The difference I would posit is tension, football's most common score is 1-1 and 2-1, that can change in an instant, even if you're team has been s**te all game. Cricket, you generally know if your going to win after the fourth batsman. Plus you can see a recovery or collapse coming, generally speaking. Where as football is full of situations where you suddenly draw level in a mad five minutes. The rollercoaster effect is much more pronounced.

Also cricket doesn't really have the same level of local focus. The sport is a 'gentlemans sport' without the kind of inter-local rivalry you see in Football. Theres a correlation between the idea of rivalry and levels of violence in sport, especially where 'banter' among fans is common.

When you look at Cricket on a professional level, its county vs county level or international, football is against the team your c**t of a boss supports, or that loud mouth s**t in the pub. It is personal, local, changeable and very intense.

Cricket brings out the best in fans, because identification with a team is along very different group identity concepts than football, and that manifests differently.

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The TV cameras tend to focus on the old boys in their blazers dozing off in the sunshine at test matches but they are in the minority as the vast majority of cricket spectators are ordinary working class people who probably go to the footie on Winter.

You are probably correct about the local rivalries being less intense in County Cricket but not so in certain international games as the rivalry between English and Australian is huge and if you want banter you only have to listen to the Barmy Army who are probably the country's leading banter experts but although some of their songs can be cutting and cruel they are always amusing.

Great post Pete, we all feel the same I am sure but we cant answer why either, I feel you are probably right on a few of your thoughts.. There must have been studys done as its not your stero typical person ie a 'football hooligan' who is caught in this trap. lol

DJ John Peel once said: "Supporting Palace has a certain cult value, like pretending that some Peruvian rock band is the best in the world."

I've often thought about this... and have never got to the bottom of it!

It makes even less sense when you compare football to other 'forms of entertainment'.

Take films... if you went to see Harry Potter 1 at your local cinema and it wasn't very good then you might chance Harry Potter 2. But if that also wasn't very good, the offer of doing a 300 mile round trip on a Tuesday night to see Harry Potter 3 wouldn't be very attractive!

But Palace could lose 5-0 at home to Yeovil, lose 5-0 at home to Swindon, but that wouldn't stop me heading up to Walsall on a wet Tuesday night in December!!!