New Perspectives on Sport and 'Deviance' by Tim Crabbe Tony Blackshaw

Author:Tim Crabbe, Tony Blackshaw [Tim Crabbe, Tony Blackshaw]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, General, Sociology, Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 9781134440894
Google: htuCAgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2004-09-23T04:39:53+00:00

It was one of those hard swallow moments. For more than an hour he had been sitting on the beach, the researcher in him hoping that the touts (scalpers) would turn up, the private person hoping that they wouldn’t. He had just about resigned himself to sunbathing away a wasted research day when the French chatter and laughter was cut by broad Manchester accents. Fat Tony and his gang of ticket touts had arrived. They made camp further along the beach. The researcher came to life and studied them from afar. Cockney Joe was with them.

He had first met Cockney Joe in the buffet bar of the train between Nantes and Marseilles two weeks earlier en route to England v Tunisia. Then he thought Joe was just another fan, but the researcher had noted the extra interest that Joe had taken in his media pass. It was only when he bumped into him again last night and watched him ply his trade in an Irish bar in Marseilles that it dawned on the researcher that fat Joe was one of a gang of ticket touts. Tickets and touts were a big part of the France 98 story and the researcher desperately wanted an insider account of the ticket black market. Several pints of Guinness later Joe had let it slip that the next day he and the rest of the gang were having a day off, planning to spend some time on a small island in the bay of Marseilles. The researcher plotted to stake out the island in hope that he could make contact.

And here they were, but what to do next? They were big boys, engaged in an illegal operation and, so the researcher thought, probably wouldn’t take too kindly to being spied upon, particularly on their day off, by someone who carried a press pass. But investigative research demands risks – some calculated others not. The researcher took his hard swallow, a deep breath and plunged into the still Mediterranean. He swam out to sea and arched round to come out of the water below Fat Tony’s gang. ‘Hi Joe I bet you think I’m following you!’ He said, reading the thought’s behind Cockney Joe’s suspicious eyes. Fat Tony took a pull from his beer can. ‘Who’s this?’ he barked. Joe explained that the stranger was a writer who he’d met on the train and that he was an ‘all right geezer’. The researcher hurriedly explained that he wasn’t a journalist, but was writing a book in which he wanted to tell the tout’s story ‘from the inside looking out’. Fortunately business had been good and Tony was in an expansive mood. ‘I don’t give a fuck if you’re a journalist or not’, he said, ‘do you want a beer?’ The researcher was in.

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