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Barmy Army is, ironically, an Australian invention deriving from England’s 1994/95 Ashes tour. The term was coined by the Australian media, bemused as to why the English fans seemed to be having such a good time despite taking pasting after pasting on the pitch. England were losing to everyone, including the Australian Academy and Zimbabwe, but it didn’t seem to matter.
According to Paul Burnham, the Barmy Army’s leader, the seeds were planted during the first Test in Brisbane. “It started with Dave Peacock, who was one of the founders,” he explains. “He was walking past the Brisbane hill on day one singing: ‘We came here with our backpacks, you came here with a ball and chain.’ He had a ball and chain round his foot and then the next day there were two of them. Then three, four…”
By the second Test in Melbourne, a small group had formed, lumped together in the notoriously rowdy Bay 17 at the MCG. Some singing started, more reminiscent of the football terraces at Anfield or White Hart Lane than the dusty restraint of Lords
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The group was decidedly noticeable when the roadshow moved on to Sydney.
The hill was colonised and the mob was increasingly difficult to ignore.
The reaction was somewhat split. Whilst the Australian press was showing grudging admiration, their English equivalents were utterly caustic.
Attitudes have changed somewhat now, but at this time, cricket was almost exclusively a game for the white middle classes in England, and both the performances of the team and the expectations of behaviour from the fans reflected this.
Whilst words like “moronic” were regularly bandied about, it was the diatribe of one correspondent in particular that steeled the resolve to make a go of things.
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.“Ian Wooldridge from the Daily Mail – a supposedly top sports writer – wondered whether there was a law in Australia that could get the England fans gassed, because he didn’t like the singing,” says Paul. “A bit harsh, But to be fair it inspired us to make the Barmy Army what it is today, right from the early stages.”
The common criticism at the time was that football fans – and more importantly, the hooligans – had invaded the genteel sport of men in straw boaters sipping tea in the members’ enclosure. “The British media was pretty uneducated,” Paul argues. “They looked at us and said: ‘Well, they’re football fans’. But football fans don’t go away in the middle of the football season to watch cricket, particularly if the team is losing heavily
“The reason we had football shirts on was that there was nothing else we could buy. We were desperate. Dave actually had some shirts made up saying: ‘We came here with our backpack, you came here with a ball and chain’. I bought that shirt, and that’s what I lived in. When we got to Adelaide for the fourth Test we said we’d make our own. We had 200 shirts for own boys, with Atherton’s Barmy Army on the front, and a map of Australia with all the dates and venues.”
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England won the Adelaide Test, and suddenly everyone wanted the shirts. Instead of celebrating properly, Burnham ended up organising a second print run to cope with the demand for a memento of a famous victory.
Fans and tour sponsors were clamouring for the shirts, and eventually 3,000 were made and sold. The merchandising arm of the Barmy Army was up-and-running, albeit somewhat shambolically, from that point onwards
The next tour was to South Africa, where other aspects of the movement began to take shape. While there were still the T-shirts and all-game chanting, the social side began to develop. No longer the same 200 or so men, nights out were arranged, as were charity cricket games.
The Army went into Soweto, forging strong links with cricket clubs there that still exist today, and much of what was raised from the games and the merchandise went into funding cricket in the poverty-stricken township.
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