Thetownend.com

Cant believe anyone is sanctioning bringing a drum to games. For a start its plastic, we are the fans. And we will decide if we want a drum and if we dont. If the club want to control all fans they should get some ghetto blasters and a murial. Were not fucking Reading, we can make our own minds up.

Also gutted they have brought out those gay scaves the premiershit fans wear. Was hoping we would just bypass that fad completely. Its a pathetic attempt by fans who know nothing and care little of the history of the game to look 'old school'. I cant remmember scarves looking like that.

And for all you nippers who think drums are the answer, drums are a shortcut to some noise. And just like all shortcuts they are no where near as the real thing/doing it properly. You end up with 30 lads trying to sing being ruined by one teenager with a drum.

Drums are also for teams who have always had and always will have SHIT SUPPORT. Dont be tempted. You may get a kicking.

I think we should substitute a kicking for a beating.

Shit joke aside, I wholeheartedly agree. Someone will bring one though. We'll probably end up with a whole army of drummers  :(

What are these scarves?

They are garments that keep your neck warm on chilly days Dave.  :roll:  :roll:  :roll:

  Its a strip of knitted wool in club colours that you wear tied around your wrist when you're a young un....makes you a scarfer.  :wink:

could u get anymore ott, if it creates atmosphere then im for it end of. dont give a fuck if its a short cut to getting people singing, if its used in the correct way to the songs.

Drums suck arse. They're the ultimate plastic accessory. I'm with Spencer on this.

I'm not putting my adver in the bin, there's a job in there I might apply for.  :shock:

fucking spot on that man!!

Drums are for CUNTS. end of discussion.

seconded. or about seventhed by now.

I agree - drums are crap.

Not sure what you're on about with the 'Premiership look' scarves though....

I also have no idea about this scarves malachi. Although I've never been much of a fan of the fashion item in question. They either make my neck itch, or I get confused whilst tying them and end up sectioned after an accidental suicide attempt.

On the subject of drums, they can work with those mental Brazilian types and their rhythm madness. But English people don't really have the beat, which is clearly shown with the way we lose time with even the simplest of football songs. Oh, and the way we play football. What's the point of a drum if it's only going to beat faster and faster to the stupid speeding up that certain clapping sections do? Answer = annoying.

They should shut off the disabled sections for well conducted steel drum bands around the pitch. That would be awesome, and would give you something to watch whilst the football is shit and you're thinking about how much you want a cigarette. Better than counting the non-working floodlight bulbs, or watching the flocks of birds fly around.

If anyone starts banging a fucking drum near where I sit in the kingswood they'll get a shoeing.

As someone else said; Drums are for cunts.

agreed, what a load of shite. fuck drums, they are wank. drums are for shite clubs with shite fans e.g. lower end of the spectrum Yeovil and Rushden, upper Wigan and Reading. Bollocks!

Yes but it doesn't create atmosphere it kills it. Look at all the places drums get used - that's right, where they don't have singing, it's a substitute for, and discourages, genuine atmosphere. Atmosphere is when the crowd are buzzing and it's just electric - you can't fake that. Drums are for plastics and just serve to kill the atmosphere (unless your idea of atmosphere is some spotty chav with a drum, in which case I'd suggest you get a job with the BBC/Sky Sports)

on the plus side, it isn't a fucking bell

Now then, if someone starts dinging a fucking bell as well (like that annoying plastic cunt at Portsmouth) I'm off.

I went bell ringing a bit in my youth. It was a bit of an odd thing to do, I'd never had any connections with the church, just went along with a mate. Big Church bells this is. The ones in the roof at Christ Church, with the big ropes hanging down.

I'd like to say that it's good fun or interesting. However that wouldn't be completely true.  It's takes a lot of skill to do. You have to know when you're next ringing the bell after the one you're ringing so you can get the rhythm right. But in general it's a bit dull

You know how there's songs in the same key which sound the same? Like Streets of London and Don't look back in Anger (although now I can't sing the former in my head, oh I can...  let me take you by the do and lead you de da streets do london). Well as you've got only 8, maybe 10 bells (they're in the roof it's difficult to change them over), every peal (I think that's what they call it) sounds pretty much the same.

I have no idea where this bell ringing story is going... oooh yeah....
Bell ringing is really good exercise as long as you're not very good at it. Having a swinging massively heavy weight above your head helps concentration. I was a natural at it, like I am at everything. Brilliant fB.

Oh and when your mate is a bit stupid, and in the bell ringing break they're deciding who wins the noughts and crosses inevitable draw by the number of marks each has on the board, you know something's wrong. I kept quiet about the going first super win advantage.

Random days.

bell ringing can be quite dangerous too.

Those horns in the arkells against Walsall were enough to do my head in. A drum would just be 10 times worse.

i like the old style scarfs.its a bit of a craze sweeping football at the moment so why not here?
 shall we stop singing chants that other clubs do aswell?

I agree with the drums, its going to do my nut in!

Its just another fake thing in football. Its fake old, not real old. Its all part of picking and choosing the bits of football history you do or dont want to remmember. By the time we start wearing them the whole fad will be over anyway.

Just thoroughly disgusted by a lot of things in and around football at the moment.

I bet they won't. I bet everyone will just either grumble to themselves, moan to a friend or maybe tell the drummer to shut up which will probably go ignored.

Although if you actually do walk the walk and give them a nice shoeing then fair play, just make sure his head goes through the drum as well so the lesson is learnt.

You do know that 'plastic cunt' has been watching Portsmouth for about 30 years or something ridiculous like that?! Although the bell is annoying, but then again most things about Portsmouth are annoying. It was even worse when he had the trumpet!

Nothing beats the atmosphere created by supporters being stuck together singing their hearts out. Not some twat banging a drum, what next those kazoo like things that the Indian supporters have at cricket matches?

Drums at football matches make me cringe.  They're almost as embarrassing as having a match day PA system announcer call 'Come on you Reds' over the tannoy and expect the whole ground to obediently join in.

If anyone ever brings a drum in to the Town End, they should be immediately directed to the Link Centre and ordered to watch ice hockey.  No place in football.  Ever.

It would be nice if they were just banned altogether from the County Ground. Cheltenham were probably the worst with the repetitive thud thud thud. Does my head in.

Not seen anything on this, so excuse my ignorance, but I used to like the old style scarf wearing and still don;t quite know why it's stopped.  probably because they became shit and expensive.  I'm all for decent basic club colour scarves though, I'd buy a simple red and white one without too many words and badges etc on it.

I still think one of the worst things about pre match build up is "Make some noise for the Swindon Boys".  Cringeworthy. The red and white dynamite isn't much better.

i believe he also had his name legally changed to "John Portsmouth Football Club" -  can't really accuse him of being a plastic, although he is certainly a bit special

I like that. I needs to be said in a more Wiltshire accent though.

He is very special. I've always thought he looks minutes away from joining Gazza.

He looks like a proper plastic, "this is what you should do at a football match" type. A bit like an dongs "fan"; all the gear, no idea. He always wears a silly blue wig and shows off his tasteful footy tats as well.

I do have a quiet respect for him though and reckon Stanley will be like that when he's about 45. :D

Football should be a sport where working class blokes go to let off steam and kick the fuck out of each other. No place for drums, scarves, hats, wigs, women, kids or anything else.

I like watching the birds. Unfortunately it was a very small flock last Saturday, which made for an unspectacular diversion from a hugely unspectacular match.

As for the other subjects touched upon here:

Red and white bar scarves = good
Drums at football = absolute fucking dog shit

WOW such contraversy  :roll:

That'll be the global warming. Eventually football will be watched and played by nudists, apart from descendants of Zaboub who will continue wearing gloves.

Bring back the old rattles, and use them to beat the drummers to death. That should create some noise.

There is a certain irony when people moan about how thngs used to be a certain way, when in fact, going back far enough you find the extensive use of wooden rattles at games!

Still, drums no simply on the basis they absolutely ruin an atmosphere, not on any ideological reasons.

I do miss scarves ala 1980's/90's though.  I know that the scraf quality has generally got a lot shitter though.

why get in a tizz over some retro scarves?
alot is wrong with football today, but bloody hell a few people waving old style scarves about?

Just another the fad. Its just another thing that some fat cat at the premier league has made another stack of cash on. What merchandise would make us loads of money??? Hmm, how about scarves that look 1970's? In general Football supporters in this country are absolute lemmings. Hopelessly dependent on the media for their sense of history and importance. They buy whatever the clubs want them to buy. They do whatever the clubs want them to do. All the while the clubs get richer and richer and are plotting the franchisement of the game. Their plan is to be so rich the proper fan backlash wont even matter.

We have no hardly any footballing traditions in this country anymore. If the money is there then nothing else matters.

The fans let football in this country become corrupted. We let the ££££ mean everything.

I hate that scarf waving lark, we're not pissing Newcastle.

you moan about football changing.these scarves are a blast from the past.nobody is made to buy them!
fog horns,inflatables,ticker tape,all fads but they go in time.
spencer i think you're going a bit ott over it because of your concerns with the modern game.

no instead we have some twat with a drum :wink:

Yeah, but all those fads werent making millions for people who seem to be hell bent on destroying the game. None of those other things you mentioned were official merchandise. Why dont the fans go back to making up fads of their own, like all the other things you mentioned? Il tell you why, because football is a souless place, thats why. Its just individuals now, just how they wanted it to be. Few proper unnofficial supporters clubs.

I was directly criticising the fans who buy it. I know they are not made to. Its their choice and I was criticising them.  

It is gonna be the straw that broke the camels back at the moment.

so do you begrudge the club trying to flog a few scarves to boost the coffers?
i see where you are coming from.and agree with you sentiments. but dont agree on this at all.i expect those scarves to sell well and its not a problem at all imo.

To date I've seen a handful of people wearing (yes, wearing, as opposed to swinging around their head) these bar scarves and I thought they looked like the nicest piece of club merchandise since I can't remember when (...I had a Swindon Town ruler when I was at school, that was pretty mint...).

I hear where you're coming from - the whole Soccer AM-isation of football fans into a maleable mass of easily persuaded consumers and all that - but I'm not sure retro scarves at Swindon matches are really the best example of it...

Of course we all want to support our clubs financially. I buy the odd tea mug or T shirt or polo. I buy loads of shit actually.

What annoys me about the stripy scarf syndrome is that it works everywhere. No one says, yeah Newcastle do it, but it looks naff on us. Were not Newcastle, weve got our own identity. We dont need their stupid scarves.

But obviously we do. Because Swindon is a baron area in terms of fan culture just like most other areas of the country. And there will be thousands of them at the County ground soon. Just like every other ground in the country. Great. How different it all could have been.

And by the way. Burberry hats in their day were just as pathetic. Well maybe the people who wore Aqua hats after Football Factory. That was pretty pathetic.

I dont get it, are you saying we shouldn't sell the stripey scarves because it wouldn't be unique? Nearly every club does it, why shouldnt we. We'd just be losing out otherwise

No he's saying it's symptomatic of the increasing commoditisation of football driven by the big-money sides in the Prem and those who "consume" football from their armchairs.

I think Spencer is saying that doing things to blatantly cash in is wrong. It's part of the commercialism that is deliberately targeting the fan and that is ruining the game as more and more people are priced out.

Personally I think the club needs to do whatever it can to bring in the £££. But obviously I am having a very large case of double standards, because I hate the prmeiershit clubs that do the same (albeit on a much more massive scale).

Hypocrisy rules 8)

We moaned at the old board for not running the club like a business. Now the new one are so we moan at them aswell.

If Clubs didn't sell Merchandise, they wouldn't make as much money. Its a no brainer really.

Really enjoyed your use of the word 'commoditisation' there, Paul.

You like wrestling, I cant say Im suprised you dont get it bud. Quite obviously thousands dont. Thats how we got here in the first place. I feel sorry for the young lads who dont even remmember before Euro 96. Just a different mentality altogether.

By the way, the old board didnt run us like a business. They ran us as an pawn for a housing development and reserved the right to dip their fingers in when they felt like it.

But anyway, this is how the monster was born. You look in disgust as other clubs do it. But when our fans do it its getting a bit extra cash for the team.

I look on in disgust when other clubs consider playing league games abroad, when they split away from a league that has 100 years history behind it just for greed, when they treat corporate sponsors with more respect and dignity than the real fans. Selling a few scarves doesn't really bother me

The more I read this thread the more I think I might buy one. I've thought the club should sell good old-fashioned red and white scarves for yonks now, instead of all these shitty half-red-half-yellow(?) things they kept coming up with.

The problems you hint at are real, gentlemen, but the scarves are not the issue.

What about the monotony of football support nowadays?

Does it bother you that teams seem to be gravitating to being more and more like Reading? Every club, up and down the land. Sit down, watch the game in a stadium that looks exactly like 20 other stadiums in a retail park on a motorway junction. Sitting with 10,000 other people who all wear the same top (edit the same scarf too), but dont seem to have anything else in common.

There is no romance in that. Dont you think its sad that everything good apart from the XI vs XI is being taken away?

Couldn't agree more especially about the stadium-by-numbers. Sadly I think that's what we'll end up with.

I'm gonna get my mum to knit me a red and white scarf, that'll be much better!!

Anything! Anything! So it just aint the same as everybody elses.

I hate them scarfs. I hate them with a passion.  :mrgreen:

Erm except we aren't are we? For a start, it's mainly Spense that has a problem with the scarves, and second he isn't complaining about the club trying to sell merchandise. And we didn't just moan at the old board for not running the club like a business, yes that was a big part of it, but there was hell of a lot more to it than that

No shit. You should have mentioned something  :D

100% bang on!!!!

its an item that other clubs are selling, so why not ours?its hardly ripping the soul out of the club is it?
fucking massive overaction by some on this i think.

Ta. And symptomatic. I started off doing a mickey-take pseudo-sociological reply then got distracted by the actual issue. All in all a bit of a mixed bag and it didn't really come off did it, Barry?

Ta. And symptomatic. I started off doing a mickey-take pseudo-sociological reply then got distracted by the actual issue. All in all a bit of a mixed bag and it didn't really come off did it, Barry?

What arriba said.

Its not good the way football is going, but everyone wearing a red and white scarf wont make a blind bit of difference.

cant believe i had to search through 6 pages to find common sense