The Home Ground in Football

[anthony.brown]

The Home Ground in Football
Influence of the Crowd on Players
Keen Partisans Who Inspire a Team
By the Rev. ANDREW AMOS (Cambridge University, Corinthians, and England)

The advantage of playing at home is one of those axioms to which everyone subscribes, a fact which no one disputes.
In days of yore, when grounds varied much, when some were heavy, others were light; some were large, others small; some narrow, others wide; some resembled a ploughed field in all but name, others were as level as a cricket pitch, and as close-cut, the advantage of playing on a pitch with the eccentricities of which an eleven were thoroughly familiar was patent.
In these days, however, when the utmost care is paid to the playing surface and when most of the big clubs have grounds which are so good and on which large sums are expended year by year, the advantage of playing on a home ground is by no means so obvious. Nevertheless, the merest glance at results demonstrates beyond cavil that playing on the home ground is an advantage, even if it is impossible to find advantages or eccentricities of playing surface to account for it.
The truth appears to lie on the psychological plane. You may take a man and prescribe for him a rule of life, which turns him out perfectly trained; you may teach him by incessant practice the art of managing and propelling a football; you may develop, by coaching, his native skill and adaptability. He is in every way as fit as a fiddle, and you put him up to give an exhibition of class football; and the beggar does not come off. Why? The reason you may express in many ways. Perhaps the one easiest to understand is 'Nerves', though the word itself is not a very satisfactory one. In other words, men may be trained to become machines, and they may become machines; but all the time they remain something more - they are men, and the psychological factor remains exceedingly strong.

The Lonely Feeling
As a player, however experienced, steps on the field, there is at first the sense of isolation; he may run or walk out with the rest, but there is this sense of of loneliness; by experience, either of his own or others, he sets to work to gain an immediate remedy. The goalkeeper retires into goal and the rest of the team indulge in taking pot shots. The value of this practice is infinitesimal; its effect is psychological in reassuring individuals as to the presence of others. The team is on the field, and on the field as a family - thank goodness for that.
Then if the game be on the home ground, the crowd quickly alters its whole characteristic; it is no longer a beast full of eyes within and without, come to feast its gaze upon an exhibition of skill and criticise every slight fault or failing. By George! the crowd is there to back the team, to back you. They don't expect you to fail, therefore why should you?
Yes, and there is the club; in many instances the town to play for, with its proud traditions, its reputation, its hopes, its expectations. You can't let that down, and so the sense of individualism with its attendant loneliness, dies down, lost in a feeling of being one of a big family, amid an atmosphere of friendliness,support, and encouragement which wraps you round and warms you up. There are other factors, doubtless, but this factor tells heavily in favour of the home team. Of course this does not apply so strongly to the men of outstanding reputations gained in many an international contest, for these men are in a special sense the property of the country, and are welcome and more than welcome to the spectators on any ground; but one or even two men of this kind do not make a team, and it is the team that matters more than the man. To the creation of this atmosphere, the mere fact that a club has a certain following, is not in itself sufficient. The crowd must not be followers but partisans, who give support through thick and thin, especially thin. In this particular the teams of the provinces have a great advantage over a place like London, because the team is identified with the town. In a football sense teams like Blackburn, Newcastle, Sunderland, Preston, West Bromwich, Derby, Hull, Southampton, Portsmouth, have the individual sympathies of great communities behind them.

The Right Atmosphere
In London, but few clubs succeed in getting the atmosphere, and in overcoming the cosmopolitan character of London's population line; perhaps Tottenham Hotspur, West Ham, and Millwall have got it. The Corinthians have got it, though in a different way, because behind them is the amateur feeling, which is extraordinarily weighty. In this sense the Corinthians are a London team (though they draw a large proportion of their players from outside), simply because London is a rallying centre for men who have passed through the great Public Schools and Universities.
Thus it is an advantage to play on the home ground simply because it is 'home', and home means the existence of a family - a very big family - many of whom are present in support and more await their result with pleasure or sorrow as the team goes forward to success or fails to get a win.
It may be noted as a sort of appendix that unless the referee be a man of strong personality he is susceptible, unconsciously of course, to the psychological atmosphere of the ground on which the match is played. His decisions against the visiting team will be hailed with delight; any roughness by the visitors will be condemned, and any penalties he may inflict will be greeted with a roar of approbation, while on the other hand, he will be told to play the game or to come off should he detaect the failings of the home team. He, therefore, needs to withstand deliberately any weakness for the applause of the crowd. There are of course numbers of referees to whom it were impertinence to suggest that this applies, but there are others.
Daily News (London) Wednesday 1st October 1924