There’s talk that at the Barnsley v Walsall match tomorrow there is going to be a minute’s applause for Konstandinos Erik Scurfield, a 25 year old Barnsley man who is reported as being the first Briton killed fighting ISIS alongside the Kurds.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31730844
Now I’m no fan of ISIS, but it seems that I’m a lone voice on the supporters forums by feeling a bit uncomfortable about all this. I appreciate the sentiments of him fighting for what he believes in (aren’t ISIS saying that also), but the whole idea doesn’t sit right with me – this is someone who made a choice to go and fight in someone else’s war, to kill people, when he was under no obligation to do so, and ended up paying the price for it. I’m sorry for his family but what good will applause at a football match actually do? It’s not as if his family are football fans, neither was he, he had no connection to the club at all other than it was his hometown club.
Am I wrong feeling this way, should I just STFU and stand and clap for the 25th minute? I’m seriously considering not going because of this.
I share your unease, it’s yet another bit of tabloid-style grandstanding (sorry) without any real meaning or point. Are the Sun behind it, by any chance? Having said which, I’d still go to the match if I really wanted to.
Is this initiative coming from the club or the fans? I’m in alignment with you and Mike.
I just checked the Burnley official web site and can find no mention of this. It started with a supporter on a board
http://boards.footymad.net/forum.php?tno=104&fid=297&act=1&mid=2110485340
It is unlikely to be club sponsored. Sounds like some anti-ISIS (or Islam) sentiment and a single supporter has taken it on themselves to suggest this. On any other day, the same kind of uninformed sentiment might be directed at those damn Kurds living in the UK and stealing our jobs and benefits.
It’s not Burnley, it’s Barnsley.
Which would explain why I couldn’t find it 😮
Although it appears to be exactly the sme for Barnsley. Nothing on the official club page.
I see your point and I’m personally a bit uncomfortable with tributes that seem a bit peripheral to the sport itself. It seems right to mark the passing of the likes of Dave Mackay and major local tragedies but I’m not convinced about the need to mark things like this whatever your feelings towards the individual. I think I’d keep my hands in my pockets for this one but i appreciate that this isn’t so easy.
Mind you, I don’t like national anthems before football matches so I’m maybe not typical.
I think you’re right and your reasoning is sound.
Would seem a shame for you to miss the game because of this. How about a tactical toilet break at 23 minutes ?
A quick google search for the Kurdish fighters shows that according to human rights groups they are affiliated with political groups that resemble the mafia, “notorious for corruption, nepotism, and violence against dissidents”. They may be lesser of two evils, but I would not be happy giving a minute’s silence for those who choose to go fight on their behalf, no matter how well-meaning they may be.
I totally agree with you and would add that I could do without the tabloids yelling about ISIS every five minutes.
We get it – they’re horrible fascists who kill people in horrible ways.
They’re also waging a propaganda war, which you’re assisting every time you give one of their members a tabloid nickname or show stills from their latest snuff movie or write breathless editorials about how furious it all makes you, as if any sane person needs to be told that burning a man to death in a cage is really, really bad.
In terms of the actual horrible shit they’re doing , there will be just as bad going on in North Korean prison camps right now, or in Saudi Arabia (where you can get 200 lashes for being gang raped), and far worse went on in Pinochet’s Chile. It’s just that those particular horrible bastards didn’t/don’t film and circulate it.
So, really, if it’s the filming and circulation that we object to, maybe we shouldn’t be abetting it with front pages images of men about to be burned to death/beheaded/shot.
There’s a line between necessary, mature reportage and ghoulish rubbernecking to sell papers, and it’s been crossed again and again of late.
OOAA
OO maybe A but they would be wrong. The newspapers are complicit in the rise of ISIS and the accompanying Islamaphobia.
I’d agree that this has no place at a football game and find it bizarre that as clubs & their players have become ever more distanced from their fans, they have taken it upon themselves to act as some kind of official spokesman for the ‘community’. These minute applauses have become so prevalent as to become absolutely meaningless and if I were you, I’d still go and just remain silent. If anyone should make a remark suggest this is being respectful in a way that applause (which is what fans do anyway during a game) isn’t.
As I noted above, this nothing to do with the club. It’s one fan on one message board suggested it.
I’m with you mate, although I decided against questioning it on the BBS, as it sometimes seems that the biggest crime on there is to question the posts that are regularly made about ‘our heroes’. Honestly, when questioned about the legalities of certain episodes of the war on terror someone stopped just short of coming out with the ‘only following orders’ line. It’s all very complex and I’d rather not get involved.
That said, a football match is no the place for something like this. In response to (presumably your) post disagreeing with the minute’s silence, someone asked whether (?you) also disagree with the minutes silence in November. I think they were missing the point, as the minute’s silence in November is for all fallen military, not just ones from the two world wars, so it would include the lad who died last week.
Looking at who the initial idea seemed to come from though, I think it was just a case of him trying to win a bit of approval for coming up with the idea.
No it wasn’t me Paul, Like you I stayed silent and sad that my fellow supporters are so gung-ho and jingoistic.
It’s nice to know I’m not alone on this, the movement has gained a momentum that would be impossible to stop, I’ll probably take gogsmunroes advice and spend minute 25 in contemplative micturation.
If that was a serious suggestion affecting my club, I just would not go to the game.
No, a football match is probably not the place to have a minute’s applause.
But good on him for doing what he believed in and fighting a brutal, extreme ( the word hardly does them justice ) bunch of barbarians.
The general theme of this thread seems to be, yes ISIS are nasty but so are lots of other groups, nothing to do with us. “The newspapers are complicit in the rise of ISIS and
the accompanying Islamophobia”. It’s a big story, they can’t ignore it.
We should be supporting the Kurds as they seem to be the only people able and willing to resist, even if they are “the lesser of two evils”.
I don’t think anyone is saying that the newspapers shouldn’t report on ISIS.
But the coverage has clearly grossly exceeded what’s required in the public interest and strayed into lurid voyeurism.
Likewise, I don’t think anyone has said ISIS is nothing to do with us. I was simply questioning whether the barbarism of ISIS is as singular and unique as certain newspapers report it to be.
What did the panel make of this?
Can’t see it my country. What’s the deal?
I’ve been at football matches where there’s been a minute applause for people I haven’t liked or even heard of. It’s no big deal standing with the rest of the crowd (you’ll need to stand to see the game continuing anyway) and sit down when they do. I doubt if anyone will notice and if they do, it’s their problem and not yours. It’s the same whenever we go to a baseball game in the US, they sing the National Anthem before every game so we just stand with everyone else and sit down once the (normally awful) warbling has finished. The only time I felt uncomfortable was when we just stayed sitting (not really appreciating the etiquette – after all I wouldn’t expect an American to stand if they were at a similar event in the UK). As someone else has said, you’re not expected to sing the National Anthem here are you, especially if you’re either not a royalist or not religious or both.
There’s a fair argument to be made that this chap (and those like him) is the equivalent of the International Brigades.