Paranoia

Nick Cohen has an article in Standpoint about paranoid political thinking. He fingers all the usual suspects, 9/11 conspiracy theorists and the like. He missed out one group though - Rochdale Hornets supporters. All referees and, at times, the rules of the game appear to a proportion of them as a vast conspiracy to deprive the Hornets of their rightful penalties, tries, goals and, obviously, victories in every game they play. As one particularly vociferous woman complained that if the rules were as she had just rewritten them, rather than as they actually are, a goal line drop out would have been a tap on the 20 metre line, I felt my brain start to slowly disintegrate. Rochdale were winning at the time too.

However, despite Swinton's best efforts to lose a scrappy, close encounter, a late fightback and a Holroyd drop goal secured a 23-22 win for the Lions. Holroyd was then sent off for abusing the Freemason, sorry referee, after he gave a last minute penalty to Rochdale and the Hornets fan next to me exploded with anger insisting that it should have been moved ten metres forward so that they could have kicked it and won the game. He didn't and they didn't. Thank god that one's over for another year.