With the Dundee derby coming up again on Sunday, there is something that needs said about Scottish football.
Ultras ruin games.
And I don’t only mean the drum volume, it’s the way these children have taken over the job of generating atmosphere – and aren’t doing it very well – I don’t like.
Being an ultra, as far as I can see, means to keep chanting and drumming the full 90, no matter what is happening.
This has changed the soundtrack of football.
It used to be that a rampaging winger would draw a collective “ooh” when he beat his man, followed by a “go on” as he raced clear.
A feeling of anticipation that had a sound.
Now the sound is suppressed by the constant drumming.
Then there was the rage eruption when the opposition’s hard man put in a “reducer”.
Also drowned out by incessant drums.
The “yasss” when your midfield enforcer crunched through a tackle (very like what the reducer had just done!)
You can’t hear it for the monotonous drums.
There was the five-thousand-voice “ach” when a mistake conceded a goal; the mass intake of breath between teeth when a shot scraped your side’s bar; the “yeah… aww” (accompanied by arms starting to go aloft, then clutching your head) when you thought you’d score but didn’t.
The drum blanket now covers and muffles all other reactions.
The pulse of the crowd remains at a constant rate, a pacemaker regulated by drums, whereas your heart used to miss a beat or soar into football-induced tachycardia.
Ultras don’t follow the game
These ultras kids don’t seem to “get” the emotional gut-punches. The drums plod on regardless.
They don’t even follow the game. They are in their own world, attending a singing/drumming event, and won’t be distracted by pesky distractions on the pitch.
Sometimes the lads with the drumsticks don’t even look towards the play.
Football was different before everyone was hemmed into a seat and had their reactions choreographed.
Being in any other close-packed crowd, a music festival perhaps, doesn’t compare with terrace surges and seethes when the excitement bombs exploded.
The assault on all your senses when a netbuster flew in, and you stood jam-packed in a mass of humanity, was very different.
It wasn’t unusual to end up 20 yards from the person you’d been beside, having lost a shoe, had your head stood on, and a lit fag dropped down your shirt – luckily doused by a spilled can of Export.
Ultras would squeal for mummy if subjected to what old Shed and Derry boys experienced when a much-desired goal went in.
The dilution of raw crowd emotion makes football less flavoursome.
I also don’t think music should be played when a goal is scored. Natural reactions should provide the soundtrack.
Yes it is safer, yes change had to come, yes I’m looking back through rose-tinted specs.
But fans lived in the game, they moved with it, they felt it.
This Sunday’s derby is the most important game of the season so far, for both teams.
It’ll be great. Just not as great as it was before drums beat football into a new shape.
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