It isn’t often Tottenham have a chance to lord it over Arsenal but they have one now. Legend has it Arsenal’s motley band of hooligans back in the 70’s and 80’s were given the name Gooners by mocking Tottenham fans. Part spoof of the Gunners, part spoof we’re gonna get ya, you’re gonna win nothing, the word was soon adopted by Arsenal fans and became a rallying cry throughout the country. Now the club, desperate to squeeze as much as they can from the fan’s wallet has come up with the idea of trademarking Gooners. As if it’s something some marketing person came up with in a wine bar on Upper Street. I wonder if those Tottenham fans are entitled to a royalty check.

Arsenal fans later returned the favour of course but we adopted Gooners in the same way we adopted ex Tottenham players Herbert Chapman, Pat Jennings and Sol Campbell. We took them in and made them better.

But trying to trademark a name given to bunch of lads who most certainly followed The Arsenal over land and sea, and Leicester smacks of something beyond greed. It’s the corporate world taking something from the terraces, something they never understood, and using it to make a few bob. They’ve already taken our North Bank, our Clock End in the name of progress. They even took the clock and left it outside the stadium! Now they want to take something else we made ours and turn it into a brand.

Where will it stop? West Ham producing ICF biscuits perhaps? Chelsea making Headhunters mouse pads, Millwall introducing a new range of Bushwhacker G strings? Or Cardiff introducing Soul Crew weekends at Barry Island! Those masters of merchandise could do a range of Red Army action figures, Leeds United could do model trains with missing windows and call it the Service Crew and Portsmouth could earn a royalty for every train that departed every station at 6.57.

It’s a nonsense of course. The club have always distanced themselves from their hooligan following, witness the stony silencing emanating from the halls of the Emirates in the days after the passing of terrace legend Dainton Connell. On the one hand they ignore the grief felt by thousands over the passing of one of their own, on the other they’re looking to cash in on those very people. Such naked cynicism and no sense of irony.

Football has moved on since the Gooners, Headhunters and their like took terraces round the country and in many ways it has improved. But it has lost touch with its soul and in many ways the fans of the 80’s who became the Gooners were that soul. At a time when football was considered very uncool and Margaret Thatcher tried to ID Card us into oblivion, people like the Gooners - the casuals if you like - stuck by their team, by extension the game. They were the ones who traveled to northern outposts, risking a barrage of bricks and bottles or a meet with Stanley, week in, week out. Loyalty was counted by how many games you went to, not your level of club membership or the cash you spend in the club shops.

These are lads who grew up in Arsenal families. They learnt from an early age the values that make our club special. They knew about Charlie George, Herbert Chapman, Ted Drake. They understood what Walsall 1933 meant. And they passed it on to their sons and daughters. Football was not the 24/7 experience it is now, people went because; well to suggest not going was laughable.

Football is booming now. Like it boomed in the post depression 30’s, post war 50’s. But any economist will tell you booms are not always sustainable. It wasn’t that long ago we had the dot com explosion and there were straight faced ‘experts’ telling us this was the future baby and it would last forever. It didn’t of course and those pundits have ditched the techies and gone elsewhere for their money. The same thing can happen in football. Again. The new breed, lacking the roots and shared experiences that symbolized the earlier generations, will hitch themselves to the latest media promoted bandwagon and the sponsors will follow leaving behind debts and empty seats.

Trademark the North Bank by all means. And the Clock End. They are part of the clubs rich tradition and are something fans can identify with. But leave the Gooners alone. They were for the Arsenal yet not of the Arsenal. The distinction is small yet to many important.

To read more of Jakarta Casual’s writing, his blog can be found here