‘When I was young, I had no sense, I bought a flute for 50 pence / The only song that I could play was fuck the Pope and the IRA.’

So went the chant that emerged from the away section following Chelsea’s Monday night clash with Fulham FC at Craven Cottage. The impromptu chorus of ‘Flute for 50 Pence’, an infamous sectarian football song that was historically deployed by sections of Rangers FC supporters, appears to have sent Chelsea officials into a nervous tailspin.

‘We would like to strongly remind all supporters that the club does not condone any chants which discriminate against a protected characteristic’, read the email sent out to Chelsea’s fanbase earlier this week. ‘Any supporter found guilty of this will face the strongest possible action, which could include indefinite suspension from attending all Chelsea matches and ejection from the stadium.’

The public-service announcement concluded by emphasising the club’s commitment to ensuring ‘a welcoming matchday experience for all’, and asked supporters ‘to take collective responsibility and remain vigilant in helping us tackle discriminatory chanting’.

Crackdowns on football chants are nothing new. Chelsea, like many Premier League clubs, currently has extraordinarily broad conditions on prohibited chants. It reserves the right to sanction supporters for any language of an ‘offensive, immoral, obscene, abusive, indecent, political or discriminatory nature’, with the framework stating discriminatory language can attract a 36-month ban. Indeed, over the past few years, the list of ditties that might lose you a season ticket has been growing. But there’s something especially silly about this latest addition – not least because ‘Flute for 50 Pence’ takes aim at a public religious figure and a terrorist organisation. However vulgar, indecent or ugly the historical sentiment, the idea that fans should be ousted for singing it shows just how institutionally micromanaged the nation’s favourite sport has become.

English football has been in this censorial quagmire for a while now. What began with the Football (Offences) Act 1991, which criminalised ‘racialist’ and ‘indecent’ chanting at designated matches, has expanded into an ever-growing regime of policing what supporters say and sing. More recently, the CPS has taken a hard line against so-called tragedy chanting: references to Hillsborough, the Munich air crash and other football-related disasters, even in jest, can lead to prosecution under public-order legislation. While nobody wants football grounds to become arenas for racism, intimidation or threats, somewhere along the way, the principle that fans should not be subjected to abuse has become entangled with a rather different one: that fans should never be allowed to say anything that could conceivably wind someone up.

For better or worse, football was once one of the few places in British public life where people were permitted to be spectacularly obnoxious. The terraces were partisan, profane and deliberately antagonistic. Nobody pretended otherwise – and no one with a brain mistook a football chant for a peer-reviewed contribution to public discourse. The modern game, by contrast, increasingly treats supporters as the nasty, rough edge of English football that safeguarding departments can’t sand away fast enough. It is yet another example of a proletarian pastime being neutered for the comfortable enjoyment of the middle classes.

There is a world of difference between protecting supporters from threats and intimidation and protecting them from words they find objectionable. The world will keep turning if football culture stays a little unruly. As a Catholic, I’m unlikely to join in with a chant that effs and jeffs about the pontiff. Then again – who am I to cancel the Rent Boys’ fun?

Georgina Mumford is a London-based writer.