Fever Pitch

The Double is a term in the English Football League, and now the Premier League, that refers to a club that wins both the league title and the Football Association Cup in the same season. In the 120-year history of the English Football League/Premier League, it has only been accomplished 12 times. At the time of his writing, Hornby points out that when Arsenal accomplished The Double in 1971 ,only three teams in the entire 20th century had done it. Following the publication of Fever Pitch in 1992, however, Arsenal accomplished it two more times, in 1998 and 2002.

In association football, extra time refers to a period of time added to the end of a match when the score is tied. The term is synonymous with overtime in most other sports around the world. In the English Football League and now the Premier League, which Arsenal has played in since 1992, extra time consists of two 15-minute periods.

Football hooliganism refers to the violent behavior of fans that was common and notorious in England during the 1970s and 1980s. Virtually all clubs in the English Football League had a hooligan group, which operated in many ways like street gangs and came to be known as firms. A strong theme running throughout Fever Pitch is the dark side of football culture, which Hornby discusses in great detail. While he touches upon other issues such as racism, his primary focus of football culture’s dark side is hooliganism.

Football specials is a term referring to the use of chartered trains to carry supporters of a club to away games. The practice is used almost exclusively for football and in England. Football specials date back as far as the 1920s, and they became extremely popular in England in the 1970s and 1980s, when hooliganism was rampant in the sport, but they are far less common today. In his essay “My Mum and Charlie George,” Hornby looks back in fascination that his mother allowed him to travel to away games when he was only 14 years old. His amazement stems from the fact that the trains became dangerous because they were the primary source of transportation to games for hooligans.

The Heysel Stadium Disaster occurred in May of 1985 when 39 fans died and another 600 were injured in a human stampede at Heysel Stadium in Brussels. The match was the 1985 European Cup Final between Liverpool F.C., the English Football League champions, and Juventus F.C., the Italian champions. Roughly an hour before kickoff, Liverpool fans charged at Juventus fans, a common act of implied violence in English hooliganism in the 1980s, and breached a fence separating the sets of fans. Juventus fans, attempting to escape the charge, pressed against a retaining wall, which collapsed. As a result of the tragedy and the role of Liverpool fans, English clubs were banned from the competition for five years. At the time of the incident, Hornby is teaching English to foreign students in London, many of whom are Italian. He arranges a viewing of the televised match for many of the students and has to translate the words of the commentators describing the fact that English hooliganism has led to the deaths of 39 Juventus fans.

The Hillsborough disaster occurred in April of 1989 at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England, when 96 fans were crushed to death and more than 700 others were injured as a result of overcrowding in pens designed to accommodate standing spectators. The match was the 1989 FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool F.C. and Nottingham Forest. The scope of the disaster was so severe compared to similar previous incidents that a governmental inquiry was undertaken and a report of its findings was published as the Taylor Report in early 1990. The principal findings of the report were that the disaster was the fault of policing, rather than drunken Liverpool fans, as had been widely speculated because of their role in the Heysel tragedy a few years earlier. The report recommended that all upper-division football stadiums do away with terraces and other standing-only sections and convert to all-seaters. Hornby discusses the Hillsborough disaster at some length and ties it into his larger discussion concerning football culture.

The 1971 Ibrox disaster was a football tragedy occurring at a Celtic Football Club versus Rangers Football Club match at Ibrox Park in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1971. Sixty-six people were killed in the disaster, and more than 200 others were injured, when fans leaving the stadium apparently slipped down a dangerous stairway and caused a human crush. There had been several similar previous incidents in which a few deaths had occurred in the same fashion on the same stairway, but no structural changes or safety measures had been taken. Hornby refers to this event in his discussion about the Hillsborough disaster, arguing that the “awful warning was not heeded” (211).

A pitch is a playing field used in various sports such as association football, rugby, and cricket. Pitch is used as a term mostly in British English throughout the United Kingdom and is synonymous with the terms “field” or “playing field” in American English.

Promotion and relegation refers to the process used in many professional sports leagues in which clubs or franchises are moved up or down between divisions based on their performance over the previous season. Promotion and relegation has been used throughout Europe, most famously in European football leagues, and primarily the English Football League (EFL). From its founding in 1888 until 1992, when many of the top clubs in the sport broke away to form the Premier League, the EFL had several divisions, and clubs could be promoted to a higher division if they performed well or be relegated to a lower division if they did not. Clubs are frequently referred to as “up” or “down” in any given season.

A striker is one of the 11 playing positions occupied by a player on an association football team. Strikers are one of the attacking positions, often referred to as forwards. They are relied upon to be the team’s primary goal scorers and typically play closest to the opponent’s goal.

The Taylor Report was the result of an inquiry that was overseen by Lord Justice Taylor and was published in January of 1990. The inquiry looked into the causes of the Hillsborough Disaster of 1989, in which 96 football spectators were crushed to death, and the report made safety recommendations for future sporting events. The Taylor Report found that policing failures were mostly to blame because too many fans were herded into a single standing-room-only pen. The report’s primary recommendation was that stadiums remodel themselves to become all-seaters and do away with terraces and standing-room-only pens.