The Travelling Hordes

Bryn Jones is a Racecourse steward. He's based in and around the Marston Stand, so he gets a fantastic insight into the psyche of visiting fans...

NO.6 LUTON TOWN

So, Luton's mascot is called Happy Harry the Hatter, or 'Appy 'Arry the 'A''er in their own words. Until the last five minutes, they were all 'Appy 'Arrys awaiting their now certain drop to the Third Division in a calm resigned manner. As every fan I spoke to seemed to be an accountant, teacher or, indeed, news presenter, perhaps this was a 'professional attitude' at work in their ranks. The news presenter was none other than Nick Owen who, I am assured, is famous on Breakfast TV. He is our second bestest famous person in Season 2000-1. The bestest was Claire Sweeney of Brookie and Celebrity Big Brother fame, who came for the opening match against Bristol City. Sorry Nick, but her legs were voted better than yours…so were most of her other bits, but I think we'd better not go down that particular road. Typically, the Bristol lot were such a bunch of charmers that we had to escort her out early as she began to fear for her own safety.

No such worries for young Nick, though, as Luton fans are usually among the easiest to steward. Even events on the pitch in the last five minutes only sparked a relatively minor outburst of anti-Welsh chants and, apart from one over-zealous V-signing hooligan, their reaction was well within the normal bounds. I'm sure Millwall will be just the same.

They were a bit more 'chanty' than recent visitors and 'Appy 'Arry's prancing up and down in front of us as cheerleader for most of the second half got a tad irritating after a while. As usual, 'Anne Robinson' and 'foot-and-mouth' go rather well together in my mind. One ditty that surfaced a couple of times ran: 'YOUR SHEEP ARE ON THE FIRE, YOUR SHEEP ARE ON THE FIRE, EE AYE ADDIO, YOUR SHEEP ARE ON THE FIRE.' My my, what do they teach them in school nowadays?

A very friendly accountant in their ranks was telling me before the match that since Joe Kinnear arrived at the club, results had been so good that promotion would have been possible had he arrived a little earlier. Funny, my accountant added up like that…and my shop went bust, too. Good luck to 'em, though. From our point of view in the away end, it looks as though we are losing a bunch of Mad Hatters who 'appen to be 'appy 'arrys, and replacing them with a bunch of Mad Bluebirds who 'appen to be ******* lunatics.

NO.7 MILLWALL - HORDE OF HORDES

Well, will my humble scribblings be noticed among the many words written and spoken about this event. I hope so, as with just seven other Wrexham stewards, I was in the thick of that lot. Helped by a further 15 Millwall stewards and ONE radio (which would have been impossible to access anyway), we were expected to supervise 3,000 Millwall fans, several hundred of whom obviously did not have tickets. The police, of course, had their work cut out somewhere below us, I think.
Cue to one typical conversation prior to this match:

Steward: 'Are we having any extra stewards for the Millwall game?'
Club Official: 'Why, are you worried you will have to do something for a change?'
S: 'So there will be just eight of us to control a large crowd with a bad reputation in a crucial promotion match on their last away day of the season?'
Club Official: 'Stop whingeing. You lot are always whingeing. You never complain when you are standing around doing nothing for games like Luton.'
S: 'What about the Lower Marston? Where will the stewards come from for that extra bit?'
Club Official: 'See, you're still bloody whingeing. You never help with the searching outside when we ask you.'
S: 'So that's it then?'
Club Official: 'Fraid so. Now p*** off. And don't forget to sign in or you won't get your ten quid.'

And that really was it. That conversation took place in various ways between stewards and unnamed person(s) several times prior to the Millwall match. That is how one of the most loyal bunches of Wrexham fans/staff is regarded.

Let's put it straight. We are all Wrexham fans. We don't do this for the money. You can get more for stewarding at Chester, for Heaven's sake, a non-league club with an American loony in charge and, at £2.50 an hour, it would be illegal to earn this rate anywhere else, anyway.

Maybe we do it because we love Wrexham FC, or maybe Wales, or perhaps we have psychopathically low esteem. I don't know. We are not hard-nuts looking for a fight (most of us, anyway). We get a spectacularly bad view of many games. Peering through fences at the goalie's arse while surrounded by loveable Cockneys waving their St George's flags is not that great a privilege. Worst of all, we cannot show any excitement when Wrexham score, nor are we allowed to thump the b****** who has just spat on the backs of our coats.

Right. Millwall fans. Loud, aggressive, foul-mouthed, racist (more black players than fans, although they are by no means unique in that respect)…yet, in the vast majority of cases, as fair and funny as any fans anywhere. They fight you. They fight each other. They swear at you. They swear at each other. A fair number are as nasty a bunch as you could find in any crowd. But we know that anyway. The rest, about 95%, could see the difficulties we were in and were great.

Example: A small middle-aged man, off his head on something, harangued me aggressively and continually for no apparent reason. Politely, I informed him that he was spoiling things for the people around him and, whatever his problem was, there really seemed to be nothing I could do about it. I did this several times to no avail. Then, bang. Up pops a very large Millwall fan who grabs him by the neck, tells him to '******* shut it' and then plonks him into his seat. He nods at me. I say, 'thank you', and everybody cheers.

As my daughter, who lives in East London, says: 'It's what they're like. They do it to each other.' In other words, with Millwall, it may be nasty, but it ain't personal. With certain clubs, who shall remain nameless, it is frequently both. This is probably why the Millwall fans kept off the anti-Welsh chants more than most, despite having a very large English nationalist element in their ranks. In their own words: 'Everybody hates us'.

Therefore, they may as well hate everybody back. Nobody condones the behaviour of the clowns who invaded the PGS or who ran onto the pitch, but, if you wanted to hear forthright, unequivocal condemnation, then the best place to be was with the bulk of the Millwall fans themselves.

I know one thing. If I was forced to live in London (and great force is what it would take…sorry lads) and, if I had to support a London club as part of my suffering, then Millwall are the club it would be. 'Yeah, right', I hear you mutter, 'you're just saying that because it would save getting your head kicked in if you happened to bump into this lot while wearing the wrong colour scarf.' 10% true, I must admit. Millwall, you will not be surprised to hear, despise all of their London rivals, Palace in particular. But, you are still 90% wrong. It would be mostly because there are so many characters in their crowd. OK, so they include too many Ronnie and Reggie fans for my liking and God knows how many cousins of Ronnie Biggs. There was even a Barbara Windsor lookalike (now he was truly weird). However, troublemakers apart, this is a colourful bunch who certainly spice up the atmosphere. And didn't we need that in Season 2000-1.

In RP33, Season 2001-2 begins...