Silence speaks a thousand words

While exhibitions of sportsmanship are frequently seen on the field of sporting combat, it has to be said that the same cannot always be said for the behaviour of fans themselves.

It saddens me to say that fans of the so-called "beautiful game" often provide the least edifying examples of sporting conduct. Opposing players are routinely jeered and taunted (sometimes racially). At internationals, it has become fashionable to drown out the other team’s national anthem with a chorus of boos. And recent events in Sicily have reminded us that physical - occasionally fatal - violence is never far from the surface.

Having said all that, I should emphasise that the overwhelming majority of fans I have encountered over the years – whether it be football, cricket, athletics, Aussie Rules or any other sport – have been friendly, civilised and about as violent as the Dalai Lama.

There is a fine line between what is acceptable and what is not. For me, jeering and waving at an opposing penalty-taker is ‘banter’, part of the natural interplay between crowd and players. However, when you start raising questions about the moral rectitude of his parents, hurling racial abuse, or throwing missiles at him: each of these moves us further along the line from misdemeanour to crime, although where you should draw the line is far from clear.

My point is this. For many fans, the distinction between what is acceptable ‘sporting behaviour’ and what is not is a very grey area. Some would argue that a degree of "crowd interaction" is part and parcel of being a highly-paid professional sportsman. Others would hope you would afford players the same degree of civility you would to a work colleague.

Basically, there’s about as much chance of getting two fans to agree on this as there is of getting a straight answer out of a politician (quite possibly less).

There is, however, one aspect of crowd behaviour that supporters of all teams in all sports would agree unanimously on.

FA Community Shield, Millennium Stadium, Cardiff, August 2003

Let me tell you about a young, 21-year old footballer named Jimmy Davis. At this match between Manchester United and Arsenal, he rendered 60,000 vocal supporters silent and moved grown men to the verge of tears.

Don’t recognise the name? That’s no surprise, for Davis hardly shared the same limelight as the Beckhams and Zidanes of this world. Indeed, he only ever played one senior game for Manchester United, and wasn’t present in Cardiff on the day in question.

So how exactly did he capture the attention of an entire stadium?

Well, the previous morning, Jimmy Davis, an up-and-coming Manchester United player on loan with Watford, was killed in a car accident.

In one of those quirky coincidences that sport seems to throw up with disarming regularity, Jimmy Davis’ sole senior appearance for Man U was in a League Cup tie against, of all teams, Arsenal, in 2001.

Equally coincidentally, I had been at a half-full Highbury that night for this essentially meaningless game between the teams’ reserve line-ups. Now I generally have a fair recollection of matches I’ve attended, but pretty much all I can remember is that Arsenal won 4-0. I certainly don’t have any memory of the teenage Jimmy Davis playing. In a team full of backups and youth team players, he was just another shirt on the pitch. His name never registered on my consciousness until I heard the tragic news on the radio on the morning of 9th August 2003.

Davis’ was a career ended before it had ever really begun. Maybe he would have developed into a Premiership superstar, or perhaps he would have faded away into relative obscurity in the lower divisions. Nobody will ever know. What is certain is that until his death he was a largely unknown footballer, not one of the sport’s great superstars.

But that’s neither here nor there. When you visit the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, you’re paying your respects to the thousands of faceless young men who gave their lives fighting for what they believed in, not to the generals whose names are recorded in the history books. You don’t know their names, but you don’t hold them in any lesser regard.

The simple fact is a talented young sportsman died before his time in a car accident. The following afternoon the 22 players and 60,000-odd supporters of Arsenal and Manchester United put their allegiances and animosity aside for one minute to observe his passing in a silence so perfect you could have heard the proverbial pin drop. It’s the sort of thing that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end; it's the sort of thing which makes you proud to be part of such a community.

And then we watched a game of football that was played with the same fiercely competitive intensity as any other. Which is as it should be. Acknowledge death, pay your respects, and then move on. But in that one minute of impeccable and eloquent silence, you remember that sport is as much about the unknown soldier as it is about the generals. For all that is occasionally reprehensible about the behaviour of some sports fans (and again, I emphasise that a vocal and violent minority do not speak for the peaceable vast majority), moments like this remind everyone that there are bigger, more important things in life than baiting your opposite number.

Respected properly, the minute’s silence is one of the most unifying and moving experiences I have ever been a part of, both within and outside of sports. And I mean that most sincerely.