The Psychology of Rowett

Since the Blues decided to embrace technology [about ten years after everybody else], ticket availability has been advertised via an online map of the St Andrew's stadium, which in turn is divided into 'sectors'. 

A green sector means you can take your family, your picnic hamper, a rug to sit on and you're likely to not lay eyes upon another mortal soul for 90 minutes.

Yellow?....So-so. You might be wedged in front of a couple of Bronx hat-wearers, spitting bits of peanut at the back of your head while they heckle the ref. But you can move. There's spare seats.

Red? Well we've not seen a 'code red' since the before time, the glorious Bruce days, since the 2005 Galacticos set the league on fire. A red block on the e-St Andrews map means it's sold out and there's not a seat to be had.

Well something weird happened today....we've got a code red.

Even as I write this, whole blocks are changing from green to red, one after another. It's almost akin to a sci-fi film when a ship's force-field is failing under prolonged attack.

You might imagine Amir [the excitable and amiable ticket office assistant] as the St Andrew's version of Scotty, twirling on his office chair back and forth across the room while a siren blares, smoke shoots out of the pipes and all the phones in the office ring unanswered. The club can't keep up with the demand.

Status report Amir?

'St Andrew's is 15% green laddy, and plummeting quickly!'

What's causing this surge in uptake? What's smashing the availability of tickets for tomorrow's game with Watford?

It's not the Klingons, or the Daleks or the Ewoks....

....It's Rowett fever.

Go to Birmingham and you'll see a city frantically chatting away. The foreign bus drivers are talking about Gary Rowett, the fruit sellers are discussing Rowett, the kids are talking about Rowett, the Birmingham internet forums are alive with the sound of Rowett. Members of the Blues Trust are sending their servants into their grand, opulent, attics to dust down their late 90s Auto-Windscreen emblazoned shirts and present them ready to wear.

The appointment of Gary Rowett has created a tidal wave of optimism that has smashed into the people of Birmingham, washing away the negativity and the misery, cleansing them of despair.

On the face of it the delirium seems misplaced. The uncaring, mysterious, distanced and damaging Hong Kong regime 'BIH' still own the club and look no closer to even wanting to sell. Finances are still cripplingly tight. The squad remains a mish-mash of young unproven academy products, free transfers from the lower leagues and wrinkled, aging pros on a last meal ticket. Blues fans continue to look to the transfer window with sheer terror. The overall situation hasn't changed much.

Yet Rowett's appointment has sent the masses into euphoria. Why?

Being an idiot who will occasionally buy a psychological book in the best-sellers stand at an airport bookstore, I must admit that I find the area fascinating when I get around to dipping my toe into literary titles like 'The 48 Laws of Power', 'The Art of Seduction' and 'The Chimp Complex' - all works loosely based on the techniques you can use to improve how others view you.

Rowett seems to embody a hell of a lot of the principles found in these books - conciously or subconciously.

Firstly the man, whilst not classically good looking, has an attractive vibe to him. Researchers everywhere from Ancient Greece to the London School of Economics have found that the more attractive you are, the better people treat you, think of you and behave around you.

Dr Gordon Patzer studied the phenomenon for three decades:

"According to Dr. Gordon Patzer, who has concluded 3 decades of research on physical attractiveness, human beings are hard-wired to respond more favorably to attractive people: “Good-looking men and women are generally regarded to be more talented, kind, honest and intelligent than their less attractive counterparts.” 

Patzer contends, “controlled studies show people go out of their way to help attractive people—of the same sex and opposite sex—because they want to be liked and accepted by good-looking people.”  Even studies of babies show they will look more intently and longer at attractive faces, Patzer argues."

Dion, Berscheid & Walster called this 'the halo effect':
 
"Results showed that participants overwhelmingly believed more attractive subjects have more socially desirable personality traits than either averagely attractive or unattractive subjects."

Part of Rowett's appeal is that he's a good looking bloke, and we therefore subconsciously assume he's going to be a good manager.

The 'halo effect' has undoubtedly added to the success of managers like José Mourinho, for example.

I believe the opposite is true too. Ugly managers have to work their bollocks off to get praise. Steve McLaren and Steve Bruce being two great examples. 

Like Mourinho, Rowett also employs another devastatingly effective social tactic....he's immaculately dressed.

By switching the muddy tracksuit for a smart shirt, chinos, shoes, a neck-scarf, even a snood. This creates status, engenders a sense of professionalism.

If you look the part, people will assume that you are the part.

'That guy's wearing a scarf and a suit, he MUST be a good manager'. 

Rowett knows this, and again, adds this tactic to his arsenal.

The visual will only get you so far, however. Looking the part must be coupled with high status behaviour.

When Gary Rowett joined the guy off Blue Peter and Peter Beagrie during the reflective post-match show after Blues drew with Wolves at Molineux on Saturday morning, he seemed to steal the focus by talking slowly and calmly in a relaxed, informed, confident manner that emitted an aura, a sense of gravitas. Not only did the viewers learn about the game from the content of Rowett's post-match comments, but the way Rowett used the tools of rhetoric so effectively added to this 'cool' reputation that is building quickly.

In many ways Rowett is the anti-Ed Miliband, whose ugliness, geekiness and awkward, nasally, way of speaking is making what should be an easy Labour win in the next election appear shaky to say the least.

When you add the innate attributes Rowett has that make him appealing on a psychological level to the fact he's an ex-Blues player himself, and is born in the suburbs of Greater Birmingham, you quickly start to realise just why this guy is getting a lot of Brummie love.

All peoples in every corner of the globe idolise that which reminds them of themselves. In Rowett, when we hear his soft South Birmingham tones, it immediately resonates with us. Exactly the same reason Peaky Blinders is immensely popular in the West Midlands region. We're proud when we see one of our own succeed - especially because there is a perception that Brummies and West Midlanders in general are largely beaten down and ridiculed by the rest of the nation.

Rowett has emerged as a Brummie Julius Caesar type character, ready to rally the Brummie legions together, create a siege mentality and drag Blues up the table kicking and screaming.

It also helps that he's coming across as extremely positive. He refuses to mention the 8-0, the prior management, he's bringing players back in from the cold, he's pumping out a positive message in between making thoroughly complimentary remarks about the club and the fans in heartfelt way.

The Blues fans are absolutely desperate to find a messiah too.

They are the romantic, working class hordes of the city. Simple people, the people of the earth. They will follow unquestioningly, and they have been ill-treated time and time again.

Chris Hughton will never be held in such high regard as he was at Blues. The fans worshiped him, forgave every mistake, afforded patience, yet he abandoned them on the sinking ship as he fled to Norwich.

This is a fanbase that put up with McLeish's horrific anti-football for the best part of four seasons, witnessed two relegations because of it and didn't even boo in protest, when other fans [such as Blackburn, Blackpool, Newcastle, Villa] would have burned the ground down in similar circumstances.

When Birmingham first reached the Premiership, and they signed their first big, foreign type player [Aliou Cissé], the guy was treated as the king of Birmingham despite being a really average, cumbersome, central midfielder.

The Birmingham fans are desperate for something, somebody, to get behind, a receptacle for their unwavering passionate support.

In Rowett, they may have finally found such a figure.

And Rowett himself is on to an obvious winner. Faced with a fanbase that is at its lowest ebb and in search of a hero; taking over a team that is in the relegation zone and has just lost 8-0, and having all the psychological 'cool tools' at his disposal - it's difficult to see Rowett failing at Blues.

If Blues go down, Rowett can rightfully say 'it wasn't my fault' and blame the ownership problems or even the previous manager. If Blues stay up, the Brummie Julius Caesar will have the desperate hordes eating out of his hands. Rowett will be raised to demi-God status.

Ultimately if the ownership issues don't change, Rowett's charm will one day work on a club in the Premiership, and the drive and ambition in the man that saw him leave Burton for Blues will see him leave Blues to progress.

On such a day the Blues hordes' love for Rowett will turn to anger, with the vitriol of a spurned lover.

I'll probably have to dig out a new internet username too.

But in the mean time, let's enjoy the journey. Let's ride this tidal wave of positivity, let's get behind local lad Rowett and his attempts to unite the Brummies, let's turn all of those green sectors red for the Watford game tomorrow.

Otherwise if you don't you'll upset Amir in the ticket office, and that'd be ever such a shame because he is such a nice chap.

 

 

 



 

 



 



 

The Destruction of St Andrews

The fortress of St Andrews stood imposingly on the horizon as we walked towards the home of the Blues. The sun-light bounced off the glass windows and reflective paneling, the rooftop flags danced in the wind, twisted fences of metal surrounded the perimeter.

This was one of the toughest places to go in football. 

Just three seasons ago, when Hughton reigned, Blues were unbeaten in 22 of their 23 home games. Even in the days of the Premiership, the likes of Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal rarely escaped the ground with their dignity intact [the latter losing two titles on the hallowed Birmingham turf].

The chubby Spaniard - Rafa Benitez - piled up the greatest riches the sport had to offer whilst manager at Liverpool. Yet even this Anfield legend failed to taste a single league victory at the Blues.

From the isolated, cold, wind-swept, Northern fishing villages of Newcastle and Sunderland, to the farms of Norwich and Ipswich, all and sundry feared the St Andrews fixture.

As we got closer to the ground, it became noticeable that the streets were half empty. A palpable silence floated through the air, only broken by the sizzling of the unsold burgers now burning on the grills of the food stalls. Nobody was here.

The metal fences had started to rust. The once powerful royal blue had faded to a sickly grey. The walls were peeling, crying out for a new lick of paint. I looked down at my feet, I found myself standing on a pavement comprised of crumbling bricks which seemed to whisper ghost-like personal messages from deceased Brummies. "Make us proud, remember we're Blues, never forget what we stand for."

A shadow blinked in the corner of my eye, a Blues fan scarpered from an alleyway and then vanished in an instant, like a mouse hoping to escape attention by racing into a hole in the floorboards.

The shutters of a window flapped in the distance.

We entered the ground. In the thoroughfare a bunch of Blues fans had gathered. These were gaunt men with worn faces, standing in contemplative silence, defeated people bedraggled with fatigue. Ten years ago these were monsters, warriors, Spartans ready to raise the roof off the fortress and create a hostile cauldron of noise fueled by working class aggression. Now they were meekly nibbling cheese and onion pasties and playing Candy Crush on their iPhones.

We emerged from the dark, cavernous thoroughfare and were blinded by huge waves of bright blue empty seats which splashed against pockets of supporters huddling together in the crisp October air. 

As I looked over to block 21 where me and my dad sat from 1995 to 2013, where we'd experienced every emotion as football fans over the best part of two decades: feeling the highs of thrashing the Villa 3-0 on that famed September night; the intense drama as we never gave up against Ipswich in the semi-finals of the league cup as the whole stand literally shook in excitement; and finally the heartbreak of shock play-off defeats at home to Watford and Barnsley. I now saw an abandoned block, with no life or movement except for a plastic bag blowing in the wind underneath a 'Hollywood Monster' sponsor board.

Gone were me and my dad. So too had Sue and Dave vanished. And the four Zulus who used to come late every week and miss kick off. And that guy with the goatee who made everyone laugh. And Brian. And old man Larry who would offer everybody a sweet from his bag which never seemed to empty. They were all ghosts of a bygone era.

The few Blues fans left in the stadium were haunted figures. Sitting in silence, awaiting their fate. They reclined in their chairs, and stared at the sky, with glazed eyes and miserable countenances. 

Many lacked the energy to speak, or even react to the events on the field, as if they were characters on an Antarctic film, had got lost and were slowly freezing to death.

Bournemouth scored. The frozen, older Blues fans remained unperturbed, still staring at the sky, inert with indifference.

Small bands of younger Birmingham fans started abusing the Blues players. Jeering every misplaced pass. Booing bouts of poor play. Shouting and swearing in high pitched voices, creating an atmosphere of panic, negativity and hostility.

The Birmingham players reacted by actively hiding from the football. Treating it like a hot potato. They let the indignant screams of the hotheaded younger fans get to them and started making foolish mistakes.

Bournemouth scored again, and scored again. The half time whistle blew. The angry young Blues fans snarled and spat boos. The zombified Birmingham fans rose in synchronisation. 

The half time entertainment started. An awkward Birmingham fan had to chip three balls into the net from varying distances without the ball bouncing in order to win some prizes. As the tubby contestant chipped the ball around, wry smiles broke on the faces of the Birmingham fans - light relief from the torture of the football. 

Yet these smiles were soon wiped out as the players re-emerged for the second half. The zombies in the stands sat down and resumed their fixed positions and the younger hate-filled Birmingham fans returned from the bars and food stands with bits of pie and pasty splattered around the corners of their saggy cheeks.

Many Birmingham fans had fled the ground at 3-0. Many more abandoned the once impenetrable fortress when Bournemouth's fourth and fifth went in.

On Bournemouth scoring their sixth and seventh the sky went an ominous black and the clouds swirled in disarray. 

Young babes and children in their parents arms let out a piercing, bloodcurdling scream, and begged their parents to take them home and never bring them back again. 

Women swooned in the stands. Men fell about with grief, pounding the floor with their fists, begging for an end to come quick.

The Bournemouth players were throwing up on the sidelines. 

Eddie Howe, the Bournemouth manager, burst into a flood of tears. Unable to comprehend the horrible and tragic event he was witnessing.

He wanted Bournemouth to win today, but not at the expense of destroying one of the nation's most-loved and respected sides in such a comprehensive manner.

Two Birmingham fans, totally shattered and broken, in a last ditch effort, invaded the pitch, burst past the BIH agents and hurled their season tickets into the air before being caught and taken into the dark, torture cells in the abyss of the St Andrews basement.

Malcolm Crosby escaped out of a side-door.

At the full time whistle Bournemouth had scored eight, and what was once the great and feared St Andrews was now nothing but a patch of grass.

The Birmingham fans scarpered out and hurried into their cars, as they zipped past, the sound of Tom Ross sighing from the radio became audible to all who lined the dusty roads out of Small Heath. The smoke from St Andrews billowed into the air.

As I got home, my dad was sitting on the sofa watching 'Beauty and the Geek: Australia'.

'Blues were shit then?'

'Yeah' I replied, hanging my coat up.

'I dunno why you still bother.' 

'Yeah..me neither, but hey ho, it's something to do I suppose.' I shrugged.

The Purge of the Trolls

Rome, and the year is 1633. An unwell, frail, elderly man nearly 70 years old is dragged into a darkened room lit by flickering candle light.

The guards hurl the old man to the ground. Overlooking this aggression is a panel of jurors, the Roman Inquisition, working on behalf of the Catholic Church. The old man is Galileo, and he’s on trial for heresy.

For Galileo had written a works entitled ‘Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems’ which spoke at length about the two competing theories relating to the Earth and Sun’s relative movements in space. The official stance of the Catholic Church was that the Sun revolved around the Earth [which was the central body of the solar system]. Galileo was suspected of supporting the rival heliocentric position – that the Earth orbited the Sun.

The trial didn’t go too well for Galileo. 

On being found guilty of promoting the idea that the Sun was the solar system’s central body and taking the heretical position against the Church, the old man sighed and looked upwards, stamped his foot on the ground and uttered, dejectedly, ‘and yet it moves’.

Galileo, the near 70 year old scientist was then dragged back to his cell to face a gruesome death by torture. It was only after a doctor interjected, late in the hour, that Galileo was far too old and ill to be tortured to death was the scientist given the ‘lighter’ sentence of life imprisonment where he would be forced to read the Psalms of Confession section of the Bible, every week, until the end of time, or death – whichever came first.

Within ten years Galileo died whilst under house arrest, after spending his last few years a blind man whose name had been dragged through the mud.

So much for scientific thought.

History is littered with incidents like Galileo’s fall from prominence.

Many of these tragedies we know about, but there’s also many we don’t know about because historical records have been lost to us through war, fire, flooding or even because the enemies of the individual didn’t want us to find out.

Throughout time immemorial has the individual with the unorthodox opinion been harassed, maltreated and often…killed…by the majority, by the mob. There’s incidents stretching back from Ancient Greece all the way to our modern day. Perhaps it’s part of our DNA as a people.

Worryingly however, where once we looked back upon history and haughtily tutted, dismissing our ancestors as a bunch of reactionary idiots…the issue has become hugely relevant in our modern world. We’re becoming almost as bad. All of a sudden we now have this notion of ‘trolling’ which has been appropriated by the media and is currently spiralling out of control.

I’m a guy in my twenties, the rise of social media has coincided with my journey from teenager to adult. Myspace rose to prominence during my late teens, Twitter emerged as a powerhouse in my early twenties. I feel confident in discussing the issue. Let’s be frank, there are trolls out there. To deny the problem would be folly. There are strange, slightly autistic, chubby types who sit in their parents’ basement and relentlessly post death threats to celebrities, or ‘invade’ Facebook groups dedicated to dead children and post horrendously offensive, graphic content.

These people are mentally ill. They’re somewhere on the spectrum. There’s an argument to suggest that they themselves are victims of sorts, and their vile online behaviour is the manifestation of a failed life of misery, where the troll lashes out at the world in order to alleviate their own inner problems and inadequacies.

But the scary thing is……the media have now picked up the term, and the media tends to be full of people from an older generation who don’t truly understand social media or the internet and since finding out about ‘trolling’…. they’re applying the term to absolutely everybody.

Any opinion uttered online that contradicts the common thought is now slammed as trolling. 

Had Twitter existed in 1633, you can absolutely guarantee that Galileo would have been dismissed and derided as a troll. Of this I have no doubt. For questioning the popular mind-set he would have been portrayed as an online sicko, as a member of the dregs of society. The ‘trolling’ criticism would have been hurled at him to not only besmirch his name, but censor him.  You can see the headlines in the press…’Sick Troll Blasts Bible with Crankpot Sun Theory’. Galileo would have been relegated from a human to some inhuman ‘troll’ that lurks in the shadows intent on upsetting people.  An entity beyond reason.

In recent weeks the Madeline McCann incident has risen to the surface in regards to the trolling phenomenon.

Everybody knows the narrative. Madeline disappeared from a holiday home in Portugal while the parents were nearby socialising with friends at a restaurant.

Many people in society remain irritated by this case, and are utterly dismayed and incredulous that parents would leave a three year old unattended for a period of time [no matter how many times the children were checked upon]. Furthermore the McCanns always seemed to lack charisma in their numerous television interviews, and when they released a book about the controversy and took on almost celebrity status, many mothers around the nation became pretty…irked.

When Brenda Leyland, a 63 year-old, mother of two, used her Twitter account to criticise the conduct of the McCanns during and after the disappearance incident it wasn’t mindless trolling for giggles, but merely an emotional mother giving a rather forthright and passionate opinion on the matter [one which went against the view espoused throughout the media].

The media caught wind of Brenda’s online criticisms and utterly destroyed the woman. 

They published her photos across the national newspapers, they published her whereabouts, ruined her life, they branded her ‘The McCann Troll’, snatching away her status as a human being, relegating her into some cartoonish villain.

Sky News set camp up outside her front door, pointed cameras at the household and accosted Brenda whenever she left the house. 

She was living under siege.

As the sun set, and the sky darkened to night, Brenda fled her home, gathered up what meagre possessions she could carry and attempted to escape the attention of the cameras and the ravenous media.

24 hours later, Brenda Leyland, the middle class, 63 year old mother of two was found dead on a bed in a Leicestershire hotel room.

This wasn’t the chubby, mentally ill, oddball in their parents’ basement posting crude rape jokes about dead people for a cheap laugh…..this was just an average mother with a seemingly passionate fixation about the welfare of children and happened to think the McCanns had been negligent.

Her mistake was to voice this opinion.

The night Brenda’s lifeless body, or, as the media put it, ‘the McCann Troll’s lifeless body was carried out of the Leicestershire hotel room her son Ben typed on Facebook:

“I love you mum and I will miss you forever.”

She had aired a controversial opinion online, one which opposed the prevailing mind-set and she had paid the penalty.

Suzanne Moore in The Guardian reacted in predictable fashion [remember the older generation of journalists tend to misuse internet terminology] by conflating Brenda Leyland in with all other mad trolls, as attention seekers, or just insane or sick. 

The important separation of somebody merely challenging the orthodox view and giving an opinion with somebody launching a campaign of mindless hate was just ignored. ‘All these trolls are the same’ was the inference, and that all online criticism which some people find offensive should be outlawed.

She snapped about these twitter trolls writing stuff that they wouldn’t say in real life. About a people who thrive through anonymity.

But surely, the reason people like Brenda Leyland felt the need to criticise through the internet was because if she voiced her views in public she might have been met with violence, verbal abuse and social ostracism – surely that is a greater criticism of an intolerant society? Of a culture which seeks to silence diversity of opinion? 

When we see old Galileo locked in his house and forced to read the Bible every day, or Brenda Leyland dead in a hotel room, is there any wonder people seek anonymity when delivering alternative views? It’s far safer that way.

As I write this article the main headline on Sky News, in pure Brass Eye fashion, is that online trolls are to be handed two year PRISON sentences. 

This of course throws up all sorts of questions...

How do you define trolling?

Is it merely the causing of offence?

If so, how do you measure offence?

What’s wrong with being offended?

Is trolling exclusively the weirdo who posts about shagging murder victims on Facebook? Or is it an elderly mother that makes controversial observations about current affairs?

Or if you’re Suzanne Moore, do you just lock them all up and swallow the key?

It doesn’t take a mad conspiracy theorist sitting in a cupboard with a frying pan on his head to see the easy jump from arresting trolls who post personal insults to celebrities, to the imprisonment of trolls who question government policy, or wars, or immigration policy, or well….anything that the powers that be deem to be offensive.

There has to be a line drawn in the sand, we’re mostly sensible adults, we should be able to discern the difference between posting death threats to actors and offering a criticism about a current affairs issue.

The political correctness of ‘causing offence’ started off as a just concept and aimed to protect minority groups, reduce violence and discrimination, but somewhere along the line it has transmuted into an uncontrollable beast that is increasingly impinging on all areas of public life. 

Stephen Fry has a fantastic quote about the sheer ridiculousness of the notion of ‘offence’:

“It's now very common to hear people say, 'I'm rather offended by that.' As if that gives them certain rights. It's actually nothing more... than a whine. 'I find that offensive.' It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. 'I am offended by that.' Well, so fucking what."

-       -   Stephen Fry

 

As we move towards a society where ‘causing offence’ becomes illegal, and as the net of what is deemed offensive widens to incorporate…well…..everything, more and more of us will fall foul of the ever-changing and increasingly irrational rules.

 

Anybody with an ounce of personality will become a troll. It now seems inevitable.

Let’s just hope there’s enough seats under the bridge for all us trolls, otherwise I’ll get a bit arsey and I might say something offensive at the goats passing overhead.

Who knows? Maybe Galileo can lend me his Bible and calm me down.

The beardy twat.

 

The NFL for English Noobs

If you switch the television on and catch the beginning of an opening NFL game, just stop what you’re doing and allow yourself to absorb the scene for a moment. Notice the colour, the fireworks, the cheerleaders, the smoke, the razzmatazz – this is big time spectacle sport, this is the NFL.

Some people will watch the NFL and be unperturbed by the splendour. The bright colours will appear garish, the orchestrated crowd behaviours will seem crass and the comments from the TV pundits will seem ludicrously hyperbolic. To those people I say let your hair down and enjoy it. I treat the NFL as American fast food. You can go through life eating salads, dining out at Michelin star restaurants and ordering the quail’s eggs on a bed of spinach but who doesn’t like to abandon pretension every now and then and enjoy the occasional cheeseburger, fries and milkshake at their local American restaurant?

That’s the NFL. You can pick holes in it and criticise all day, but it’s really good fun.

Don’t get me wrong, I was once like you, scoffing at this ‘American rubbish’. Using the tired, worn out [and unfunny] ‘rugby for wimps’ catchphrases; complaining about the constant ad breaks; ridiculing just how fat the defenders were; getting irked every time one of these defenders performed a celebration dance just for tackling somebody.

‘What’s he dancing for? All he’s done is trip somebody up‘, I would murmur in bemusement.

I hadn’t bothered to learn the rules of the game, nor did I know anything about the players, the characters in the contests, the mind games, the histories of the teams. Sporting jingoism kicked in and I joined the hordes of other British people who just blindly dismiss the game as being inferior to our sports.

It is extremely easy to just reject American Football outright for two main reasons:

Firstly, the game is incredibly complex. Even the refs don’t seem to understand the rules a lot of the time. Add these complicated rules to a wall of incomprehensible jargon [PAT, scrimmage, screen pass, icing the kicker] and you’re left with something that takes a lot of patience and learning to understand.

Even after two years of watching, I still probably understand about 50 per cent of the game [enough to enjoy it] and I’ve got no doubt that should a proper NFL fan read this article they’ll be cringing at my terminology. I can only imagine it’s the equivalent of an American guy talking about this new game ‘Soccer’ and calling the box ‘the square’ , the penalty spot ‘the penalty dot’ and so on [to those people let me prematurely apologise.]

I think the other reason there’s a bit of hostility towards the sport in the UK generally is that…..well….the type of British people who love NFL are generally deemed to be quite ‘odd’.
Whenever the Super Bowl coverage on the BBC or Sky switches to check in at the ‘Super Bowl party in London’ and these people in replica XXL jerseys emerge to be interviewed, it’s usually as if ‘My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding’ and the geeks from ‘Beauty and the Geek’ have collided to engender a horrifying new spectacle.

As if a Games Workshop store decided to lock the clientele in one night, on a total whim, and turned the place into a disco.

I’m sure the attendees of the NFL UK events are all nice people, and I’d get on with them if I ever made the pilgrimage down there in February – but I can’t help feeling that they slightly hurt the image of the game in the UK and cement its status as a niche interest.

If you give NFL a chance, learn the rules and the jargon and you gloss over the existence of the Super Bowl London fans…you can learn to love this sport, because it’s genuinely brilliant.

I got into the sport because I had a gambling problem of sorts. The rain was a tappin’ on my window pane, the hour was 1am and I’d exhausted all bets on the total number of corners in the Israeli Premier Division match between Maccabi Haifa and a team whose name escapes me but it was nought but a succession of vowels.

But  down there, an NFL match was about to begin. I blindly threw a fiver at the Denver Broncos – 7. Woke up the next morning and my money had doubled. A few more bets over the coming weeks and I was watching the matches broadcast on Sky and Channel Four. The Denver Broncos would be the team I’d support.

I’ve always liked the idea of Colorado. It’s not East Coast, it’s not West Coast, and so to the average Brit it remains quite a mysterious kind of place. I also like ‘proper’ weather. Apparently in Colorado they get non-stop snow from about October to April, and then in the summer months it’s routinely 30 degrees plus.

That sounds fantastic.

White Christmases and boiling summers, one extreme or the other. My kind of place. None of this cloud and mediocre drizzle we get here.

Then factor in that Colorado is the home of South Park. The Broncos are the team of Cartman, Randy, Stan, Mrs Garrison, Chef, Butters and co.

Their logo is a horse that looks like its head’s on fire and their quarterback is the greatest QB of all time – Peyton Manning, a guy who is incomparable to any one character in our football. Someone who is class personified. A walking manifestation of old school America. I guess he’d be the equivalent of Zinedine Zidane’s ability and Clarence Seedorf’s charm.

When the Denver Broncos faced the Seattle Seahawks in last year’s Super Bowl, the old me would have seen just two faceless teams. However, on knowing a bit about the sport, two faceless teams became the story of Peyton Manning [the ageing, all-time great] attempting to secure his legacy and bring a Super Bowl to Denver, facing off against Seattle who are famed for having the best defence in the NFL, hilariously nicknamed the ‘Legion of Boom’ for their crunching tackles.

Once you know that background information, a sterile match between two teams becomes quite an enthralling contest. Would Peyton Manning be protected long enough to throw the ball, or would the Legion of Boom and friends get to him and break his ageing bones?

As it happened Seattle thrashed Denver in a shocking turn of affairs. Seattle’s defensive monsters trampled all over Denver and Peyton Manning was roughed up to the point of physical abuse, getting no protection from his offensive line.

In American Football the offensive line are the chubby guys who stand in front of the quarterback and try to stop the defenders from crunching him. They’re bodyguards.

Imagine Peyton Manning is the Queen. Seattle’s defenders are Mike Tyson, Ya Ya Toure and Joe Calzaghe, and they’re trying to beat up the Queen. The only people attempting to stop that from happening are the offensive line. If Seattle’s defence was personified as Mike Tyson, Denver’s offensive line was Tyrion off Game of Thrones. A total mismatch.

On Friday 5^th September the journey to Super Bowl XLIX begins as reigning champions the Seattle Seahawks host the attractively uniformed Green Bay Packers with their yellow helmets, green jerseys and yellow trousers in a matchup perfectly suited to catch the attention of any newbie fan. Seattle are famed for having the most impressive home form in the league [think Pulis’s Stoke], playing in a cold, wind-swept stadium where the fans regularly scream so loud they’ve caused minor earthquakes in the past.

Green Bay are hotly tipped to make the Super Bowl this year after addressing their defensive concerns and holding onto one of the most explosive offences in the NFL led by the brilliant Aaron Rodgers.

Unfortunately given our time differences the game isn’t being shown until the wee hours of the morning, so Sky + this contest if you’ve got to get up in the morning.

Once you understand the basic rules and you become aware of the characters like Peyton Manning, Aaron Rodgers and the Legion of Boom, the sport really does enrich a weekend’s afternoon.

You quickly realise that the fat guys are fat for a reason – to protect their quarterbacks with their bodies. The ad breaks in America are great because they allow us to listen to the brilliant and often funny views of pundits like Iron Mike Carlson in the studio. The timeouts aren’t boring, but are actually used as a tactic, and if they’re misused it can be the difference between a team winning and losing.

Once you get your head around the idea that our football and the NFL are beyond comparison, just as Jazz music is to Pop, you can enjoy both types of sport. The non-stop and the tactical.

Good luck in taking your first step into the sporting Disney World that is the NFL – and if you can pick a team using better reasons than ‘colour of uniforms’ and ‘weather’ then you’re a better man than me.

* The NFL starts Thursday 4th September with reigning champions Seattle Seahawks facing off against Aaron Rodgers' Green Bay Packers*

Follow @VivaBrownie