This train of thought started with our game at Barnsley. On the way up from London, we heard Princess Margaret had died. As football supporters, we knew what to expect. Sure enough, the afternoon's match kicked off a minute late. We're used to this by now. Minute silences seem to be ten a penny these days. But it wasn't always like this, was it? I don't think my memory's playing tricks on me, but surely the minute's silence was a rarity a decade or so ago?
The minute's silence seems to have crept into football, to the point that what was once a moment for sombre reflection has become an irritating commonplace. Are we getting to the stage where, if anyone of public significance dies, we're required to mark his or her passing before the game? A friend of mine takes her young son to games. After a particularly long run of silences the other year, he asked his mum at one match, "When do we all stand up and be quiet?"
There are several things that concern me about all this. For a start, what are the criteria for deciding who to honour, and to what extent? Sad though the circumstances of Princess Margaret's decline and death may have been, what connection had she with the game that marked her death? Nevertheless, at Barnsley, we had a silence. Subsequently, George Bray, one of the greatest servants of Burnley FC, died. At the next game, his passing was marked with a minute's silence, and quite right too. But this means that the death of someone with no connection to football, and the death of someone who gave 50 years' service to a football club, were treated in exactly the same way. Can this be right?
I resent the element of compulsion, too. No one asks us if we wish to observe a silence. We must simply go along with something that has been imposed. Not to do so is bad form, but what if that means faking a show of respect for something you have no respect for? In the case of the monarchy, this is hardly a politically neutral subject. One friend held a principled objection to observing the passing of a member of the royal family, but got into bother for raising this. Feigning respect that we don't feel makes hypocrites of us.
I go too far, perhaps? Surely keeping schtum for a minute isn't too hard, even if we only manage to do so by biting our tongue? But let me offer a scenario which one of these days won't be hypothetical. What happens when Margaret Thatcher dies? She is the longest serving Prime Minister of modern times, our first female Prime Minister, and she led us through war. If we agree that a minute's silence at a football match is an appropriate way to mark the death of a relative of the unelected head of state, surely it would be just as right to honour the passing of such a significant Prime Minister? Of course, she happened to be strongly anti-football and advocated the membership card scheme. Many of the crowd, in a town which always returns a Labour MP, would feel highly opposed on grounds of politics. There are people I know who will drink champagne when Thatcher dies. But what could we do at the match if our masters decided it?
Further, why is football chosen as a vehicle for the formal expression of public grief? I think because it's easy. It's public, it's obvious, and you don't have to go to much trouble. Other entertainment fora would be harder. I go to the cinema about as often as I go to football matches, but I've never had to stand through a minute's silence before the trailers roll.
While on this subject, I still resent the way the football programme was cancelled on the day of Princess Diana's funeral. Again, life went on as normal in other arenas that day. At three o'clock I could have gone and done my shopping, taken in a theatrical matinee or just sunk a few pints down the pub. The one thing I couldn't do, it seemed, was go to a football match. I concluded at the time that those who run football are deferential to authority, uncertain about their position and keen to be seen to do the right thing. Why fall out with royalty when you want them to present the FA Cup? I haven't had reason since to change my mind.
My fear is that, once you start having minute's silences week after week, where do you end? If we're having more and more, as seems to be the case, where do we draw a line? We already know you don't have to have any connection with the sport. But there are very few clear cut cases. From our point of view, for George Bray, Bob Lord or Harry Potts (although the club made a real botch of that one) a minute's silence is the obvious thing to do. No one would question that. But what happens when one of our lesser lights goes? Would you join a minute's silence for John Bond? And then what about those people in football, high profile, famous, significant, whose death would give rise to a predictable response that, for our own reasons, Burnley supporters wouldn't share? Does anyone remember the badly observed 'silence' for Bill Fox some years back?
Don't get me wrong. Personally, I tend to respect them, whether I agree or not. I think most people do. But how many of us are just going along with it? I'm curious about the lack of public debate concerning a development which gradually seems to have come into our sport.
I, of course, stand as a die hard against all innovation in our simple, brilliant game. For what it's worth, I'd employ minute's silences as sparingly as possible, to mark the passing of key personnel of either of the two teams taking the field, and leave it at that. Anything else is a thin end of the wedge.
If we gave minute's silences sparingly, those that happened would be rare, significant and indicate genuine respect and a sense of loss. They would be all the more eloquent, and feel like true memorials for those honoured. At the moment, I think the minute's silence is being rather cheapened through overuse, so that when a genuinely important occasion comes along, it no longer feels properly marked. Otherwise, let's at least acknowledge the way these silences have found space in our game. Not an original suggestion - in fact, one blatantly stolen from a member of the Burnley e-group - but might we not as well be scheduling matches to kick off one minute later, just in case? That way we can accommodate anyone who may have died since the last game. John Thaw, Chuck Jones, Spike Milligan - round them all up and give them their due. Then we can be sure we haven't missed anyone out. I wasn't around, but someone told me that we didn't have a minute's silence when Walter Winterbottom died recently. So football can honour the Queen's sister but not a former manager of the England football team? Poor show.
As a bonus, at least if we did that, we'd know we had a minute extra to play with, which sometimes comes in handy for finishing off that final pint, or making the crucial piss and pie stop prior to kick off. You could force down another half in that bonus minute, after all (we did this once at Su'lan'). Callous this may be, but I'd prefer to think of it as choosing life. And in the case of Barnsley, I'm sure it's what she would have wanted.
