What a Waste of Money!
According to the Guardian, Barclaycard are spending ten grand on funding some poor soul to go round to football grounds and help us with making up songs. Thanks Barclaycard! If you made a list of all the different bits of football which need work or money or research, the songs fans sing would likely be somewhere very near the bottom.
The absence of obscenities is a mild disappointment: as any composer of terrace anthems will tell you, the odd bit of swearing can do wonders for your scansion and often add a cheap laugh along the way. But the real point-missed in this story is simply that fans very, very rarely accept songs written for them by someone else. There’s plenty of adaptation, sure, but I could count the examples of fans adopting songs foisted on them from outside on the fingers of a one-fingered hand. That single digit would be pointing at Leeds. ‘Marching On Together’ was first a dodgy Leeds United record, now it’s the key song in the Leeds fans’ repertoire. Each club already has its own laureate(s), with a built-in understanding of what’s important or potent or funny or relevant, external help isn’t wanted or needed. Particularly if it’s not sweary.