#I'm not from a sporty family so any connection to sport has been primarily social for me

[georgia-stanway]

Your Hatters tags on the archive post were so cool! There’s definitely a project for someone to use the National Media Museum photo archives to write more people that aren’t white cis men back into English football history

Yes!! Particularly if it could be done in combination with oral history. Honestly i find the social history of football absolutely fascinating. I'm going to yell about it below the read more because honestly i just think it's so important that when football is being increasingly controlled by money which is concentrated in a small number of clubs that people remember the importance of community and communities to football (and that those communities has always included women and minorities)

My grandad is very much more invested in social side of football than the sport itself so most of his stories have very little to do with actual football and are far more focused on people. He talks about the rover's player who lived up the road or his dad having the sports paper sent down from Wigan and sending them info on a Yeovil player they were interested in. Even when they are a bit more football focused it's his dad's adventures in getting tickets to the famous Yeovil vs Sunderland match in 1949 and the back up goalie who was forced to play and barely played again. I feel so much closer to my grandad since getting into football because we have something to talk about and bond over and it's really really lovely.

And then you have the geographic (and subsequently demographic) aspect. I've never been more aware of my locality since getting into football: my family's migrational history (both that 3/4 of my grandparents aren't English and the only familial connection with football i have is through my English grandfather but also movement within England), the difference in culture between the west country and the rest of England (i.e the preference for rugby over football which kind of reflects the relationship between wales and the west country and the greater presence of like celtic culture in the area even if it's not actually linked) and just being from my side of Bristol because the rivalry here is geographic. Nicknames are often reflective of local culture, industry and history (Bristol rovers are the pirates for example but we're also known as the gas because our old stadium was right by a gasworks and the smell carried into the stadium.) I'd be fascinated to know why there are comparatively so many west country clubs called the robins, whether it's a coincidence or what.

But you've also got things like Spurs' Jewish connection. i think it would be quite difficult to detangle spurs from a (particularly social) history of the Jewish community in North London and of course vice versa you can't talk about the history of spurs without talking about the Jewish community in north london. I'm sure football would feature very heavily in the history of many other communities as well, I think Arsenal have had a large Black following for example. Just the fact that football is a working class sport and even today the majority of footballers come from a working class background. Then you also have, particularly across europe, political and class aspects in rivalries like Barça v real madrid and celtic v rangers. Even things like Manchester vs Liverpool has it's own history that goes beyond yet very much includes football.

It's one of the reasons i hate trophy logic and debates on whose a big club and man city has no history because while it's obviously a competitive sport and there is a conversation to be had about money and sportswashing, a club doesn't have to be big or traditionally successful to have history and value and importance and yes success. And i don't think that community and big clubs are incompatible and while I would encourage all football fans to engage with their local clubs, i think the whole support your local thing is overly simplistic to say the least (particularly when employed by prem fans) and doesn't actually address the issue people want it to which is that particularly big clubs are pricing out fans both local and not

If you could gather people's stories and memories of football you can create such a rich tapestry of football culture and history but even just having proof that people who have had their own history and relationship with football erased and banished allows space for these things to be discussed and acknowledged