The Fear

One shouldn't think like this, but it's inevitable. The relevant fear is not about a disastrous result on Saturday, or the mockery that would come from that. That's a different kind of inevitability. No, this fear is the nonsense that could occur off the field, the terrace nonsense, the march to the stadium nonsense. A little bit of nonsense is to be expected; not everyone can be controlled, not everyone can control themselves. And besides which, nonsense is inherent in an exercise where the point is to support an arbitrary group of young men kicking a ball around against an equally arbitrary collective of same. But the fear is about enough people crossing a line, and the cascading effects of that. First, what might happen in the immediate vicinity of the incident; then the immediate impact to the club; then the recriminations among the supporters; and then whatever other consequences flow from that, but in particular, one: the chance for certain people to point at us, and say with a justification made easier by the circumstances, "see, we told you that this is what they're like, and that this would happen"; and then others who were on the fence, or perhaps beginning to come around to our self-proclaimed as well as actual merits, would retreat from acknowledging the worthiness of our cause, our arguments, and ultimately our club as an institution.