By Matthew Groeger (twitter.com/groegerwriting / instagram.com/groegerwriting)
“…seagulls are loud, unnecessarily aggressive, irritating creatures we could all do without..”
There was a moment during Leeds’ loss to Brighton when the camera panned to the stadium rafters. There was a seagull standing on one of the white metal beams overlooking the pitch. That is all I will remember from this game.
I don’t like seagulls. Now, you might be reading this thinking ‘ahh, I see, this is going to be a clever metaphor criticising Brighton Football Club, and we’ll only see it at the very end of the article!’
It isn’t. I promise. I just don’t like seagulls.
They’re just not very nice birds. They are noisy. They smell (probably). They steal food out of people’s hands. I was at a music festival (remember them?) a few years ago and there was a drone filming the crowd. A group of seagulls were attacking the drone. If anything, I’m probably more anti-drone than I am anti-seagull, but I think it speaks to the fundamental aggressiveness of the seagull character that their first instinct is to attack what they don’t understand.
So instead of watching the highlights (yawn) or trying to say something interesting about xG (impossible) my research for this match report has been to google seagulls.
The first thing that comes up is the admittedly-quite-funny “Seagulls (stop it now)” lip reading song they made with Yoda. I’m not giving actual seagulls any credit for that though, as I’m assuming it was humans who made the song.
” Not just “why can’t I eat/kill a seagull?” but “Why do seagulls even exist?” “
Next come a series of questions about seagulls which are very telling:
- Why is killing seagulls illegal?
This is very informative. If I Googled myself and found that the first question about me was “why is it illegal to kill him?” I would have to ask myself some questions.
- Why do we not eat seagulls?
Same point as above.
- What is the purpose of a seagull?
The killer third blow. Not just “why can’t I eat/kill a seagull?” but “Why do seagulls even exist?”
- What is the fine if you kill a seagull?
There is someone, somewhere, who is doing a cost benefit analysis on whether they can afford to kill a seagull. Or maybe they are calculating how many seagulls they can kill and still afford rent.
What I’m shooting at is that seagulls are loud, unnecessarily aggressive, irritating creatures we could all do without. Again, this is not a Brighton metaphor, it’s actually a metaphor for internet trolls.
After a weekend where players and clubs took a stand against the endless abuse they receive online, it is important to remember not to be a seagull. Only a seagull would abuse an opposition player because they had the audacity to Cruyff turn their centre back into oblivion. Only a seagull would abuse their own team’s player because they gave away a ridiculous, ridiculous penalty.
Football is frustrating, disappointing, and mind-numbingly boring at times (there you go, there’s your match report), but we have to remember that the people playing the game are human, and that we should never, ever be seagulls.
The Roaring Peacock 