While a Serbian first division side is fined and banned from their home stadium due to their racist support, fans get a taste of their own medicine in England.
Just a week after everyone's favourite white supremacist fraternal organisation made an appearance on the terraces in Scotland, this bizarre form of racial goading has made its way to Serbia
Saturday’s Serbian Super Liga clash between Borac and Vozdovac Belgrade, which saw the visitors from the capital win 1-0, was notable for eight fans being charged with spreading racial hatred and a further 29 detained for disorderly conduct at a football match.
The Borac fans had donned Ku Klux Klan white hoods and held banners reading “The South will rise again" and "Go away from here because nobody likes you" – the last being a marvellously wordy effort that reads like an eight year-old penned it.
They also made the Nazi salute and the match was delayed for 10 minutes midway through the first half for police to wade in and arrest the offenders (Scottish coppers take note).
Well done the Serbian police – and that’s not something I ever thought I’d type.
The subject of the Borac supporters’ hatred was Vozdovac’s Zimbabwean striker Mike Tawmanyera, who commented: “I have never been insulted for being black before. I got scared for my wife and child. I've been given a great reception by the club and I get along really well with my neighbours. Some of them play all day with my son Nikola, who has a Serbian name because I like it here so much.”
It’s thought that Tawmanyera had been singled out as he used to play for Borac’s local rivals Javor Ivanjica, although that hardly excuses the repugnant behaviour of the Borac fans.
The Serbian Football Association said the club could be hit with a fine up to 7,300 euros and be forced to play between one and six matches behind closed doors. If they need any alternative arenas to play in, I hear Nuremberg circa 1933 might be right up their alley.
There is a big question here that obviously needs asking: Is there a giant right-wing soccer conspiracy linking Airdrie in Scotland to Cacak (home town of Borac) in Serbia?
The answer is almost certainly no, but there are a few uncanny parallels between the two places:
- Cacak is famous for the ten monasteries of the Ovcarsko-Kablarska Gorge
- Airdrie is situated in an area known as Monklands
- Cacak is home to many important industries, especially metal-processing, paper production and chemicals
- Airdrie also boasts many economic powerhouses: Albert Bartlett & Sons have expanded their fresh produce operations to a new site on the Stirling Road and the HQ of beCogent Group, a major leader in telesales and virtual help-desking is within the Cairnhill area of the town.
- At the time of writing, both local football teams have seven points from their first nine league games.
Coincidence? You decide!
Oh, and Dan Brown – hands off. This is my loopy plot and you aren’t having it.
As the unpleasant Borac story shows, football fans can be a repugnant lot to the people out on the pitch – like the school bully in the playground they generally pick on the weak and different.
Also like the school bully, they say beastly things to the girls about getting certain body parts out for the lads. Cheerleaders and half-time dancing troupes get their fair share of abuse all over the country from the inebriated pie-munchers on the terraces.
At the Sheffield Wednesday-Barnsley match in the Championship (as the English second division is grisly known), they got a taste of their own medicine.
The game at Wednesday’s Hillsborough stadium was a Yorkshire derby and these are keenly felt matches. In retrospect, it may have been a mistake for the stadium announcer to reveal that the half-time ‘entertainers’, pop duo TWIN, were two Sheffield lasses. This didn’t go down too well with the Barnsley faithful who let them know what they thought in no uncertain terms.
TWIN, made up of Francine and Nicola Gleadall (18 year old twins would you believe), decided to have a go back and one shouted obscenities which were amplified around the ground, while the other flicked V-signs (which one did which is unclear).
Hilariously, the pair were arrested and fined £80. They later said: “We apologise for offending anyone, and would hope that most would agree they may well have acted in the same way if faced with the torrent of obscenities we were exposed to.”
The fact that most of the 28,687 crowd no doubt sang and bellowed far worse and for greater lengths of time without even a disapproving look from a steward would seem more than a little hypocritical.
I say well done to the girls for showing true Yorkshire grit – saying what they bloody well like.
Hang your heads in shame, South Yorkshire police.
Wait one moment, though. I’ve now seen the song TWIN were covering was Slade's “Cum on Feel the Noize”.
In that case: lock ‘em up and throw away the key.
Why not send them to entertain at the next Borac home match? It might make a change from the Horst Wessel Song that the locals normally enjoy.
