Through Gritted Teeth #44: Alan Pardew
November 16, 2011 § 3 Comments
by Scott Oliver
I’ve often wondered whether ‘irrational hatred’ wasn’t a tautology. Isn’t loathing always ‘irrational’? If not irrational, then unconscious, at least, conscious justifications merely giving our more base, primordial sentiments the ex post facto sheen of legitimacy? Or are there genuinely rational grounds for hatred — the implementation of systematic genocide, say, or the so-called ‘ideological’ call to destroy a supposedly morally degenerate civilization — perfectly sound reasons that can be objectively agreed upon, and consciously assented to by all of ‘right mind’? I have a feeling that to seek to justify hatred in this way makes you, inescapably, as demented as Hitler or Osama bin Laden, and to ‘hate’ them in turn would be an undeniable waste of psychic resources, pity seeming more appropriate. « Read the rest of this entry »
Through Gritted Teeth #33: Stan Collymore
August 1, 2011 § 1 Comment
by Thomas Nash
Mention the name Stan Collymore to anyone who watches football, and the first memory called to mind is almost invariably his well taken winner against Newcastle for Liverpool in the 1995/6 season which took the wind out of Newcastle’s title charge. After staring misty-eyed into the middle distance and nodding sagely, the next reaction will normally be a rueful shake of the head and an utterance of “He was fucking mad though” or words to that effect. « Read the rest of this entry »
Through Gritted Teeth #18: Crystal Palace, 1990
June 9, 2011 § 2 Comments
by Dave Hartrick
Fellow Brighton fans please forgive me; it was a moment of weakness in mitigating circumstances. Allow me to explain …
1990 was a difficult year for a young me. Faced with a permanent move from Brighton to Huddersfield at the end of the school year, everything seemed to be changing. Not only was I being ripped from my comfortable Hove-centric world but my eldest brother was going away to university, my dad was away all week at his new job in Yorkshire and I had a hair where I’d never had a hair before. All in all, I was pretty damn miserable about things. « Read the rest of this entry »
Through Gritted Teeth #13: Neil Warnock
May 23, 2011 § 2 Comments
by Rob Langham
Without wishing to lurch into “my mate who works in the club shop saw Mickey Thomas heading for the Chairman’s office” type claims, the one person from whom I have received a personal opinion of Neil Warnock — that is, not one filtered through the closed ranks of media driven diplomacy — pronounced him to be a truly odious human being. « Read the rest of this entry »
