ABSTRACT

There has been a growing interest and a developing literature in relation to sports fans and the notion of fandom. However, amongst the plethora of studies from, inter alia, Desmond Morris in 1981 to John Williams in 2007,3 there are minimal references to music and sport. On the other hand, fans are increasingly being studied in relation to late modern sports fandom in the context of commodification and patterns of consumption in sport4 and music has a place in these studies. The beginning of the 1980s witnessed an increase in the study of popular music5 and in this context both Steve Redhead and John Bale have identified a musicalisation of football developing from the mid-1980s.6