Bălan: Angry Men in The Night

This chapter presents the way in which the football gathering was organised in a typical socialist mono-industrial mining town with specific workers’ culture due to the copper mine and hardship. The inter-ethnic context—Romanian majority and Hungarian minority—influenced the special setting of football consumption. However, the supporters left the ethnic differences behind, based on the commonly shared workers’ culture formed alongside hard and dangerous work. The chapter shows how the football played a bridging role. It argues that the football gatherings placed all the inhabitants of Bălan, irrespective of their jobs, on the same side. As the borders and the social differences between physical and intellectual workers disappeared on the mountain, both the “lads” and the “eggheads” became active members of the same dissident public. All of them were concerned and angry because of the hard economic situation and struggle to survive, so the football gathering provided a common basis to express a certain form of protest and gave them a unifying force. Although the equipment was ensured by the intellectuals, the role of the blue-collar workers and regular miners was not unimportant either, in setting up. This chapter underlines the role of technical knowledge in the economy of football gatherings, as it was described in connection with the antenna designs and organisation of the collective events.