Categories: uncategorized
Tags: southeastlondon, london, local, millwall
Date: 17 May 2009 17:33:16
Well, I went to the pub on Thursday when the Millwall/Leeds match was on. Support your local team and all that. (Though what support they get from me drinking a few pints I don't know)
But what really is the local team? My mate Dave insists it ought to be Charlton. But then he was from Woolwich or some such place.
All the pubs round our way are Millwall if they are anything at all (not that that many pubs are open at all any more) And I think that local kids at the schools my daughter went to tended to be Millwall, if they supported any South or East London team. And I see far more Millwall than Charlton insignia in the local council estates. You don't have to go very far to see more Charlton - just the other side of Lewisham High Street - but our exact location is more Millwall.
Just going by who turns up to drink in our local pubs when the footy is on TV, at a rough guess I'd say Arsenal actually gets the largest barstool following. Especially from black people (something I only noticed quite recently, I must be slow on the uptake) ManU and Chelsea are closely behind them. Though practically any Premiership game will draw a few viewers in.
Nerdish as it sounds, I actually have been counting the "extra" people in the pub when there is football on. For the recent Euro semi-finals, the Arsenal/ManU games got about 50 extra in when they were on Sky and about 30 on ITV. Chelsea/Barca was about 35 and 12. The management actually charged entry to the pub on a couple of those nights. Though of course those games sort of rate as internationals and so get more attention. For ordinary Premier League games both the ManU/Wigan and Newcastle/Middlesbrough matches got in about a dozen. They didn't charge for the Millwall matches though!
Millwall aren't on the telly that often of course, and when they are it tends to be one-off big games, so its not strictly comparable. The few matches that get shown on the TV in the pub tend to attract a big following though - the largest crowd I ever saw there was the day Millwall was in the FA cup final. Much, much, larger than the last couple of year's finals.
But of the London sides that aren't anywhere near the top of the Premiership, Millwall is clearly the most popular locally. Some support for Charlton, but not as much. Palace are all but off the radar - they seem to attract about as much comment as Fulham and QPR.
Maybe someone should produce a map of local and ethnic affiliations to London football clubs.
Are there actually Fulham neighbourhoods and Chelsea neighbourhoods? Or are they all mixed up together? Do they tend to split by class or race?
How far out into Essex does West Ham go? All the way to the coast I suspect, but I don't know.
Is there still anyone in South West London who counts MK Dons as a local team? And is the hole in South-West London left by the defection of Wimbledon filled by Chelsea? Or Palace? Somehow I suspect it isn't Brentford.
And who on earth supports Brentford anyway?.
And who is your local team if you live in Brixton? Certainly not Millwall - they fizzle out somewhere about Camberwell Green. Again I suspect Chelsea or just possibly Palace, but I'm not at all sure and am more then willing to be informed.
And while we're at it, going south of London where is the cut-off line between Crystal Palace (Palace? Palace?) and Brighton? Or is it all Chelsea in posh Surrey? (For those few who support a local team at all I mean)
And is Hammersmith locally Fulham/Chelsea (as I would expect) or QPR (as a taxi driver from Shepherd's Bush implied the other day? Though he also claimed that the reason West Ham have hammers on their badge is because they used to be connected with an ironworks which sounded totally spurious to me but seems to be true)
And are there or have there ever been any teams in London whose support is anti-Protestant or anti-Catholic (as you find in Scotland, and used to just a little bit in Liverpool and even Manchester)
How much truth is there in the stereotype that racist East Enders are more likely to support West Ham, but anti-racist ones either Arsenal or Spurs? (As famously portrayed by Warren Mitchell, the lefty Jewish Spurs supporter playing Alf Garnett as a Hammers man)
And if you are a posh Hampstead socialite, what is your local team? I suspect Arsenal somehow, even if QPR is closer. Bet it isn't Barnet.
This is all valuable anthropological and ethnographic information! It should be documented somewhere!
Like the real Millwall chant, which seems to consist of some of them howling "Mill" as loud as they can, drawing the vowel out for maybe ten seconds, and others singing "wall" (a syllable which contains no consonants in a South London accent) at the same time (maybe they start together but they end in different places) so the combined noise is roughly a completely wordless "eeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrr" (or "uuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhh" for rhotic Scots and Americans) Though how they thought anyone could hear them in Leeds is beyond me. But it was bloody loud where we were.
And incidentally is, I think, a deliberate playing-up to the media stereotype - portrayed as inarticulate thickos they have a laugh by acting the part. Why bother with words in your chant when no-one listens what you are saying anyway? The thing is a stance, a pose, an attitude. Not particularly a pleasant one to be honest, but a slightly different one from that affected by supporters of some other teams.
And Millwall are going to Wembley!