mass media where it might be dismissed as copy cat behaviour).

I do think there is something very unique to the actual game of association football that lends itself to heightened emotional states. As daft as it might initially seem, it is one if the few games where the key moment in the game is when one side scores; this might seem obvious but think of most other sports or games and almost always scoring is not the most difficult part of the game and often not even where a game is won or lost. A lot of sports and games have constant or at least frequent scoring (cricket, basketball, snooker, rugby usually) so individual scoring matter less and it is much more about strategy and HOW you score. An even more extreme take is something like 10 pin bowling - and I suppose the same applies in basketball - the Olympic men’s final was great example* - it is the mistake or failure to score when expected that is where games are won or lost.

*France missed multiple free throws that could have pressured USA at a key point.

I know that when I go to football I don’t feel like that in anything else I do. Jumping around like a loon when we score, screaming at a linesman 50 yards away that he is a “f*cking joke of a human“ for not seeing the ball take a knick off an opposition player so gives a throw in their direction. When Tom O’Connor scored our second against Sheffield Utd in cup I literally made a fella next to me take photo of my driving license as went to mental with joy I felt ill to point I was worried about those who relatively frequently cause games to be paused as “there is an medical incident in the crowd“ - and I don’t even drink booze at games never mind those young un’s ruining their hearts shoving cheap coke up their nostrils every weekend.

Point being yes culturally there are lots of reasons why the game of football and the culture around it creates animosity and tribalism but I wonder how the psychological impacts of the nature of the actual game itself can magnify and modulate these.

Or maybe I’m just talking sh1te! Who said that? You saying I talk sh1te? Outside… now!!