A story for the ages

Once upon a time there were a bunch of people who decided they didn’t like Football anymore.
What is to like about a bunch of men, who exclude women – those bastards, running around on a patch of grass on a Saturday afternoon throwing funny-shaped ball around trying to ‘score’? There is a bunch of made-up rules of the game that are constantly broken anyway as they bash each other in the most barbaric way. The strangest thing is how this seems to excite the crowds who arrive religiously every Saturday in their tens of thousands, wearing funny gear and singing funny songs.
Afterwards they clog up the streets and cause traffic jams, making a mess of the public spaces that they really don’t share with everyone. In some cases this ‘entertainment’ is even allowed as tax break for the corporate types, which is a ridiculous use of taxpayer funds and completely unfair. They have access to these massive stadiums with all the facilities that no one else gets to share equally.
Then this bunch of people decided that the so-called football fans wouldn’t have it all their way anymore and that they needed to be saved from themselves for wasting their time and indoctrinating their kids into the sport. (One kid even got a tattoo of the club and that form of child-abuse is evidence of the barbarity that is promoted with that sport.)
So they too built a stadium and invited all their friends to come along. They would pack out the stands and sit and talk to each other. Every now and then someone would jump up and shout “I hate Football’. Sometimes they would even get a Mexican wave going. Occasionally, one member would talk to the crowd from the centre of the field, but usually there is nothing happening – except to think about all the things that are wrong about football.
A few vendors saw the opportunity capitalise on this unexpected market and all sorts of stalls popped up promoting various types of merchandise. The best-seller was a t-shirty that proclaimed “You’re Deluded’. They even got a good rate on stadium hire because they didn’t muck up the place as much as the other mob.
Every week they would go to the stadium and lament the stupidity and the barbaric nature of football and how it endorses violence and even causes severe injuries. They insisted that stadium management supply hot dog stands even though they scientifically studied the contents and declared it a health risk and wasn’t so stupid as to actually buy them. But if the other mob had an entitlement to it, they wanted equality of opportunity.
So they bought the occasional hot dogs and cokes, and chatted and cheered each other on as they sat around the empty stadium. Afterwards they too got to cause a traffic jam just like everyone else and they were happy. They were even happier when they successfully lobbied the government that they should also get a tax break on their expenses.
Everyone was surprised about how many people would actually bother to gather and talk about something they thought was stupid. In fact they even printed t-shirts and formed clubs and started tracking attendance. You would think that people would tend to go to these stadiums and devote their time supporting their team when there is actually a team there, but this group of people fooled all of us and their numbers kept increasing. In fact, they gave up doing other things they might like in order to talk about what they didn’t like and didn’t believe had a place in society.
Everyone was happy - for a while.
Then they realised that other people still attended football games and nothing had actually changed and that these dumbasses need to be saved from themselves. A civilised world has no place for such barbaric practises.
So they decided on a strategy. There was one brand of football that originated in Rugby, England that was played by bunch of private school toffs. They weren’t too tough and scary. In fact, a lot less scary than those dudes that wore the funny uniforms and the strange headgear that don’t seem to belong in a sport. They came from a scary place and there were cultural sensitivities, so they picked on the other mob instead.
They thought all the codes of football were equally stupid, but the smart thing to do is to pick your battles well if you want to win the war. So they proceeded to mock the lovers of that one code – with the occasional snide remark to the other as they gathered in their stadiums staring at the empty grass and eating their hot dogs.
Life is great if you don’t have a football team to support. And it is so much smarter not to waste your money on stupid fandom, and best of all is that you don’t have to listen to the office talk about which team is the best anymore.
Hallelujah.