Football!

Hi folks,

Well, I feel like I’ve just had the ultimate British weekend: going to a football match.

England, for all intents and purposes, really only has one sport – football (‘soccer,’ for those of you who don’t know, but I’ll only say that word once!) The sports section of the newspapers contain about 10 pages of football news and 1 page on the ‘lesser’ sports. The 5 year-olds at church know who has been traded for whom. The 3 year-olds are taken to football practice… I’m exaggerating, but not very much. A minority follow cricket and rugby, but everybody seems to love football.

Football is a great conversation starter and ender. The quickest way to learn local pejoratives or get into a fistfight in England is to simply run into any pub and yell something along the lines of “Chelsea!” although I wouldn’t recommend it. (Chelsea is almost universally hated around England since most folks feel they bought their success instead of building up a talented team over time).

Sheffield actually has two teams (‘football clubs’); Sheffield Wednesday, and Sheffield United. Both are in the Championship league (one league below the top level, the Premier League), and in recent years both have ended up in the upper half or even upper third of the league. I haven’t publicly declared my support for either team yet, lest I lose about half my friends.

At any rate, I went along with three other guys from church to the Sheffield Wednesday match on Saturday against Charlton (who are at the bottom of the league right now; there was a reason the tickets were only 10 quid). Happily, Wednesday won 4-1, which is a very high score for football.

Three good friends from church: Tom, Rob, and Mattias.

It was really the quintessential football match. The day was cold and overcast. Our toes were numb after the first half. People brought along thermoses of hot soup and tea. Before the game, long queues were forming in front of the chippies (fish ‘n chip shops). Fans from both teams sat on their own sides. There was a constant barrage of cheering, chanting, and booing; lots of goals. There were the fancy box seats, the general admission section, and the Kop (where you can expect slightly more ‘industrial’ language and manners). After the game, some slightly inebriated and instantly-nostalgic fellows sang Sheffield Wednesday chants, which mingled with the lingering cigarette smoke.

Wednesday in action.

It was a great day. Although, (disclaimer) I am still not publicly a Wednesday fan.

On a more sobering note, Wednesday’s stadium, Hillsborough, was also the location of Britain’s worst ever sporting disaster. In 1989, Sheffield was hosting a semi-final match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest, and the game was more than sold-out. Delays on the major motorway to Hillsborough caused may fans to arrive late, just as kick-off was drawing near. A large crowd started to form outside the gates, waiting to get in the stadium. They were frustrated that the game was about to start without them, and were further agitated by the cheering that was beginning inside.

The police, fearing that someone could be crushed by the throng of people waiting to pass through the turnstiles, simply opened the large exit gates, instantly relieving the pressure on the turnstiles, but allowing a massive wave of excited fans to descend on the pitch (the football field).

Thousands of people tried to push their way into the funnelling entrance of the stadium, oblivious to the effect of their combined force. The fans that were already standing at the front of the stadium, nearest the pitch, were pressed against the large steel fences that had been erected to prevent hooligans from interrupting the game. With literally nowhere to go and with several thousand people pushing from behind, they were simply crushed to death. 96 people died as a result, sparking massive and world-wide changes to the design of stadiums and to crowd control tactics.

Aside from thinking about disasters, I’m doing very well.

Things are starting to pick up with my school work. I have an exam coming up, so I’ve been mixing revisions with my normal research all week. ‘Revisions’ is what everyone over here calls studying for an exam, aka: “I would love to go to the cinema with you, but I’ve got revisions to do. My exam is in three days.”

You may or may not realise that the British have an entirely different educational philosophy than the US, especially at the university level. In the British system, you sign up for classes or modules each semester just like in the US. Older schools like Cambridge and Oxford run on three terms, but more modern schools, including Sheffield, use plain old semesters. That’s about where the similarities end.

UK semesters tend to start later and then end later in the year. For example, we are having final exams all week, and the new semester doesn’t begin until February. This means you can’t flush the commode of knowledge over Christmas break; you still have exams ahead... Gross.

An even bigger difference is the way the British evaluate the class. In the US, your class grade is typically some average of test grades, quizzes, homework, and a final exam (or essays, project reports, etc, as the case may be). Here, however, everything is dependent on one exam. It’s not technically a ‘final’ exam because it’s the only one! There are exceptions, of course.

The nice part about the British method is that it cuts out all the busy work throughout the semester. Imagine a life without mid-terms, without hours of homework every night, without essays due every other day, and so on. Imagine having time to read the books you were assigned and still having time to sleep. Glorious! On the other hand, imagine the stress if your entire semester grade came down to a single two hour exam! Will there be a curve-ball question? Will he emphasise the lecture notes more than the assigned reading, or vice versa? It is not uncommon for British students to practically lock themselves in their rooms in the weeks leading up to exams trying to memorize all the material (often for the first time).

I don’t think I could say conclusively which method works better. I suppose most of it comes down to the individual. Some people need lots of chances to learn from their mistakes. Others could go much farther in their studies if they weren’t held back by busy work. Personally, I love it.

Anyway... I need to get back to revisions... My exam is tomorrow (Theory of Distributed Systems). Yuck.

Cheers,
Will