We’ve been discussing last week’s news that the ex-Leeds United soccer player, Robbie Rogers, ‘came out’ and announced he’s gay.
What we thought was significant about the announcement was that Robbie said he was now ‘stepping away’ from football. Why would he feel the need to quit football – a sport he obviously loves (on his website he even says it’s his ‘purpose’ and ‘identity’), and for which he has nothing but grateful thanks for his past involvement?
To understand this you have to understand
the tribal mentality which accounts for so much of the passion which drives the enthusiasm for the game, and how much millions of
guys
are dependent upon it for their day-to-day ‘fix’. Football, and the support they give to their team, is as close as they ever get to their Life’s Purpose.
The intensity of this was brought home to me years ago when I had a crap job at the local biscuit factory. Me and three or four other guys were responsible for tipping flour down various chutes – different combinations of sacks of flour were required for different types of biscuit.
Some Monday mornings there was a strange tension in the air. It was particularly tense if Liverpool had lost their Saturday game – doubly so if it’d happened at Anfield, their home ground – as one of the guys was excessively affected by it. Clearly he was desperate to pick a fight to help ease the pain of defeat, a loss which he seemed unable to leave with the Liverpool team. Because he himself personified the ‘will to win’, he didn’t find it easy to come to terms with the fact that they’d lost.
I found his behaviour odd and tried to discuss it with him. However, after I’d tried this a couple of times one of the other lads took me aside and said I was “cruisin’ for a bruisin’”. My seemingly (to me) innocent questions were easily misconstrued as serving to remind, and then perpetuate, the memories of the recent loss.
I was also told that this guy’s wife lived in fear each Saturday as, if Liverpool didn’t win the game, or at least draw at an away ground with a more superior team, well her chances of avoiding being beaten-up that evening were slim.
It strikes us that the entire football world – supporters as well as the players – are mentally unbalanced for the ninety minutes of the game and everyone sees themselves as part of the team.
And to be a part of the team you can not be different from their perceived norm – which requires that, sexually, you’re ‘straight’. If you’re not, you have to pretend to be. This need to conform to a very rigid code may explain why racism has been so difficult to eradicate from the game.
It may also go some way to explain why, for now, Robbie feels he must ‘step away’.