Fan behaviour

D K Asked 5 years ago

Greetings Coach,

following the championship which occurred a month ago in my city, I would like to ask about your,or rather PingSkills community's too, opinion about behavior of fans at such big tournaments.
The one I was watching was European Junior Table Tennis Championship.
I felt so much differences between fans of different countries,soon I was able to distinguish which country do they belong to despite not seeing them clearly and not understanding their languages.

Some of them,for example namely Italian,French,German and Cypriot,were enormously noisy,crying loudly with a high-pitched tones (IT/FR), whistling and using giant rattles etc (GER) or yelling the currently playing player's names out of all lungs (CYP). Sitting next to them was,I would say,dangerous for ears,despite that except German they were not very numerous. Majorly because they kept shouting,emitting their noise etc the entire time between the rallies.

Another group was,I would say "most correct",there I would put majorly Russian,Sweden and Slovak.
They were also quite loud,but considerably more controlled compared to hysterically looking IT or FR for example.
Russian people,after their player won a point,stood up and sang a mystic-sounding melody,which caused my hairs to stand.
Slovak people reacted to every point of their players by calling out about 2-3times,they were loud but controlled and did not try to fulfill the entire time between points.
Sweden people looked even more disciplined,since they reacted by absolutely synchronous call "SVERIGESVERIGE!" ("Sverige" means "Sweden" in Swedish).
Loud,but calm.

Then there were nations like Czech,Romania,UK or Belarus,who only clapped or reacted by standing up with some occassional "yeees","go" shout etc.

Last group were people like Azerbaijan,Norway,Finland etc.,which were dubbed as "silent deaths",being completely calm,silent,only occassionally clapping.

What do you think about fans with table tennis generally?
I thought like some of these fan behavior patterns are not really correct for the players but also for the "neutral" fans (for example,I as a CZ fan was watching Belarus vs Italy,where I was not siding with anyone,but the loud ear-tearing sounds coming from the Italian fan section forced me to leave soon ,as I was concerned about my ears' health.)
I even heard some Polish people complaining with Latvians that the French fans are being disrespectful with the amount of noise they create,especially after they started to whistle whenever the server threw up the ball.

Dan

Alois Rosario Answered 5 years ago

Hi Dan,

I like the involvement of the crowd.  It adds to the spectacle of the game.  I think it is something that is important for Table Tennis if it is to be looked at as an entertainment as well as a sport, like all the big sports are.

For too long people have been too scared to make any noise at Table Tennis matches.  

I think players enjoy playing in an arena where there is some noise and atmosphere.  It lifts them to perform.  Much better than a silent cold hall.

Would love to hear other readers' opinions.