As human beings, we like aggression. We like to see confrontation. It’s a gladiatorial instinct that goes right back to Rome’s Colosseum in the first century AD and it’s why boxing, MMA and other contact sports are so popular.
It’s in us. The ‘good and bad’ is in us. That’s the reason why I loved the Goodison derby on Wednesday night, and why millions more like me will have felt the same.
The game was a throwback – refereed by an official who played his part in allowing a lot more to go on.
It was the kind of game that has been increasingly lost, because of all the Johnny-come-latelys who have changed our sport into the reduced spectacle it is today – much of it a very hard watch, with the passive football on display, the referee blowing his whistle for every nudge and the tedious simulation that goes on.