It is sometimes said that football is better than sex. At first glance, this looks like a rather a strange statement. Surely the two activities are so completely and utterly different. But are they? We sent our top investigative reporter to compile this special Give 'Em Beans! investigation...
Is FOOTBALL BETTER than SEX?
It involves sensuality, passion, emotion, commitment and selflessness; the speechless admiration of heart-stopping beauty, rushes of breathtaking, ecstatic excitement followed by shattering, toe-curling, orgasmic pleasure. And that's just the football. How on earth could sex be better than that? How could anything be better than that? Women (and men for that matter) who are not true football fans fail to understand the connection. They cannot relate emotionally to the blissful anticipation of the game, the preparation, the build-up, the ritual foreplay of booing the opposition as they take to the field, the thrust this way and that of the game itself and then the, er, shared climax of victory, prefaced by the numerous smaller excitements as each goal enters the net. With the attendant spontaneous overflowing of pride and emotion and the simultaneous drinking of several pints of beer after the game, what could be better? Women could be forgiven for feeling neglected on Saturday afternoons. She may be the love of your life, the most beautiful creature that ever walked the earth, intelligent, fabulous, caring and sexually enticing. She may even be the mother of your children and wipe away food stains from your tie. But does she like football? What a silly question. She hates it with a passion. Men stand accused of preferring football to sex because they find it difficult to express their emotions, especially in intimate, one-on-one situations, where they may be wearing very little clothing and therefore feel particularly vulnerable. Is it any wonder that most men clam up in such situations whilst women feel compelled to unburden themselves? Not only that, but women expect that men will do the same. But we can't, unless we find ourselves in a situation where we can express our emotions with a few thousand other fellow men. Like at a football match. Men feel safer that way maybe because so many others are doing the same thing. It makes us feel more comfortable. But ask us to utter a couple of romantic phrases as a prelude to a few minutes of erotic fumbling and we are far too vulnerable to bring ourselves to do it. Women tend to talk about relatively unimportant things anyway, like the destruction of the rain forests and the possibility of human life on our planet coming to an end. But to say that men don't like to share their emotions is wildly inaccurate. 'Offside, ref,' or 'You ß@$*@®¶, linesman' or even 'Fancy another beer,' are all evidence of men's deeply caring natures. The sad truth is that, for most men, in the struggle between sex and football, there is ultimately no contest. Lets look at the facts. A match lasts for a whole ninety minutes. Afterwards you can invite your mates round, order a pizza, a few cans of lager and watch another game on Sky. You can even see the best bits three or four times in slow motion from ten different angles. You can't do that with sex. It's over in three or four minutes (that's seconds in the Ed's case. Asst. Ed.), she'll want a cuddle afterwards which means she'll lean on your arm and you'll get pins and needles, while you'll want to have a shower, get dressed and do something else. And you can't see the best bits in slow motion afterwards. You can, however, wear your replica away shirt while watching the match and while having sex, but I'm not sure exactly what that proves. The Italians say that sex is the poor man's opera. But surely they mean that opera is the rich man's football. Out there on the pitch is all the passion, emotion, excitement, physical violence and ham acting of a Verdi masterpiece. Football is really man's defence against the onrushing tide of feminism. Nothing makes men feel more under threat than the open expression of Girl Power. In an age when women can do just about everything themselves without the need of a man, from flying a jet to conceiving a child, men need a refuge, somewhere that can make them feel valued, important and wanted; that can provide a sense of belonging. And where better to get this feeling than a football match where you can feel part of a huge family of fandom. Professors, thinkers, contemporary commentators of great intelligence and Jimmy Hill have suggested that the narrative power of football has the power of great fiction, allowing the spectator to step outside the self for a temporary and defined moment, the conveying of the sacred right to belong to something larger, a communal and unified entity that is somehow more than just the sum of its parts. But that's just a load of bollocks. The desire to belong, to become an anonymous part of a large group unified by common allegiance, can be unhealthy, xenophobic and even fascist. Feminists would argue that we must strive to build a world without borders and petty interests, a world of tolerance, where our children and our children's children will live in harmony and understanding for ever more. But that's a load of bollocks too. Football is the only truly democratic game of our time. It cuts right across barriers of class, race, geography and social standing. It is played in backstreets and in huge, modern stadia in every country of the world. No other sport comes close to having such a universal appeal. Football is the last embodiment of the human spirit of innocence despite corruption scandals, the greed of agents, the manipulation of players and the insane hatred of the hooligan lunatic fringe. What it comes down to in the end is twenty-two fully grown men chasing an inflated pig's bladder around a field and kissing each other without any sexual connotations whatsoever. That people can get so excited about something so fundamentally stupid is really quite amazing. When you think about it, sex is quite stupid as well. And it gets people quite excited. But it's messier than football. Women can feel that their menfolk become infatuated with the teams they support, to the exclusion of all else, especially common sense. That isn't exactly true. Sure, common sense flies out of the window. It has to when you're prepared to travel more than a hundred miles or so to stand in the wind and rain at some godforsaken place at the other end of the country just to see your team lose again. But infatuation? Not a chance. Over time, the true fan's feelings for his team grow into something more meaningful, lasting and mature. Yes. It's nothing less than true, unselfish love. A man may love a woman, but he can get involved with his football team in a deeply spiritual way. A woman leaves her tights on the bedroom carpet, his football team doesn't. Nor does it shave its legs with your razor. And much more importantly, it doesn't go on and on about George Clooney when everyone knows that as George has never kicked a ball in his life, he is a man only in the strictly biological sense. But can a man really prefer football to sex? After all, isn't it true that most men, George Michael, Dale Winton and Peter Mandleson excepted, have a weakness for any woman wearing a wonderbra and a short skirt? And if a woman so much as hints that she might be interested in sex, every man for miles around turns up like bees round a honeypot. No, of course men don't prefer football to sex. They just make it look that way. After all, it would be a very sad state of affairs if the answer to the question, 'Darling, what's your favourite position?' was 'centre-forward'. The ultimate test is when he's about to set off for the match. What man wouldn't have second thoughts if, just as he put his scarf round his neck and his bobble hat on, the woman in his life beckoned him upstairs? If you were about to see Barrow play Farnborough in a relegation dogfight, then the attractions of the bedroom would win hands down (are you sure about this? Online Ed.). But what if it was a crucial cup or promotion game? A semi-final, or even a Trophy final at Wembley? What then? Yes, even sex has to take second place sometimes. After all, part of the feeling of belonging means sharing in the team's success, which tastes ever so much sweeter after decades of failure. What woman could hope to understand? Supporting your team also brings with it the illusion of control. Men know on an intellectual level that their own individual support makes little difference. But if everyone felt like that, football grounds would be quieter than mausoleums. Who can resist a yell of encouragement when their team is on the attack? This is quite a nice feeling for men, as they very often seem to lack the power to influence the outcome of sex very much. It may seem strange to a woman that her man can care to the very core of his being about eleven individuals he does not personally know, will never meet and who couldn't give a toss about him. But just as in sex women sometimes lie back and think of England, so men's minds can wander over to who might be in the team on Saturday. The really marvellous and surprising thing about men is that they don't have large numbers of terribly deep feelings about anything much. And when they do, they prefer not to think about them at great length. That's where the woman in his life fits in. He idolises her, worships her and puts her on a pedestal. He loves her so much but he just can't really figure it out. She's the best thing that's ever happened to him and he simply adores her. But he doesn't understand all these feelings for her. He does, however, understand football. And above all else a man needs something to understand. So is football really better than sex? It depends on the football. And the sex. Some football is better than sex. But some sex is better than football. Especially sex with someone you love. But if Barrow won the Conference and got back into Division Three... Grateful acknowledgements to the Ed's better half, the Welsh Dragon, for buying Elle magazine and leaving it open at a page which inspired the above article in issue 039 - April 1999.