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| SILENCE ISN'T GOLDEN AS RAG FAILURES START TO BITE |
| Posted on 21/08/06 at 04:57 by ABU |
For those clubs not involved with the Charity Shield, the first home game is the traditional curtain raiser for the new season. Fans still with bitter memories of the calamities 3 months before can put their fears to one-side and look forward to a new start with renewed optimism, at least till kick-off
But over at Old Trafford there was a different story. A new record attendance of 75.115 was supposed to herald a new dawn for the rags and their cosmopolitan fan base but with 5 minutes to go, vast swathes of the new quadrants were empty. But this is just a minor point - over 75k is still an impressive attendance. No, it was the atmosphere or more to the point, the lack of one that most surprised the neutrals. After10 minutes of reasonable singing and applause, the ground descended into muted background noise where even instructions from the opposing managers could be clearly heard. The BBC were moved enough to comment that "you could hear a pin drop" during their commentary. It continued in this manner all game, until with 10 minutes to go the gradual emptying of the ground descended into a headlong rush to be first to get on the M6 to London and home.
But why is Old Trafford so much quieter than their premier league rivals? Liverpool has never been this quiet and Arsenal and Chelsea while not noted for their vocal support, have between 15 and 30 thousand less fans in their ground. Well one reason is the make up of the fans. The 20 or so thousand Irish that go week in and week out have a different football sporting culture to the English where in traditional sports like Shinty, and Gaelic Potato throwing, vocal support is frowned upon. The 30 or so thousand cockney rags that go are also traditionally quiet due to reluctance to open their mouths and give the game away. But its the remaining 25 thousand fans where the biggest change has occurred. Once made up equally of corporates and glory hunters from the satellite towns round Manchester (Stockport, Timperley, Salford. Oldham etc), over the past 2 seasons many have drifted away to either follow their local team or FC United. This unfortunately has been the final nail in the coffin for any sort of atmosphere with these fans having their seats and ticket greedily filled by more cockney and Irish reds. While once Glazer was dismissive to this change, he has come under increasing pressure from sponsors to do something. One of the reasons Vodaphone privately gave for their sponsorship pull-out was "lack of noise at OT is incompatible with a telecommunications company". The recruitment of AIG as replacement sponsors who in their line of business thrive on long periods of silence was no coincidence. But it will not pacify others, including SKY who has recently given out lucrative contracts to both Reading and Watford to edit their ground noise for use at the theatre of dreams. This will provide a short-term stop-gap to the problem, but this is just papering over the cracks until they manage to attract the northern glory hunters back and only success on the field will achieve that
Until then, Old Trafford will continue to resemble its more famous cricketing neighbour.
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