Football Supporters' Association

period and obviously we launched as a supporters group then to provide a strong voice, a voice that is based around democratic principles and independent principles as an organisation.

And also at the time, I'd been thinking a lot that I worked for the Football Supporters Association, so I worked with supporters trusts and big supporter entities at all clubs across the whole pyramid.

And I'd always sort of wondered why we were in a position where Sunderland didn't have their own supporters trust.

We were probably one of the biggest clubs, if not the biggest that didn't have one.

We're at a point in the club, and I guess we have been for the last year or so, at a point in the club's history where there is an opportunity for the club ownership and executive team to exploit the loyalty of supporters because the demand is as high as ever.

There's a real, obviously, positive trajectory on the pitch.

And in the day job of the Football Supporters Association, we do a lot of work with Premier League clubs, particularly those clubs that are being influenced by their owners, where pricing continuously goes up, where there is an erosion of discounted pricing, concessionary pricing, and where there is a feeling across the Premier League that there is a move towards moving away from core support in order to take the big bucks on a one-to-one match basis from, for want of a better phrase, tourist fans.

Now, I'm not saying there's a massive influx of tourist fans at Sunderland, but we do have a ground that we can pretty much sell out regularly.

Yeah, so for anyone who isn't aware, Andy Burnham, the Prime Minister, has branded a ban on fans being allowed to drink alcohol in the stands during men's football matches as discrimination.

He thinks it's unfair that football fans get singled out The Football Supporters Association have said that the legislation is outdated and should be reviewed.

Of course, this legislation was brought in back in 1985 by Margaret Thatcher, so it was brought in a long time ago.

I think for me, it's one of those things.

As you will know by now, Festive Fixtures came out behind the scenes.

The Football Supporters Association has been pushing the Premier League and Sky.

TNT etc to actually at least release the Christmas period because that's a period that people plan for don't they ahead of schedule so at least have the decency of announcing that because you haven't got European games over Christmas period so it should be a lot easier to lock in and you know there's no excuses so at least they can reveal those games which they did and this time Leeds is the game and it's an early one as well which is a bit of a pain but Especially after Christmas.

12.30 Boxing

So there does have to be a bit of nuance.

I see that they're using empirical data to support the argument from the FSA, the Football Supporters Association, saying that the women's Super League is a blueprint.

I think that's absurd.

A completely different fan base, completely different atmosphere.

Football was not simply a game to him, as David said.

and he became one of Britain's most important writers on football culture, helped establish the Football Supporters Association, observer of the industry and its supporters because he wrote about the fans.

And perhaps without quite saying so, he kept returning to the same question, what exactly happens when thousands of people gather together to watch a spectacle? The colours, the scarves, the songs, the chants, the tribal identities, the heroes and villains, the sacred ground, the ritual journey to the stadium, the anticipation, the collective anxiety.

And then the moment when something happens on the pitch and thousands of people suddenly scream as one organism.

So, you know, not everything is... cosy meetings and not everything is Zooms and not everything is emails.

There's other stuff in supporters' armoury and I always say that there is a real power when supporters come together and that would be why I would always encourage people to join organisations like the Spirit of Shankly, to support things like the Football Supporters Association.

I think things like that are more important than ever in football right now.

When you look at some of the worrying directions it's gone in, you look at the World Cup and Infantino, you look at plenty of stuff that we've opposed, European Super League, matt meaningful matches being played abroad you know there's all of these things that supporters have opposed and they haven't happened but i think without you know organized supporters we could well be in a much worse place than we are i think tickets would be much more expensive i think we would have meaningful matches abroad i think we may well about the european super league all of those things were opposed and prevented by supporters coming together.

I think for, for those who don't know me, I, I'm a founder of the City Fans Foodbank, um, and was involved with the organization of the protest at City.

Um, you know, I'm a member of the Football Supporters Association and the Fans Europe organization a- and, you know, my background outside of that i- you know, not including work obviously, is, is, you know, organizing, community organizing, tenants union, stuff like that.

So people getting organized and fighting for something better is very much my, my thing.

I think the ones at United are interesting because we, well, we know that the protest at City, which secured the ticket price freezes and matchday price reductions, you know, not unqualified wins, but wins nonetheless.