A history of violence

To know Ndamukong Suh is not, generally, to love him. Suh plays the position of defensive tackle in the National Football League, in which role he has come to be broadly regarded as the dirtiest player in the competition. Even in an inherently violent game like NFL, Suh's brutality stands out: a laundry list of late hits and head twists, high shots and low blows, stamps, stomps and sledges over his brief years in the league had rocketed the league's best and filthiest defensive tackle to the top of every neutral fans' list of Most Hated Player In Football. It's easy to see why. If Suh was a rugby player, he'd be a niggling French forward of the 80s, all dark arts and dirty tricks - gouging, elbowing, clotheslining, rucking Buck's ballbag, punching Peter Fitzsimons about the head... actually, not all bad then.

Ahead of Suh's looming free agency this month - he's out of contract, and despite his all-pro worth on the field, the Detroit Lions couldn't afford to resign him at the pricetag he was likely to fetch on the open market - the invariably excellent Brian Phillips of Grantland wrote a searing piece on Suh, pitched to the fans of the teams who might think of acquiring him: if he pulled on your shirt, could you cheer for him? Given all the vicious, red-misted fury with which Suh plays, and all the headlong pole-vaults he makes over the faded lines of sportsmanship, could you possibly reconcile your fandom with having this goon in your colours? Is winning at any cost worth it if the cost is Ndamukong Suh?

The answer is, fuck off, of course it is. As the Miami Dolphins no doubt nodded to themselves as they backed up the Armaguard van to make him the highest paid defensive player in the NFL. Miami are paying Suh franchise-quarterback money to lock him up for the foreseeable future, notwithstanding the minor fact it'll prevent them having sufficient coin to sign anyone to put around him.

But Phillips' point is worth exploring, because no matter what code of football or of sport, there's inevitably That Guy. There's ALWAYS That Guy. The one you CANNOT abide. The dirty cheat, the thug, the flopper, the gouger, the big-talker, the niggle merchant, the shiny overexposed cock with the eminently punchable face. That Guy. You know him, you hate him. You've always hated him. Every fan of every team hates him. And then... he comes to play for your team.

And then what?

Then, you either suck it up and adopt your new pet munter, or you chuck it in and find something else to do.

That Guy is across all sports, although his precise form varies by code. The Rugby League is strong with gurning, Neanderthal meatheads (type specimen: William Mason.) Cricket favours the chippy flog, like David 'DAVEEYYYYY' Warner; while football and basketball's hate-to-love types are typically your bitey, floptastic red-mist niggle-merchants like Suarez or Costa, Rodman or Artest. Then there's your flat-out cheating bastards like old mate Lance. And if you're really lucky, and the That Guy fairies have been particularly generous, you'll get the magical quadrella of a thuggy, chippy, niggly, cheating prick, otherwise known as Paul Gallen.

Yes, he's a psychotic fuckwit, but he's *our* psychotic fuckwit. Carn the Blues #OneInARow

I have form with this, and I admit it: I'm easily bought. I'm as mercenous as the arseholes who get signed to play for the teams I support. Did I stop barracking for Souths when Mick Crocker, Queensland's eminently hateable proto-Gallen thug of the earlier oughts, came to play for us? Did I fuck. (Then again if being bought by Rusty fucken Crowe wasn't enough to drive me away, Crocker Shit would hardly make much difference.) Carlos Tevez, a footballing Escobar henchman on a very dodgy contract landing at West Ham? Saved us from relegation. Nice work son. You name 'em, I've backed 'em. Public enemies and walking enemas. The hated and the loathed. LeBron at Miami? Whincup at Triple 8? The Australian team under RRRRRRICKY PONTING? Schumacher at Ferrari?

Ay, there's the rub.

Ferrari was my team as a kid. More than any football or cricket side. Because of my Italian roots, because of my youthful obsession with Formula One, because they hadn't won a world title since I was in nappies and for some reason I appear to be drawn to historic teams which have run to shit *cough Souths cough West Ham cough the fucken Oakland Raiders cough* And they had cool cars and cool colours and cool drivers like Berger and Alesi who did things The Right Way.

And then they fired all the cool people and hired that venal big-chinned flog Schumacher and half his team from Benetton, who'd won his first world title despite the team being disqualified from several races for inveterate cheating *and* his punting Damon Hill out of the season-ending Australian F1GP.

I tried. Really, I did. For the whole first half of the '96 season, until I realised: fuck this. This wasn't Ferrari. This was a Schumacher ego trip. And when he tried his Damon Hill move on Jacques Villeneuve's Williams at the season-ending race in Spain a year later, the point was underlined. Sometimes, winning at any cost just isn't worth it.

Oh, and obviously any team this cunt is on has no fucken show. Goes without saying.

The Doctor is OUT.

PS: @beeso and I are recording #BALLS this evening, and this'll likely come up; post your suggestions for terrible shitcunts you've had to endure in your team's colours, particularly those who joined after their terrible shitcuntery was already clear to all, either below in the comments or on Twitter @theBALLSpodcast.