The passion that makes sport such a powerful commercial tool can create unforeseen problems.
It has long been the custom of hardcore sports fans to request that, upon their death, their ashes be scattered across the turf at their team’s home stadium. This practice may be seen in some quarters as a little morbid but is, nevertheless, harmless enough. While it might cause some cynics to question how full and rounded an existence these individuals had led, they must be free to choose their departure point for the ultimate journey. Urging them to ‘get a life’ would be more than a little futile at this point.
The problems creep in when a club moves home and this week we learned that Welsh soccer club Swansea City has launched an appeal to relatives of fans whose cremated remains have been interred beneath the pitch at their Vetch Field stadium.
You see the Swans are set to move to a new 20,000 seat stadium on the other side of town and they’re desperate to take all their fans with them…even if they are of the ‘late, lamented, fallen off life’s perch’ variety. To the caring Swans, a functioning respiratory system and evident pulse is not the prime qualification for fandom.
But here’s the difficulty.
Over the years ashes have been interred but nobody has kept much of a record of who they were or where their remains remain.
At the end of the season, the Vetch pitch will be dug up and the urns will be either returned to relatives of transferred to the new stadium. Relatives of those whose ashes were simply scattered on the field will just have to say where, and the appropriate slice of turf will also be moved to its new location.
One can only assume the deceased who remain unknown supporters will, in the absence of further instructions, be transferred to the new ground where Kevin Johns, the club chaplain, will conduct a short service of dedication.
There is, of course, no truth in the suggestion that by taking the deceased with them to the new stadium, Swansea is simply employing a tactic for increasing the gate.
Swansea has played at the Vetch for 93 years and, in that time, has enjoyed a number of highs and many more lows. The club has produced some great players and some magical moments, and in the good times they’ve been extremely well supported.
Their move will be a particular disappointment to the inmates of certain sections of Swansea jail, which overlooks part of the ground. For those jailbirds who were Swans fans the view helped alleviate the boredom. For others a sentence at Swansea was simply an example of the cruelty of the Welsh judicial system.
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Sports people are notoriously superstitious and this week provided the latest in a string of examples of just how seriously mumbo-jumbo can be taken.
You will recall that the Boston Red Sox victory in baseball’s World Series brought to an end a long losing streak which, we were told, was the result of a curse put on the club many moons ago.
In African football, shamen of various types routinely bless and curse one team or another with all the vigour and voodoo they can muster, while English club Birmingham City has carried out a religious ritual at its St Andrews Stadium in an effort to lift a curse, allegedly placed by Gypsies who had, presumably, been given season tickets.
Now it is the turn of Carlisle United Football Club to claim that it is a hex rather than hopelessness, which has seen them slide out of the Football League into the footballing purgatory of the Nationwide Conference.
Things have been going downhill for the club - and the city in general - since the installation of the sculptured granite "Cursing Stone" inscribed with a 16th century curse in one of Carlisle’s museums in 2001.
Not only has the club dropped out of the league, its stadium was recently flooded.
The club has even had to put up with an eccentric chairman who spoke publicly of his encounters with aliens.
Local councillors are trying to determine what to do with the stone, which contains a 1,069-word curse – around 1,067 words longer than the one normally used by footballers.
Councillor Jim Altman has no truck with the antis.
“The stone is just illustrating a historical past,” he said. “Bad things are always going to happen…aren’t they?”
It remains to be seen whether Carlisle can improve on their recent run of form and challenge for a promotion place. If not the TNT may be coming out by the end of the season.
