It's almost 20 years now since a group of West Bromwich Albion-supporting Irish men, on board a ferry from the North Wall to Liverpool, treated me, and a few other non-boys who were present, to a glimpse of their naked bottoms. They were big, round, hairy, spotty and most unattractive. Just like their bottoms, in fact. "Hey, hey, gurleez! Hic. Boobies! Yay hey! Blubbedy, blub. Me love Cyrille. Uh oh . . . bluurrggh," one of them spewed, as he fell to the ground, trousers wrapped around his ankles, while making an unsuccessful dash for the side of the boat.
In later life, I came to realise this translated as: "Hey, hey, girlies! I am a very drunk male football supporter who, when I'm not with my mates, is a perfectly normal, pleasant, civil chap. But, when I am with my mates, I feel the need, when I spot a she-person, to pull my trousers down, show her my bare bottom and chant `get yer boobs out for the lads' - it's what football-supporting laddish lads do."
And, remarkably, it still is. A recent football trip to England confirmed this. This time the mooners wore Manchester United shirts (those West Bromwich Albion fans are probably now running the country and all have sons named Cyrille Laurie Bryan), but their response on spotting a female person was spookily similar, in a time-warped kind of way. And, frankly, the quality of the bottoms hadn't improved a jot. "Hey, hey, gurleez! Hic. Boobies! Yay hey! Blubbedy, blub. Me love Keano. Uh oh . . . bluurrggh," one of them spewed.
Only this time this incident occurred on the way in to a football ground, where the she-person was making her way. Now, according to research, one in eight fans attending matches in England these days is female. So, if the figures are correct, close to 7,000 of the crowd at Old Trafford that night would have been of the female variety. That's an awful lot of mooning for the lads to do - and it was a chilly night too. But they gave it 110 per cent, fair dues. Good engines, they had. For many of these lads, though, the sight of a girlie voluntarily entering a football ground is positively mind-blowing and very frightening indeed. But it's when they over-hear them discussing flat back fours and sweeper systems, on their girls' nights out, that it seems their world is coming to an end. Some of the laddish lads take to this quite well, some do not. "Stick to covering Royal funerals - what the **** would a woman know about football," as one of the these chaps wrote in a letter to me about a year ago.
As Pat Spillane put it recently, when talking about his anonymous hate mail, you'd think these fellas, having put so much thought and effort in to penning their letters, would take credit for them by signing their names at the bottom. But no. This fella hadn't even the decency to enclose a photo of his naked derriere. So I couldn't even add him to my Christmas card list. At least the lovely Ron Atkinson was good enough to go on the record when he said, a few years back, that "women should be in the kitchen, the discotheque and the boutique, but not in football". Likewise West Ham manager Harry Redknapp didn't hide behind anonymity earlier this season when he criticised David Unsworth's wife for encouraging him to leave Aston Villa for Everton, a week after he had signed for them. "I don't understand wives getting involved. They should concentrate on looking after the kids and the house," said Harry. Does one sense a teeny weeny bit of resistance on the part of laddish football lads to accepting that non-lads can love and understand the game?
After much painstaking research, the following list was compiled and is made up of 25 Assumptions Made by Laddish Football Supporters about the Female Football Fan.
1. If you love football you must hate men.
2. If you understand the offside rule you must be a lesbian.
3. Any man who takes you seriously as a football fan must be a homosexual.
4. You think Michael Owen's cute and you'd like to mother him.
5. If you got half the chance you'd scratch Posh Spice's eyes out because she's engaged to David Beckham.
6. You think Sky Sports invented football.
7. You think the Republic of Ireland played their first ever international on June 12th, 1988, against England in Stuttgart.
8. You think Manchester United were formed in 1990, adding a football team to their jerseyselling operation two years later.
9. If you're a Liverpool supporter you'll stop following them if they ever sell Jamie Redknapp, because you want to have babies with him.
10. If you go to a match it's only to con your boyfriend in to thinking that if he marries you you'll allow him to carry on following football.
11. And when you go to a game you bring Hello magazine with you, to pass the time.
12. You think Ryan Giggs has two great legs (when everyone knows he has only one - his left).
13. You support a team because you like the colour of their kit.
14. You change your footballing loyalties more often than Andrei Kanchelskis switches clubs.
15. You think Paolo Maldini is a Milan-based fashion designer.
16. And Gabriel Batistuta is a Spanish rock star.
17. You think Cobh Ramblers are a hill-walking society.
18. And Shelbourne is a hotel.
19. You're only interested in football during World Cups and the month following them.
20. You couldn't possibly understand the game because you've never played it. ("Have you played it yourself Mick?" "I most certainly have, love - I was libero for St Joseph's until I was eight." "Right . . . I bow to greater knowledge, then.").
21. They think you only give 10 per cent effort to supporting your team (compared to their 110) and you don't cry when they lose.
22. If you don't `get yer boobs out for the lads' it means you're flat-chested.
23. They think you'll forgive the referee for disallowing your team's perfectly good goal because he has a wife, a family and a fine set of thighs.
24. They think you'll soon tire of football and get back to your flower-arranging.
25. They think you find their bare bums attractive. Laddish Lads? Keep your trousers up for the girls. And we'll see you at the ground on Saturday.
