Football can be a royal pain

Yesterday, Aston Villa (a Birmingham football club, for the outlanders among you) made it to the quarters of the Champions League, much to the delight of the Brummie fans in the stadium.

Yet at least one wildly cheering fan wasn’t a Brummie at all. He was our heir to the throne, His Royal Highness William, the Prince of Wales.

HRH was screaming, jumping up and down, embracing everyone around him and giving every impression of a man on his way to at least a dozen celebratory pints. I don’t know whether HRH was prepared to uphold the fine tradition of such triumphs by punching anyone less enthusiastic. If he was, I’m sure his bodyguards would have stepped in.

Since I like football as much as the next man, I can’t possibly think there is anything wrong with such an innocent hobby. Neither is there anything wrong with supporting a particular team: this adds frisson to watching a match, sort of like making a side bet without putting money down.

Problems start when such support becomes an obsession, when fans begin to identify themselves with – and by – their team. An alarm bell should sound each time a fan begins to refer to his favourite club as ‘we’ in the spirit of unabashed tribalism.

This, at least to me, compromises our humanity, based as it has been on individual choice ever since that episode in the Garden of Eden. And tautologically speaking, individual choices are made by individuals, not baying herds on their way to those 12 pints.

Man is an individual, but fair enough: he isn’t just an individual. We all, unless we are sociopaths, identify with some corporate entities, from our family all the way up to the nation and a few in between. Catholics refer to such duality as subsidiarity and solidarity, but any terms would do.

However, focusing one’s solidarity on a football club is a sign of a small mind incapable of making distinctions between trivial and important, high and low, transient and transcendent. I’d venture a wild guess that no one who refers to a team as ‘we’ has ever had tears in his eyes listening to Bach’s fugues, reading Shakespeare’s sonnets or looking at Sienese paintings (currently exhibited at the National Gallery, by the way).

Such forfeiture of any spiritual heights to which only man can ascend is unfortunate, but not tragic. Not everyone is endowed with the requisite ability, and those who aren’t shouldn’t be despised for their display of primitive tribalism at football terraces.

We are all God’s children, and he made us all different. Yes, if grownups choose to act in a simian manner every time a tattooed chap kicks a football into the net, they represent a lower order of humanity. But logic suggests that, if the lower orders didn’t exist, neither would the higher ones. We are all, including football fans or for that matter players, arranged in a vertical hierarchy, and thank goodness for that.

Yet hierarchies aren’t just spiritual, intellectual or cultural. They are also social, and Prince William sits at the apex of one. One day he will reign, meaning HRH will act as the embodiment of our ancient constitution and its link with God.

This isn’t a metaphysical statement but a factual one. Unlike their European counterparts, British monarchs are crowned and anointed, as the world was reminded of during last year’s coronation of Prince William’s father.

Judging by his pronouncements when he was the Prince of Wales, King Charles’s personal instincts were quite ecumenical, not to say secular. Yet he put them on hold to accept the pomp and circumstance of a lavish Christian ceremony because he understood something I’m not sure his son does.

Pomp and circumstance, along with some air of mystical exclusivity, are essential to the survival of the monarchy. People don’t want their kings to act like regular blokes next door any more than they want regular blokes next door to act like kings.

Our princes are driven around London in state cars, Bentleys and Rolls Royce bearing the royal escutcheon. They don’t cycle through the streets in the manner of their Dutch counterparts.

Their traditional sports are shooting, hunting, polo and other equestrian competitions, rugby when in school. Not darts, bowling or, for that matter, football. There is nothing wrong with such sports for the rest of us. But our princes must cultivate, and be seen to cultivate, princely habits – or they may not remain princes for much longer.

I’m not privy to the inner workings of the royal family, but I suspect that heirs to the throne don’t just act as they please – that prerogative belongs to their lesser relations, within ever-expanding limits. Hence there must be people, King Charles certainly one of them, gently guiding William to the kind of conduct that’s likely to perpetuate the well-being of the monarchy.

An heir to the throne must walk the royal walk and talk the royal talk because, if he doesn’t, the republican hand will be strengthened. Yet William’s walk takes him towards Villa Park, and he certainly doesn’t talk like our future king. Whoever is advising him to take his image down a few pegs is, I think, making a strategic mistake.

Things HRH says certainly don’t betoken aristocratic sensibilities. Why, for example, does he support Aston Villa, if he has to support any team? Usually, such affections are based on geography, yet William has no obvious links to Birmingham.

He was born in London, educated at Eton, which is in Berkshire, then at St Andrews University, which is in Scotland, he served as helicopter pilot mostly in Wales and has lived in London or Windsor ever since. Where does Aston Villa come in?

Apparently, this obsession started at Eton, where most of his classmates supported Chelsea or Manchester United. Yet William wanted to stand out: “I wanted to have a team that was more mid-table that could give me more emotional rollercoaster moments.”

There was another option: just enjoying the game without going out of his way to be a fan. But that would have meant missing on something important to him: “It was fantastic, I sat with all the fans with my red beanie on, and I was sat with all the Brummie fans and had a great time. It was the atmosphere, the camaraderie and I really felt that there was something I could connect with.”

Note the prole diction “I was sat”. I find it hard to imagine William’s grandmother saying, “One was sat with one’s husband at supper last night.” His father, aunt and uncle are also more likely to sit than to be sat. Nor does one expect to see them wearing beanie hats with football insignia.

Things do change, and Whig historians will even insist they always change for the better. Be that as it may, so much more important it is that some things remain constant, acting as adhesives binding our past, present and future together.

Only the monarchy and the church can perform this function in Britain, two isles of stability in the maelstrom of turbulent life around them. These institutions can’t escape some change either, but when they try to march in step with modernity, they betray their mission and jeopardise their survival.

Perhaps William ought to ponder this next time he feels like putting on a red beanie hat and a Villa scarf. Then maybe he won’t put them on, much to my delight.