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Sport and Communities
| Article
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14912 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1988 |
6,176 Words |
| Author
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Lincoln Allison
Lincoln Allison is senior lecturer of politics at the
University of Warwich in England. He is author of A Journey
Quite Different: Collected Walks, Manchester University Press
(1988). |
Late April and early May form a transitional period in English sport. The winter sports, primarily soccer and the two forms of rugby, are winding down; the summer ones, led by cricket, are hitting their stride. All over England, Saturday, May 9, 1987, was a beautiful day, warm and bright. The cricket season was three weeks old, but this was the first day cricketers could truly say was entirely fitting for their game; and at every level, from country to village, the pads and gloves were put on with enthusiasm. At Twickenham, the headquarters of the Rugby Union, sixty thousand people gathered for the national seven-a-side tournament, which concludes the domestic season. Over the years, the tournament has become more of a fiesta, a celebration of southern English opulence, than a competition; on this occasion, a new form of "Mexican-wave," which involved throwing five-pound notes in the air, added to the amusement. Meanwhile, one social, one social stratum up, the international aristocracy were playing polo for the Moor Cup on Smith's Lawn in Windsor Great Park.
It was also the last day of the Football League season. The indisputable facts about the Football League are that it is the oldest and the biggest such organization in the world. Formed in 1888, it has ninety-two clubs, more than twice as many fully professional clubs than in any other soccer-playing country. The league is divided into four divisions and has system of promotion and relegation between divisions. The system is quite complex in some respects, but brutally simple in essence: if a team continues winning it rises in the league standings; if it continues losing it drops. In 1986-87 competition became even more brutal because the league decided to expel the bottom-ranked club. The new expulsion rule replaced a more complex version in which the bottom four clubs had to submit themselves for reelection.
In the morning of May 9 the bottom club was Burnley, a fact that caused widespread consternation. Burnley is a small town in Lancashire in the north of England. It is quite a spectacular place to look at, built of black stone and set at the bottom of a bowl of hills. It grew up on the cotton trade, but has declined sharply: the population is now about 30 percent down from the late-Victorian peak of over a hundred thousand, and 6 percent of the houses are empty. To most people in England, it is just one of a number of Lancashire cotton towns whose names begin with a B: Bolton, Blcakburn, and Bury are others. But in soccer terms the name means rather more: Burnley Football Club was a founding member of the Football League. It was the first club to be visited by a member of the royal family and the first (in 1914) to be presented with
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