By Nathan Jackson
September 7 2005

theimps.tk has go all phychological and done an experiment revealing just how biased and judgmental football fans really are. Over the summer, I did several experiments in various places, trying to reveal how fans truly react to different situations and it includes some interesting results.

Being a former psychology student, the whole idea of football fans reactions’ really interests me. I’ve seen plenty of things to show the differences of people’s reactions to certain types of other fans so I decided a few months ago, to do a few experiments. So I decided to list all the possible experiments to see what would happen under various situations and what it's really like for certain types of fans. So here are my results.

Inter-City Rivalry

For this experiment, I had borrow a Notts County and Notts Forest shirt from a friend and I traveled to Nottingham one day during the summer. This experiment would have been quite awkward due to there not being many fans around but I decided to give it a go anyway. My plans for this experiment were based on something I’d seen in the mid 90’s involving Liverpool fans in Manchester. What I would do is go Meadow Lane and run along the street in a County shirt and see how many people would react and try to help if I fell, then I’d run around in a Forest shirt doing the same thing. Then, when I had done that at Meadow Lane, I’d do the same thing at the City Ground.

So I donned the Notts County shirt and went for a little run around the outside of Meadow Lane until I came saw some people, then, just before I was about to pass them, I pretended to trip over the post I was running passed. Sure enough, they were nice enough to try and help me up. I waited 10 minutes and donned the Forest shirt and went for another little jog. This time, I fell over directly in front of a few people just outside the ticket office but they all just looked at me in disgust and walked off.

So now to the City ground, I had kept the Forest shirt on, I started to run around the outskirts of the City ground and sure enough, when I fell over, plenty of people tried to help me up, however, when I donned the County shirt however, I got similar looks to those outside Meadow Lane.

Away sides

My next experiment came on the day that Man Utd were playing in Barry Fry’s testimonial at Peterborough. This time, I didn’t borrow a Peterborough shirt because it would look too suspicious if a guy in a Peterborough shirt was asking where the ground was. So I just went in casual clothes and stopped someone to ask them where the ground was, they asked who I was supporting and I said “the blues of course” and they were extremely helpful.

I stopped in a shop and donned one of my old Man Utd shirts, I stepped outside and asked some elderly people how to get to the ground and I got a less than polite response. Obviously already knowing where the ground was, I decided to see if anyone else would “help me” so I started heading towards the ground and yet more and more people kept giving me responses that wouldn’t be out of place in a movie about hooliganism.

Gender Reversal

Now this will probably be the most unusual experiment of all. I decided to risk a lot by going to a game dressed as a female and where better to test people’s reactions, than our beloved Hull, a place famed for it's, let's put it nicely, lack of subtlety when it comes to supporting their team and hating something that isn't "normal". Now, I had dressed in a way that still made it obvious that I was a guy dressing as a girl so I would get the most reaction.

I actually didn’t know how to get to Hull’s ground from the train station so my questions were genuine and it’s fair to say that I got some very bad reactions from people who obviously didn’t appreciate “my kind”. I even had to reveal to one of them that I was just doing a psychological experiment in order to avoid being beaten up and to be honest, I couldn't have gotten out of there quick enough. I felt so incredibly endangered that as soon as I got to the ground, I changed back into male clothes and all the funny looks I was getting, had suddenly disappeared and amazing, people decided to help when I asked them a question.

Blind

Now I have a friend called Kelly who is blind and she wanted to help me in some way. She had recently received a new stick and glasses so she lent me her old ones and I decided to make another trip to Nottingham and believe me, it is really hard pretending to be blind because there are so many things you want to react to.

So I got off the train station and was automatically pretending to be blind and several people helped me get off the train which was very pleasant and I asked them how to get to the City ground, obviously some of them said “you turn left at the junction” and did a lot of pointing. So I started wandering off in a direction towards the ground.

Now this experiment really showed me what a lot of people are like. As I was walking down the street, I had a load of little damn kids keep sticking their fingers up at me, thinking that I couldn’t see what they were doing.

Now obviously I had to hit people with my stick (making it look accidental of course) and apologized and see how they reacted when I asked them how to get to the ground. Most were actually a bunch of prats and kept lying, thinking it was good revenge for me accidentally hitting me. I decided to take a break from walking towards the ground and go into the McDonalds near the ground. Obviously, I was still pretending to be blind and I could hear all sorts of comments about my “situation.” The staff tried to make a big deal of it and kept patronizing me and if I were really blind, I would have been majorly offended by some of the things they were saying.

So, I got in the ground and asked a steward if it were possible if he could guide me to my seat (obviously still pretending to be blind), he was really arsey about and at one point even said “listen, you can find it on your own,” yes, someone who can’t see is expected to find a seat, brilliant.

I did eventually get to the seat, obviously being able to see but still asking another steward who did help. I got out my little radio so that I could listen to the game, or at least make it appear that was what I was doing. It’s amazing how many little kids came up and stood in front of me swearing and all the stewards just standing there doing nothing or anything and I quite often had things thrown at me. At one point, a kid did come up to me and stuck his fingers up and I said, “I’m not actually blind so I can see what you’re doing” and hit him with the stick.

Conclusion

It’s safe to say that I would hate being treated like I was by some people when pretending to be blind and overall, my experiments have proven that a majority of football fans, despite their claims of not being biased or judgmental, are just lying and they will only help certain people. In the gender and blind experiments, I was treated badly virtually every moment of the experiments and I feel sorry for anyone with situations similar to that.

I was expecting the results regarding wearing the other team’s shirts and even to an extent, the away shirt one but the other’s seriously disappointed me, especially how “the blind man” was treated by some people and if this is the way that football fans are, it’s no wonder that violence is becoming a major part of the game and unless people’s views change soon, then nothing else can.