Date: 23rd March 2012 at 12:08am
Written by:
United players show their support of Muamba by conducting a compulsory applause

United players show their support of Muamba by conducting a compulsory applause

I am a Bolton Wanderers supporter. Last Saturday, I was shocked and saddened when Fabrice Muamba collapsed and went into cardiac arrest on the pitch.

By Tuesday I was embarrassed at how the story had evolved.

Within about an hour of the 23 year old hitting the deck, the insincerity began.

People who had never heard of Fabrice Muamba began tweeting about how devastated they were.

Football clubs issued statements of solidarity, with cut and paste sympathy words, mainly involving the line, ‘our thoughts are with him’.

Players took to social networks announcing they were so close to Muamba that they just had to express it publically in less than 140 characters.

Something wasn’t quite right.

At this point, the hospital announced he was critically ill.

Some well-meaning person then decided to start the hashtag #prayformuamba which immediately started trending.

Then the unofficial Twitter police were called in.

As often happens in the wake of a ‘sad’ public story, the pantomime bigots get involved. A small number of people write disrespectful messages and usually people with lots of followers decide to try and bring them to justice.

Step forward Stan Collymore, a confident yet limited broadcaster who once hit a woman and introduced dogging to the masses. On Twitter, Captain Collymore opts for the name and shame approach, updating his followers with details of impending court appearances and trying slightly too hard to show that he is no longer morally flawed.

Stan wasn’t the only pundit working tirelessly for his fallen comrade. The BBC’s Mark Bright urged everyone to pull together and help Muamba reach 100,000 followers. Constructive stuff Brighty. That’s right up there with shaving the word Fabrice in your pubes.

The news later in the evening that his heart had stopped for over an hour and doctors had struggled to resuscitate him, saw the TV news channels crank it up a gear.

The incident was branded an instant tragedy. Except it wasn’t. Because a tragedy has an unhappy ending and he was still alive.

The ‘Football Community’ became another buzz phrase as the weekend progressed.

Apparently in times of sadness the ‘Football Community’ rallies around each other.

It also boos victms of racism (Patrice Evra, Anton Ferdinand) and creates an environment that deters gay footballers from admitting their true sexuality.

By Sunday, the ‘Football Community’ had got together to print lots of t-shirts. They carried a clear message, ‘Pray for Muamba’. Apparently, God was with him now.

Presumably the Devil had stopped his heart?

Matches began with a minutes applause, a concept brought in because the ‘Football Community’ can’t be trusted not to shout something inappropriate during a minutes silence. To me though, the idea of clapping someone who’s in hospital, seems more sarcastic than respectful,

By Monday morning the news that Muamba was stable was greeted with muted optimism by Bolton boss Owen Coyle. Over at the Reebok. fans, locals and people who wanted to be on TV, visited the bizarre living memorial for their midfielder, who, remember, was definitely still with us.

A prayer evening was hastily arranged in the Chairman’s lounge and some claimed that people were returning to faith. They weren’t really. People used the word pray because saying, ‘I’ve got my fingers crossed for you Fab’, lacks a certain gravitas.

By the middle of the week, the 23 year old was talking and amazing doctors. Bolton announced they were ready to play again and resume their relegation battle. Football had been put into perspective and Wanderers were everyone’s new second favourite club.

The doctors and God had worked in tandem to deliver a miracle.

The ‘Football Community’ had clapped a lot and printed lots of t-shirts.

Fabrice had his 100,000 followers, courtesy of Mark Bright

And most importantly, Stan Collymore had helped to bring a drunken youngster to justice for no personal gain.

A week on, Fabrice Muamba is making excellent progress and the real story is well on its way to having a positive conclusion.

Finally, a tragedy with a happy ending.

 

13 responses to “The Ridiculous Side To The Fabrice Muamba ‘Tragedy’”

  1. Justin Mottershead says:

    Couldn’t agree more with this, while i realise people want to show their support of Muamba, some of the things I’ve seen over the past five days have been beyond a joke.

    My TL has been crammed with racist bile being retweeted, theres been some frankly absurd posts and comments likening it to losing a family member and then there’s even been people getting stick for NOT tweeting about it.

    I’m just glad the lad’s getting better and hope the whole ‘football community’ doesn’t expect too much credit, its the doctors that saved him, not the tweeting.

    • xmas says:

      No way, man. It’s been proven that 10,000 positive tweets can cure a cold. The # increases exponentially in relation to the severity of the ailment. Thus people are striving to reach what doctors are calling the “Muamba Number”….the critical point at which the right number of tweets will cause his heart to heal.

  2. daveyboy says:

    good post.people will pull their faces at the title, but it’s a good read and bang on right imo.

  3. tony smith says:

    This article is written by a cynical twerp/nobody, who shows his personal jealousy at the goodwishes sent geniunly by people who were genuinely distressed at Fabrice Muamba,s distress at White Hart Lane on saturday.There will always be Cynics,the writer of the article being one.However in my opinion the goodwill shown by all and sundry shows that the life of a 23 year old footballer/father matters and people do care.

  4. David in Australia says:

    Great article and great perpsective. The amount of comments about miracles and ‘praying for Muamba’ are ridiculous. It wasn’t god that saved Muamba it was Science (and yes I did get the capital letters in the right place in that last sentence).

  5. chris says:

    This is the third article like it I’ve read & i hope i don’t see another one. When i saw the Muamba go down i was genuinly upset by it & i think millions of other viewers were too. I also think it is a tradgedy in that he might never play again. A carrer cut short at 23. It is also a happy ending because he survived. When is the world going to stop being so synical. Yes I’m sick of the same old I’ll pray for etc. Particularly because I’m an atheist but what are they supposed to say? they don’t know him personally their day way was just affected by him.

  6. Trydent says:

    Mate hats off to the best piece of journalism I have read all year! You absolutely nailed the idiocy of all this crap! 11 out of 10 for this!

  7. Dan says:

    Slightly disagree with this article, while some people used it to show off, the overwhelming feeling was that of sympathy. In today’s world, how else would you know the impact this incident had on people except social networks and the media.David in Australia, You only wanted to propagate your atheist anti God stuff by trying to use this article as your platform. GOD SAVED MUAMBA’S LIFE. Mark My words, You’ll need God seriously in the next few days.

  8. Bwfc Ben says:

    To say the football community cannot be trusted to have a minutes silence is just absurd! A minutes silence is generally used to pay respect to someone who is no longer with us and as Fabrice Muamba hadn’t died why would they tempt fate with that gesture?! Sit down, shut up and as a Bolton fan you should appreciate the concerns ‘the football community’ has had for our beloved player!

  9. k says:

    tony smith, that’s the point though – most the people crying didn’t even know Muamba existed and probably spend every other day cursing footballers for their undeserved wealth given to them for playing a game they don’t care about “as much as a tenth as us fans”. Next week they’ll be back to the loathing of everything else in the game.

    How can you be jealous of someone who has suffered a cardiac arrest, and why would you be jealous of thousands of “tweets” from the grief police that are the twitter brigade – of whom you don’t know any of.

  10. cantona says:

    prayer- the simple-minded person’s way of showing concern. For the rational, we have faith in medicine and we accept the laws of probability. The fact that Fabrice did not die elates us all, but there’s no need to attribute it to the flying spaghetti monster or the volume of ‘prayers’. So all the other good people out there who die everyday at young ages just weren’t good enough for this god? Or maybe didn’t have enough strangers praying for them? or hashtags tweeting for them? At the end of the day, the simple-minded masses show their support with prayers and hashtags.. and the victims of cardiac arrest who get early CPR have a much higher chance of survival.