Why is swearing worse than cheating?

Nick Green,
Tuesday 5th September, 2006

We all agree that there are certain things that should not be exposed to the children of the world. Some things are best kept hidden from their pure, untainted minds.

So these days, pretty much everything is censored and edited; monitored and modified; regulated and calibrated.

We can no longer advertise smoking - because all the children in the world would supposedly succumb to the billboards and smoke the living arse out of themselves. (Because now that tobacco advertising is banned, kids will never see another cigarette again, will they?)

We can’t show violence in videogames unless there’s an ‘18’ certificate the size of a large boil plastered on the front cover – just in case “Little Johnny” goes a little mental and, say, decides to imitate the “what happens when animals are introduced to fireworks” scenario he saw on “DeathStick 4” or “Vomit of Misery 2: The New Death” (fake titles obviously, though they do sound interesting).

And recently, there has been talk concerning the implications of kids seeing footballers such as Wayne Rooney swearing their thick heads off.

Now, football, whether played in the playground or at the Nou Camp, is an extremely passionate and emotionally charged affair.

What happens when we’re worked up about something we love and something’s not gone our way?

We get angry.

And what spills out of our mouths like festered sewage when we’ve been brought down in the area by a challenge with all the graceful subtlety of a gorilla masturbating in a library?

Big, fat, horrible swear words.

It’s completely natural. Something the human race has done for centuries. It’s done to emphasise a point we may have. It’s common knowledge that “passionate outbursts” have always been very much a part of football’s gritty legacy.

Now, I know Rooney’s vocabulary is uncouth to the say the least but it genuinely surprised me when there was outcry and serious talk of football not being allowed to be shown before the watershed after he was shown mouthing a few choice expletives during some pre-watershed highlights.

The reasoning behind this chorus of disapproval was that it was a bad influence on children. People were worried that if their kids saw Rooney calling the referee a “f**king motherf**king f**k tossing twat f**k” (or something different yet equally vulgar), they would instantaneously start sounding like inebriated dock-workers… which seems a tad pointless to me.

Kids swear anyway. They always have done and they always will do. Well, maybe not in front of their parents - but everywhere else? You can bet your oh so precious life on it.

Do you really think that at lunchtime, all the kids walk round the school playground saying to one another, “Golly gosh! That Mrs. Baxter is a right old biddy. I do dislike her so.”? No, of course they don’t.

Most kids will learn their first swear word at around the age of eight and they won’t fail to learn more as they get older.

By the time kids are teenagers, they’ll have acquired most of the swear words in circulation and then use them all with admirable effect when they get hacked down by the school tosser during a lunchtime game. And this is irrespective of Mr. Rooney.

Given that fact, ask yourself this – if you had a choice, what would you rather our children be doing - swearing from time to time (like most kids do anyway) or cheating, lying and swindling their way through life?

You see, all the exaggerated hullabaloo about footballers swearing seems to pale in comparison to the bigger problem in football – the ever burgeoning act of what the panellists call “amateur dramatics”. Like Sandi Thom’s “I Wish I Was a Punk-Rocker (With Flowers in My Hair)”, it’s everywhere and about as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit.

One example of play-acting that immediately springs to mind was last season when Chelski played Liverpool at Stamford Bridge. Arjen Robben, who is undoubtedly an extremely talented player, lost the respect of so many fans when he feigned an injury to his face. It would have been comic genius if it hadn’t been so depressing. Sure enough, he fooled the dope dressed in black and got the Liverpool goalkeeper sent off - all thanks to his “amateur dramatics”.

The moral of the story? Cheating gets you everywhere.

If you want to increase your chances of winning a match, cheat your slimy arse off. That’s what we and certainly all our children will have learnt from our footballing idols over the next few years because it’s getting more and more common. In the near future, I guarantee the playgrounds will be full of Klinsmanns, Rivaldos and Robbens diving and spinning in the air like drunken ballerinas.

And once they’ve grown up, they’ll be programmed to lie and cheat every chance they get.

But that’s nowhere near as bad as them swearing, is it?