When did British football crowds start singing obscene songs, for example “What the fucking hell is that?” to the tune of the famous Welsh song (sorry, don’t know its name)?
Was there ever a time when crowds did not swear en masse?
Does this happen in other sports like Aussie Rules, or American Football? (I’m talking 25000 people all singing at the same time, loud enough to be heard on TV and ignored by commentators.)
On REALLY bad calls by American football referees, the crowd will chant in unison “Buuuuullllll - shiiittttt, buuuuullllll - shiiittttt, buuuuullllll - shiiittttt, …”. The most the commentators would say is “The crowd is expressing their displeasure with that call.”
I played rugby in college, and we had some godawful obscence songs. If you blipped all of the naughty words out of one, it would be
**** **** ****** **** ****** **** ****,
Some ************ just ****** my man.
I’ll **** another ****** better than the other ******,
**** **** ****** **** ****** **** ****.
But they were terribly fun; almost all were participatory, encouraging creation of new verses and thinking on one’s feet.
Aussie Rules crowds en masse will scream, shout, cheer, abuse, barrack and roar in unison, but they don’t sing … not even the national anthem.
University of Texas fans sing a fight song that unofficially contains the phrase “make 'em eat shit.”
I don’t know when it started, but the tune you’re thinking of is Cwm Rhondda.
obscene songs are all part of the fun of UK football. there’s such a huge variety and new ones are made up on the spot by some random bloke who shouts something out.
I know, I’m fully in favour of them. But when you see these huge black and white crowds in the 40s and 50s with their rattles and rosettes, was part of the crowd singing “The referee’s a wanker” for example?
AFL crowds mightn’t sing, but I recall attending a certain cricket match where the crowd was singing “I-an Bo-tham none for six-ty” to the tune of “deck the Halls”…
That was all before my time of course, but from personal experience the rougher stuff started in the '70s. For instance, my club’s favourite song started in the mid '60s and includes a line about “hanging Koppites”, but no swear words.
I’d be surprised if anyone could find an official cite to show when swearing in songs first started, but I’d guess that, by no surprising coincidence, the routine f-ing started at around the same time as the violence (although there were isolated instances of crowd trouble from the '30s).
Is there anyway you could post this without the blips?
I could be wrong but I don’t think it’s ever been documented. In the absence, thus far, of academic references I’ll broadly concur with everton.
I’m sure there were occasional outbreaks of expression prior to the late 60’s but, IMHO, the obscene chanting really arrived with the original skinhead movement of that period – as did a whole raft of new social phenomena.
I’d also add that it’s not always just obscene. There is a lot of humour in some of those chants and, although this isn’t an example, it did make me smile. Elton John was retelling a story a few weeks ago on teevee about watching an away match with his mum (the arrival of both being announced on the PA system) while Chairman of Watford:
<several thousand home supporters> “Don’t sit down when Elton Johns around cos you’re get his knob up your arse”
<Slightly deaf mother> “What are they singing , dear”
EJ – “Oh, nothing mum”
This went on for the entire 90 minutes. It made me smile, and Elton.
My favourite was when my team (Spurs) – this was back in the late 70’s - picked on the away teams goalkeeper with such effect that he completely lost the plot: Shouting and waving his arms at the crowd and then conceding two goals. It was all part of the theatre back then. Ah ! the good old days…
I feel obliged to point out that it isn’t just limited to UK football. Irish and Spanish fans, for example, also have their share of rude songs.
You’re not going to leave it at that, surely? Examples? Go on – use asterisks if necessary, we’ll use our imagination.
Well, here is a songs page for my local club, Bohemians. Some of these will be familiar to you already, but there’s a couple I think are Bohs originals.
I can’t remember any of the Spanish songs specifically (been a few years since I’ve been to a Liga game) and a quick Google search isn’t turning up anything, so you’ll just have to take my word for it 
[sub]f**k me, as I’m typing this Hartson’s just got a hat trick![/sub]
OK, now I’m remembering a Barça song that translates roughly to “Madrid, you bastards, bow down to the champions” … obviously this one’s a few years old …
Check out any of the articles written by Tim Parks for the Guardian about following the Italian club Verona last season.
This article in particular describes the difficulties involved in coming up with a properly insulting footie chant 
Um, I should point out that it’s rather rude in places (just making sure, sort of thing…)
A list of his other articles can be found here.
– Quirm
Link’s knackered.
Just go to http://www.guardian.co.uk and do a search under “Tim Parks” and you should get the list
– Quirm
Yeah, there are some good ones there. I was glad to see there were none comemorating my team (Aberdeen)'s world class performance against Bohemians in the UEFA Cup.
Not if I ever wanted to run for public office. I’ll email them, if you desperately desire.