Join Now for Free
Home » Fan Forums » Tickets & Travel

A lot of fans Booing the knee tonight

Anyone else think the FA need to drop this gesture for the Euros.

It’s starting to get a bit embarrassing.

Your own team being booed before kick is surely not the way to start a game

109 Replies

  • Alan Sutton

    In reply to Paul Dennett:

    Yup, all those things, ribbons, bracelets and whatnot are virtue signalling.

    I know they are much more up to date and I am a cantankerous old git but we were brought up to believe that when you give to charity, you should not do it with a fanfare of trumpets but so surrepticiously that your left hand does not know what your right hand is doing.
  • Garford Beck

    In reply to Doug Fenner:

    Thank you, at least you've clarified that. You're right, at no point did you say that they haven't, but it took a lot of effort on my part to get you to actually say that the fans have right to boo. No, I don't see the players showing their support for a Marxist organisation, either. It's like I keep saying, the gesture is inexorably linked to said Marxist organisation and that's where the problem lies. The fact that probably most of the players have little inkling what they're donning and why they're doing it only makes their virtue-signalling more risible. As I said, all good people with their hearts in the right place, but they need to stop making a laughing stock of themselves and come up with a different way of making their point. I told you at the very start, a simple, unequivocal statement from the FA puts all this to bed and then there'd be no need for any kind of embarrassing, belittling, virtue-signalling before matches. I don't know what TL:DR means, but, again, as I said right at the very start, I didn't boo, I just looked on with incredulity coursing through my veins.
  • Garford Beck

    In reply to Alan Sutton:

    Exactly that. A brilliant contribution, Alan. The only item I wear having given to its cause is the poppy and I do that because we owe a debt of gratitude to a generation of men and women who defended our country and preserved its much cherished freedoms, freedom of speech and freedom to think freely, being the two main ones. Sadly, of course, that generation have nearly all passed, but those who perished in combat would be turning in their graves if they could have witnessed last summer's anarchy and the defacing of Winston Churchill's statue and the Cenotaph. But of course, the neo-marxist organisation responsible for that debacle see Churchill as a racist and not the national hero that he truly is.

  • Doug Fenner

    In reply to Garford Beck:

    I think we're going round in circles now Garford so this will be my last comment. You're not going to change my mind and I'm not going to change yours. The 'lot of effort' comment was also unnecessary in my opinion, but each to their own

    We agree that the players are not showing their support for a marxist organisation.

    I disagree that most of the players don't know why they are taking the knee. I think most of the players know that they are doing it as an anti-racism gesture so I think it's far from risible. What the players have no control over is other people's interpretation of that gesture and other people's reaction to it and, as I said before, I don't believe everyone booing is booing the potential marxist link. To use your own turn of phrase, I think that to believe that is risible.

    I disagree with your comment to another poster that most of the population see taking the knee as supportive of a marxist organisation. Most of the population, I would guess, aren't read up on the aims of the Black Lives Matter Global Network.

    I can see why some would describe the gesture as virtue signalling. I don't think of itself it's belittling or embarrassing but the reaction it provokes in some can make it so. I also think that it has lost its impact through repetition which is why I think it's time for a rethink myself.

    I'm sure they'll kneel again on Sunday and I'm sure they'll be more boos and, to counter that, more applause and I'm pretty sure it will carry on into the Euros, probably with the same result.

    Anyway. Enjoy the game on Sunday and let's hope we're talking about the game and the Euros in the weeks to come rather than tangential events.

    PS TL:DR is Too Long: Don't Read - it normally just proceeds a precis of the previous comments.
  • Peter John-Baptiste

    In reply to Garford Beck:

    She loves me Garf you know that, as you do
  • Peter John-Baptiste

    In reply to Garford Beck:

    I saw a picture the other day of the Churchill statue with 'CFC 1905' sprayed on it.

    Idiocy comes in all forms.
  • Jonathan Shapland

    In reply to Garford Beck:

    Garford Beck
    Southgate is misguided and was wrong to say that the jeering was a form of criticism of the players.

    This is the bit that annoys me the most.

    Southgate and the players want to tell us that we're misinterpretting their gesture - the reality is that they're misinterpretting ours.  One can't play the "authorial intent" card in support of one party's behaviour yet simultaneously deny it being played in defence of another's.  No way.  That's a double standard - which is ultimately what we're supposedly attempting to drive out of life!

    Personally, I didn't boo on Wednesday night, and won't do on Sunday evening either.  It's difficult to articulate why, but I just don't feel comfortable with it.  I strongly disapprove of taking the knee though and furthermore want to show my disapproval, and the best way I can think of sotodo is to stand and turn my back on it, but the problem is that that is lost unless virtually everyone does it, whereas it's much harder for booing to go unnoticed.

    I absolutely, totally and utterly support the right of my fellow supporters to boo.

    Just as I am sure that, while there are some idiots who have jumped on the knee-taking bandwagon because they are in fact neo-Marxists who want to defund the police etc, the vast majority of those who support taking the knee do so out of genuine sympathy (even empathy) to the cause of anti-racism, I am just as sure that, while there are some idiots who have jumped on the booing bandwagon because they are in fact racists, the vast majority of those who support booing do so because they don't like many of the things that are connected to that which they are booing - or morever because, regardless of their own personal persuasions, simply don't agree with politics encroaching into sport.

  • Peter John-Baptiste

    In reply to Jonathan Shapland:

    Politics encroaching into sport?

    Rightly or wrongly politics has encroached into sport across the planet for decades.
  • Barry Pounder

    In reply to Doug Fenner:

    You mean ‘no surrender’ isn’t in our national anthem!
  • Garford Beck

    In reply to Doug Fenner:

    I must admit, I didn't have you down for being part of the woke brigade, Douglas, my 'lot of effort' comment was appropriate, because I kept asking you to clarify your stance on the fans right to voice an opposite view until I was blue in the face. I mean, I didn't get offended when you called me Garfield! Anyway, I've enjoyed having this frank discussion with you, I'm glad you've come round to our way of thinking, i.e., that this futile virtue-signalling has more than run its course and that even you are having a rethink and, finally, thank you for clarifying TL:DR. Top man! If you're going up on Sunday, drop me a line and I'll let you buy me that drink, anything I want, you said, a pint of bitter and a large whiskey chaser, please! I've posted details of our fans match and I'd be delighted to see you there. You'll be my special guest and you won't have to put your had in your pocket. I didn't know who you support, but Tony Woodcock and Frank Gray will be there, amongst others, and you can chat with them until your hearts content.
    Best wishes,
    Garford.
  • Peter John-Baptiste

    In reply to Barry Pounder:

    :-)
  • Garford Beck

    In reply to Jonathan Shapland:

    Jonathan,

    If I've annoyed you, mate, I can only say I couldn't be happier!
  • Jonathan Shapland

    In reply to Doug Fenner:

    Doug Fenner
    I choose to believe them when they say why they are doing it rather than subscribe their actions as being in support of one particular organisation that has co-opted the gesture.

    For what it's worth, as a non-booer but a non-booer who believes in the right of my fellow supporters to boo, I actually believe the footballers too!

    They can't get away from the fact that taking the knee has links to politics that others may not find particularly pallatable, though.  See the comment in my previous post about authorial intention.  Footballers can't on the one hand dictate to supporters how the former's gesture should be interpretted while simultaneously unilaterally deciding how the latter's gesture must be interpretted.

    Seemingly without realising it (else they'd surely offer others the same courtesy they request for themselves), the pro-kneetakers are actually only serving to rip the rug out from under their own argument when they refuse to allow anti-kneetakers the same right to have their own reasons for their gestures.

  • Jonathan Shapland

    In reply to Garford Beck:

    Garford Beck
    Jonathan,

    If I've annoyed you, mate, I can only say I couldn't be happier!

    You've not annoyed me at all, mate.  I agree with virtually everything you've said in this thread (I do agree with those who said you were a bit condescending/patronising, though).

    It was the subject matter of the particular line I quoted that annoys me rather than the poster or your own thoughts on the matter.

  • Garford Beck

    In reply to Jonathan Shapland:

    I was only joking, Jonathan, your initial post was actually a really well thought and considered response, as was your response to Doug. Seriously.
Sign In or Sign Up

To participate within this community you need to sign is as an England Supporters Club member here.