THE ONE-MINUTE SILENCE HAS BEEN done to death. Most of the time the objects of these desperate affairs — 9/11, the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, 7/7 — have nothing whatsoever to do with football. But still the authorities insist upon ordering the fans to keep schtum in an ultimately futile attempt to demonstrate the sport’s respectability.

And each time the gesture is thrown back at them by a bunch of Neanderthals who rend the air with their pitiful oratory while the rest of us struggle in vain to focus upon the supposed object of bereavement. Whatever the noble intent, these occasions have become toe-curling affairs that most of us approach with dread rather than solemnity.

Thank heavens, then, for the spontaneous ovations at football grounds across the country during the one-minute “silences” in memory of George Best. The stamping, chanting, cheering and clapping drowned out the jeerers in a way that would have brought a smile to a departed genius who knew a thing or two about outsmarting thugs.

But football should bury the one-minute silence for cultural as well as pragmatic reasons. Football stadiums are not libraries or churches. Quite the reverse. Football’s is a culture that not merely tolerates but celebrates noise. Noise as chanting, noise as booing, noise as applauding, noise as cheering. Noise as satire. Noise as censure.

We go to watch football, in part, because it provides an opportunity to ditch the mask of Anglo-Saxon reserve amid an orgy of noise-making. In every football ground in the country, the quality of the spectacle is directly proportionate to the quantity of noise. Noise communicates everything you need to now about football; it is as much a part of the liturgy of the beautiful game as the offside rule.

When we see a masterpiece by Thierry Henry or Wayne Rooney we do not reflect in solemn silence as we might when looking at a Leonardo or a Matisse. Both inspire awe, but there the comparison ends. Art galleries are places where silence feels right. Not football stadiums. These places are cathedrals of sound, receptacles of tonsil-charged euphoria. To deny this is to deny football.

This is why the one-minute silence feels so artificial and uncomfortable. It is why we long for it to end before we have even begun to reflect upon the recently departed. And this is why the football authorities should stop throwing to a minute’s silence with knee-jerk inevitability every time somebody dies.

I used to go to a happy-clappy church at which the elders quickly realised that they would have to ditch the conventions of the traditional church funeral. This was a place where the only silences occurred during the pause before the clash of cymbals. Even when we prayed we did so while dancing. So, it was not long before the prayerful silences of the traditional funeral were replaced with a vocal celebration of the life of the deceased. The ceremonies were beautiful.

Best was a one-off. He pirouetted his way around defences in a way that defies credulity. The television clips of his skill demonstrate a greatness that is beyond ambiguity. He understood football intuitively in a way that the dinosaurs that insist on contrived silences do not. Fortunately, we the fans have the thing in our own hands. Best broke the mould in life. Let us hope he has done so again in death.

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