" If you know your history... "
The way football is portrayed, you would always think it has been run as a big business enterprise, controlled by local businessmen, property tycoons and millionaires.
The origins of most football clubs are rooted in the working class. Arsenal started off as a works team from the munitions factory at Woolwich,West Ham by workers at Thames Ironworks and Manchester United by railworkers from Newton Heath.
Other teams came from the local community or church groups.Celtic were formed originally to support soup kitchens amongst the impoverished Catholic community of Glasgow's east end and soon became a focal point of local pride and achievement.
Historically, then, football has its origins in the working class community and if it is to survive as the game we love, it needs to be reclaimed by working class fans.
Money, money, money
For fans everywhere the match is the highlight of the week. When your team wins, you are on top of the world, when they lose, you are depressed.
However, football is becoming more and more removed from fans and the local community.Big business and property tycoons increasingly pull the strings behind the scenes and flaunt their wealth in public.
Arsenal, Manachester United, Liverpool, Spurs and even the smaller clubs are run purely as business and not in the fans' interests.It is 'balance sheet' football.
The fans are the biggest 'sponsors' of football. we should, through a ballot of season ticket holders, club and supporters' club members, annually elect the boards of our clubs.
Also on this board would be elected players' and club staff representives.
The local council would also be involved in running the club to ensure full use of the club's facilities by the local community.The grounds would be owned jointly by the supporters and local council. After all, the fans have probably paid for the ground 20 times over, through the years.
This may sound like a dream, but we must fight to make this dream reality.The alternative is an unthinkable nightmare - the destruction of the majority of clubs, the pricing out of working class fans from the live game and the final transformation of the peoples' game into big business circus played out on the TV screens to us proles watching at home.
Sponsorship
The Sky Sports deal means big business dictates when matches are played.
In the 1992 - 93 season, QPR played their first league game against Man City on a Monday night and their second game the following Wednessday. With travelling, it meant that players had less than a day to rest and treat injuries. For the away fans, it meant inconvenience in taking time off work.
Sky is only available to a minority of people, so football is taken from mass TV audience to accommodate those with cable or satellite dishes. Sky have already increased their charges for football on top of rental and may soon even charge for individual matches.
Democratic control
At the moment, unelected boards run the different football clubs. If we are to reclaim the game then a democratic structure is needed. Fans, players, club staff and local community should all be represented on a club's board.
Anti - racism and Fascism
In Britain and Europe fascists are again attempting to infiltrate grounds. Here, the NF and the B.N.P are distributing their material at matches.
Fans at Celtic, Newcastle, Chealsea, QPR and elsewhere have produced anti-racist/anti-fascist material as have St. Pauli in Hamburg, Germany.
(Anti Racist/Fascist Web pages. AFRANet / The Antifascist Web! / Anti Racist / YRE )
Policing
The policing at grounds also needs to be monitored and controlled by the fans.
Many ejections from the ground occur for very trivial things and the police attitude to fans can be very confrontational both inside and outside the ground.
Stewards, under the control of the supporters' club, should be used inside the ground with away fans being in charge of their own stewarding.
The police would only be called into the stadium if requested by the ground stewards.
This would reduce the tension inside the grounds and further reduce the already low number of arrests.
Women's Football - history and future
Women's football was founded in the 1890s when Nettie Honeyball pioneered the game with her touring team
In Scotland in the same decade, a travelling team, under the management of Lady Florence Dixie, was formed
At the height of the suffragette movement, crowds of up to 10,000 used to attend women's matches.
From its inception the establishment did not like the idea of women playing football.
On 23 August 1902, the FA council banned 'Ladies' matches.It was not until World war one that women's football boomed. With men away at war, women were drawn into the factories and many formed works football teams.
Dick Kerr's Ladies (Preston) was formed in 1917 to raise money for a military hospital.
After the war they toured the country playing to large crowds, including one of 53,000 (with 10,000 locked out) at Goodison Park.But in December 1921 the FA again banned women's football at their grounds.
Local women's football still continued but did not flourished again until the 1960s, when England's World Cup success led to another boom in the women's game.
In 1969 the FA finally recognised women's football. The Women's FA was formed and recognised by the FA in 1971.
That year England had 44 women's clubs.( Women's Soccer World )
Early history
The game that football developed from was Shrove Tuesday football. These games involved whole villages, the aim being to get the ball from one marked out area (goal) to another miles apart.
Roman soldiers introduced the game (Harpastum) to England and a variation is still played in Ashbourne, Derbyshire. Similar games introduced by the Romans exist in Brittany and Italy (Ancient Greece had a similar game, Episkyros).
Football was initially frowned upon. A proclamation by king Edwards II in 1314 forbade on pain of imprisonment the playing of football in city streets.
Richard II (1389) was worried his subjects were neglecting archery practice on account of football. Similar prohibitions show the game's popularity in Scotland.In 1583 one commentator described football as characterised by murder, homicide and great effusion of blood.
Football was a massively popular game and gradually evolved over the centuries to the game we know and love today.