THE JUGGLER: Women fans attend matches just to look for football boyfriends
A colleague recently asked me whether the exponential influx of women in our stadiums is good for the game or bad, and I began to question his otherwise proven intelligence because I find no relationship between the two.
Six years ago, the country’s football was on its knees. Few spared a thought for the national team, and an even fewer number ever showed up in the stadiums to watch the matches. But in came the live broadcasting of games and with it, the birth of the Kenyan Premier League circuit girl.
Anyone who has been to any of our five stadiums has definitely seen, sat next to, or hit on these cling-ons for whom the term “circuit girl (CG)” has been invented by a sophisticated class of rugby players and the few educated footballers.
I have finally come up with an honest answer to my colleague’s question: these women have no bearing to the rapid growth or sudden death of the game.
That is for one simple reason. Ladies, even those who pretend to have “passion for” and “knowledge of” the game, attend live matches with the sole motive of landing an athlete boyfriend. Yes, I said it!
It’s easy to recognize these ladies because there isn’t a member of the fairer sex who will be found alive in the stadia with an immaculate desire to follow on-pitch goings-on. All of them harbor the shallow vision of “eating” and later “being eaten” by a footballer.
These CGs are a class of obnoxiously loud, intimidatingly outspoken, fearless ladies whose sole vision in life is to bag a rich footballer and live excess off the back of his fame and income.
Circuit Girls, they are called, because of their ever revolving modus operandi. These are girls who will shamelessly date all the members of one football club; the goalkeeper, to the midfielder to the defender, to the striker in a chain, before shifting base to another popular premier league team.
DRESS CODE
A KPL CG will be stereotypically shallow in her conversations concerning the game, will perpetually engage members of all popular KPL social media pages with endless teenybopper rants and pedantic arguments, and openly flirt with well-known footballers.
On match days, a CG who is already living the dream, i.e. dating a footballer, will be dressed in blue boutique jeans complete with huge sunglasses, and will be found in the main stand.
You will spot the “still searching” CG on the terraces inhaling thick whiffs of bhang and imbibing “sisters of death” type alcohol. CGs in this class require external courage for the demeaning task of approaching their already marked targets.
Immediately after the game, however, the two CG groups will converge outside the players’ changing rooms and will stay long after genuine fans have left, with the former group marking territory and the latter angling to strike.
In away matches, the second category CGs will travel along and after the game, will follow the team bus to their hotel, from where they will offer free sex to the ever willing players.
CGs will not always be “drop dead gorgeous”, but they definitely know how to make cheap foundation work.
Their standard dress code is strictly Gor Mahia or AFC Leopards jersey (depending on either catch or target), figure hugging shorts and ordinary rubber shoes. New comers will rock extremely short dresses and knee-length boots, but they catch up real fast. These CGs!
Their shallow dreams notwithstanding, CGs have found a way of hiding under dead end groups such as ‘K’Ogirlo Divas’ and ‘Ingwe Ladies’ with the convoluted aim of motivating fellow dense girls to come to the stadia. To what end?
Well the answer to my colleague’s question is nay, nay. The inflow of girls in the stadium is of no substantial gain to any sport, and definitely not to football. They offer no tangible motivation to the players -they only serve to derail their focus instead.
NO PLACE FOR A WOMAN
There is also no financial gain from their entry fee (most of them either have fake entry passes or work in cohorts with the stewards and therefore don’t pay entry fees) and worse of all, they can weaken the herbal medicines placed on the pitch to “help” the team conjure up a win.
The Catholic Church has it that the altar is no place for a woman and the same is true for the stadium.
While men would genuinely watch the game for the sheer thrill of seeing fellow man do something he can’t, there is nothing in there for a woman. Not even the androgynous, tomboy, macho woman.
If you don’t believe me, ask a CG whether they worship the English Premier League with the same passion they do the local league. The answer will be no. Reason? Because those European football gods are out of reach. Period!
For a woman, there is little excitement to be achieved from watching 11 men running around a plain field chasing a ball.
There is no thrill from patching bottoms on the hard concrete stands awaiting goals that are already in real short supply in the Kenyan league. And, surely, there is nothing adventurous about getting caught up in the crossfire of rowdy hooligans, or choking in the all too familiar smell of teargas when things get thick.
The easiest way to confirm these CG truths is to try finding out from them any obvious detail of a game: for instance, who scored which goal? What was the final score? Oh, and what does off side mean?
Chances are that they have their eyes fixed on their “target”, their minds on how they will catch their attention and the manner in which they will fumble with words trying to find answers gives them away.
@cellie_beckie