English football has a reputation for violence. When you speak to people from Oz about it you realize they think it's still like it used to be. They think the segregation of fans is a pointer to how bad things are. But in the vast vast majority of cases there are no issues. The segregation is integral to the atmosphere, where singing songs aimed at winding up the opposition is what makes English football the experience that it is.
But there are still a few rivalries where past violence is never far from the surface. And one of those is West Ham Millwall. The last time West Ham played Millwall at home in 2009 there were ugly scenes and a pitch invasion. Someone was stabbed down the road.
So when West Ham were relegated to the same division as Millwall it meant a home and an away clash would be a headache that had to be handled. The Millwall home game passed it hour incident and it was back to scene of the 2009 troubles that would be our last game for the trip.
Pre game preventative measures included, an early kick off at 12.30 to minimize drinking time, no alcohol sales from pubs within a 9 mile radius until well after the game was over, pleas from both clubs for good behavior, ticket sakes restricted to those with existing club memberships and or a history of purchases and about a gazillion police. They also moved all West Ham season ticket holders ou of the Trevor Brooking stand and restricted it to just the scum. The lower was empty to stop them invading the pitch and throwing stuff down from the upper.
We went incognito until we were off the tube and on Green St. While having lunch at the Chippie we got our 1st taste of the underlying venom. A large group of Millwall supporters were held in the middle of the street corralled inside cordons of foot and mounted police. We stood and watched as the police set cordon set up frog marching them along. They let out this guttural menacing roar, that was quite confronting if I'm honest. I had started recording it on my phone but one of the scum (i'll refer to them using the West Ham vernacular for Millwall) pointed at me and hollered something so I stopped. They turned them up a side street and we didn't see them again until inside the ground.
As I said they had the Trevor Brooking upper to themselves and they just looked evil, many with hoodies and scarves coving their faces. The whole ground was devoid of collar as everyone turned up in plain dark clothes which fitted the atmosphere.
To the game itself. An experienced Premier League ref had been appointed to help keep things under control but he didn't help thing when he brandished a straight red card to the West Ham captain in the 9th minute for a two footed lunging tackle. 35000 heads dropped and 1400 celebrated and taunted.
But as sometimes happens when a team goes down to 10 men everybody lifts. It takes discipline and a rigid gameplay to stretch and tire the 10 men but Millwall didn't exploit their advantage and West Ham bossed the rest of the game. Scoring just before halftime allowed the Eastenders to stick it to their south London enemies. Ben, Carole and I jumped around and Ben chanted who are ya, who are ya even before the rest of the ground launched into it.
The 2nd half was again all us but against the run of play the scum scored to make it 1-1 and we got it back from their supporters with interest perhaps sensing we might tire from all the 10 man heroics. But we rolled our sleeves up scored a cracking goal albeit there was some controversy over a challenge on their keeper leading up to Winston Reid's super strike.
It was by far the best performance we had seen out of the 8 games this trip and made the stats 4/4 home wins and 3 losses and a draw from the 4 away games. But you get the feeling that things are back on track now, 4 pts clear at the top with 3 new players to lift the team.
We hung around to make sure the scum were well and truly gone. While we waited some o the players filtered out to the car park and Ben got his program signed by Matt Taylor, Papa Diop, Gary O'Neil and new boy Nicky Maynard.
As it was an early kickoff and our train back to Kent wasn't until 7 we headed into the centre of London one more time. Caught the tube to Leicester Square, tea at the Brewmaster, wandered through china town and just as we were heading to Charing Cross to catch the train it started to snow as had been forecast.
Back in Kent there was no sign of it tho. Maybe the morning would be different?
0 comments:
Post a Comment