Feminism vs. Football – The John Terry Story

Friday, 5th February 2010

By Liz High

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Damn you John Terry! Why did you have to mess up my happy equilibrium by presenting me with the moral dilemma – Feminist or Football fan? It is true that I was a football fan before I was a feminist.

In my formative years, I spent too many freezing Scottish winters watching my home team St. Johnstone ping pong up and down (mostly down ) the divisions. Today, I still love the claustrophobic warmth of Stamford Bridge’s Captain’s Bar at half time while watching Chelsea, my adopted London team, strive consistently to retain our position at the top of the Premiership.

The problem is, the feminist in me knows that John Terry got it badly wrong. There is no upside in him publicly trading his ‘Father of the Year’ status to compete for the ‘Philanderer of the Year’ title – no doubt it will be a close fought battle between him and Tiger for the 2010 accolade.

His behaviour, attitude and treatment of both women involved in the affair frankly shows a lack of respect and little grasp of what it means to be a husband and a father. Money, fame, power – all combine to create a world where men like Terry think they can have whatever they want and that everything can be bought. It makes me angry.

But not as angry as I am with myself over how easily I forgave him.

One goal in a mediocre match was all it took. I mean, Terry is not a goal scorer – it’s not his job, he is a world class defender whether in an England or Chelsea shirt. So, even discounting that he was in the middle of the whirlwind of publicity, legal difficulties and emotional turmoil at home, the odds of him pulling a winning header out of the bag were slim to say the least. To put it in context, his average goals per game were 0.06 last season but when he needed to, he played a blinder.

While we were all waxing lyrical about his private life, he was focused, strong and playing better than I have seen him for some time. That’s why he needs to be judged as a footballer and not as an idiot who has messed up his home life.

It seems that my change of heart is not untypical. 

Together with Lift9, our social media measurement partner; we have been tracking the story as it unfolds through social media.  The overriding message is:

IT’S OK TO HAVE AN AFFAIR, EVEN WITH YOUR TEAM MATE’S GIRLFRIEND, AS LONG AS YOU ARE VERY, VERY GOOD AT FOOTBALL

Tracking social media mentions over the week the story broke, there were over 8,000 posts about John Terry, the majority of them negative. What really struck me when looking at the data was the change in sentiment that Terry’s performance on the 30th created.  It turned social media opinion –suddenly this performance gave people permission to switch attention back to his prowess as a footballer, and drown out negative sentiment based on his off field behaviour.

 

We saw the same thing happen on twitter. For those of you following the #teamterry versus #teambridge threads, you would see they were running head to head until the Burnley match. Between 30th of January and the 1st, the balance tipped and the sentiment shifted to Terry – 3:1 of all tweets favoured Terry over Bridge.

 

So it looks like I am not alone, when push comes to shove, I want him captaining England and I want him captaining Chelsea – so sorry Germaine, I’m in Fabio’s camp on this one.

Full time score: Football 1- 0 Feminism

If you want to know more about how Social Media is supporting John Terry or indeed how it could help you support your own brand, then we have a full report here.

Better still if you want to know more about how social media measurement and analysis can help your brand, drop me a mail at liz.high@thinkintrepid.com  or call me on 0207 524 7900.



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