As you'll see if you read this, the answer to the question below is 'Pretty much everybody, really?'...
WHO DO YOU LOATHE?
No doubt most, though by no means all of you reading this will be Barrow supporters but, if you're anything like me, whatever team you follow, there will be other clubs you also kind of like and those you despise and detest with a passion. So why is it that we root for some clubs and yet wish all manner of ills on others? Michael Gibson has suggested that hatred is based on local rivalries and though this is often the case, the reasons for taking a dislike to a particular dub are usually more arbitrary and irrational. Let me illustrate. The idea for this article came to me shortly after Jamie rang to ask if I wanted to go round to his place to watch last season's FA Cup final. "Er, thanks," I said. "But no thanks. I don't think I'm even going to watch the Cup final this year." "Whaaat!?" he replied as if I'd just told him I was going to join the Moonies or something. "That's right. I have no interest in it at all. I couldn't care less who wins. Man. United and Everton... I hate them both equally." Well, that's not quite true. I suppose on balance I despise United more. In their case it's easy of course - I hate them for exactly the same reasons everybody else does... the glory hunter fans from everywhere but Manchester, the new away kits every third game, and just the graceless way they go about winning everything in sight. With Everton, it just goes back to when they were never off the screens in the last year of ITV's coverage of the Premier League, despite the fact that they were particularly boring and crap at that time. But having one or two players with a reputation for the rough stuff is always a good way to attract more than your fair share of critics and pure unadulterated hate. You don't even feel you have to justify despising a team if they have a couple of violent criminals in the side. These days Everton have the thug Ferguson leading their attack. United of course, with the possible exception of Giggs, who's just a prima donna pretty boy, are all well acquainted with various arcane and devious ways of GBH and other dubious activities. And while we're on the subject of thuggery, if the Dennis Wise case had happened a year earlier then I wouldn't have watched the 1994 Cup final either. I actually wanted Chelsea to beat United in that match, but now I wish nothing but consecutive relegations to about the fifth division of the Diadora for this awful club and their fans. "Dennis couldn't have kicked the taxi or the driver because he'd injured his leg playing football." Oh, come on! What a load of ßø!!ø¢#$! So why wasn't this mentioned at the original trial? How the appeal judge could fall for the biggest heap of baloney presented in a court this side of the defence in the OJ Simpson trial to let this little $#¡* walk free must be one of the mysteries of modern law. So that's done Chelsea for me I'm afraid. A pity too that the appeal hadn't been heard before their Cup Winners Cup semi-final exit. I would have cheered heartily for the ultimate test of when you really hate a club is when you want foreign teams to beat them in European competitions. So, which teams do you all hate? I suppose it's too much to ask you to write in and tell us who are your particular least favourites so we have compiled the following list of all the clubs that we (that's the royal 'we' by the way. They're all mine. Online Ed.) here at Beans! have a particular distaste for and why. But just so you don't think we're completely twisted with hate we're also going to list the clubs we actually have some time for. But that's not until the next edition (Yeah! in another article that never appeared. Ed.). So if there are teams you think we should have included in our list overleaf, then please e-mail us and let us know. The LOATHE PARADE
PREMIER and NATIONWIDE LEAGUES • Arsenal Lucky Arsenal, boring Arsenal... but you don't need a reason to hate the Gooners, football fans just do, that's all. If an Arsenal supporter ever asks you why the correct reply is 'Because they're there.' • Aston Villa Can be summed up in two words... Nigel Kennedy. Add another billion hate points for the thug Saunders. • Chelsea See above; and since writing that, they've bought the thug Hughes. Oh dear, Chelsea. • Everton See above. • Liverpool Should be pretty obvious really. If s because they win everything, or at least they used to until about eight or nine years ago. But we all have long memories and besides, nowadays we have the thug Ruddock to sustain our loathing. • Leeds United Antipathy towards Leeds generally goes back to the Revie days. In the early seventies they were despised for the same reasons Manchester United are now. They came second in everything with a negative and brutal lack of style that one finds impossible to forgive even twenty years later. • Manchester United See above. • Southampton This lot get it in the neck for some implied criticisms of non-League grounds made by Matthew le Tissier in Match magazine (see G'EB! 006). Also because the lucky ßµ¿¿*®$ manage to escape relegation from the Premier League by the skin of their teeth every year. • Wimbledon The long ball, all that stupid Crazy Gang stuff, the thug Jones, the thug Fashanu (does he still play for Wimbledon? Who knows... who cares?). • Colchester United Generally however, it's difficult to muster the same degree of loathing for clubs outside the FA Carling 'Greed is Good' Premiership, but if always looking for a team's results in the hope that they've lost counts as hate, then Colchester qualify, by virtue of their two seasons spent in the Conference, thinking themselves too good for non-League.	NON-LEAGUE • Altrincham Another obvious one. The erstwhile filthiest team in the history of the Universe, combined with a rivalry with Barrow that goes back twenty years and one we have seldom got the better of. • Dagenham and Redbridge The Arsenal of non-League. Universally reviled since their PacMan days of gobbling up nearly every semi-pro club in East London, now just hated out of habit. • Enfield Barrow's only ever defeat of Enfield was the second leg of an FA Trophy semi-final, but yet it was still the Londoners who went to Wembley. That alone would be sufficient to make them one of the most despised clubs by those in the Furness area, but their legendary self regard as one of the elite of non-League just goes to compound it. Oh, how, we laughed when we found out they had been refused promotion to the Conference in 1994-95. • Hereford United No cavalcade of hate would be complete without our old friends from Hereford, of course. These are the boys who knocked Newcastle out of the Cup, replaced us in the League on the strength of it and have done exactly nothing else, either before or since. • Runcorn Although we never liked going to Canal St, it was still a shock and a surprise when we heard in May 2000 that they were to go out of business. • Southport This one's easy, It's simply because after many years of lying dormant, Southport are now better placed to achieve what we want to do... be the first club that was voted out of the League to return through the system of automatic promotion. • Welling United Added since the original publication of this article, although Welling were never exactly one of our favourites even before they escaped relegation from the Conference at our expense in 1999. This, of course, was the third time the jammy sods had avoided the drop through the misfortune or ineligibility of others, namely Nuneaton Borough in 1987 and St Albans City in 1993. • Woking FA Trophy quarter final 1980, the new found 'fans' since their famous 1990 FA Cup victory over West Bromwich Albion, the hype... I could go on.

Issue 023 - August 1995