Millwall vs Leeds and the season's most unnecessary light show

The person who decided that the best way to warm up the crowd before Millwall vs Leeds United was with a light show should be made watch Millwall home matches in a Leeds shirt.

I do not consider myself to be a ‘proper football man’. I try to stay on top of changes and trends within the game, and where they’re not to the detriment of those involved, I’m open to change. I don’t want football to be preserved in aspic as it was when I was ten years old. But sometimes, they just really test your patience, don’t they?

Millwall vs Leeds United is more than just a ‘needle match’. It was never particularly common at matches themselves—the two clubs only played each other twelve times between 1920 and 2003—and really stemmed from the fact that these two clubs probably had the two worst sets of elements within their supporters during the halcyon days of hooliganism. It has taken on a meaning some way beyond merely the Bushwackers vs the Service Crew.

But oh, to have been a fly on the wall of the meeting at which it was decided that it would be in any way whatsoever a good idea to inflict a light show and—you guessed it—a booming rendition of Right Here Right Now before this of all matches should be sat down and made to learn, from scratch, the history of English football culture. Because to do something like this can only have come from anyone who’s ever set foot in a football ground in this country before, let alone The Den. Goodness only knows what Neil Harris thought of it all.

It is an experience like no other, the away end at The Den. It’s not completely unheard of these days for the lower tier of the stand to be open during matches, but for this particular match it definitely wasn’t. Getting off the train at South Bermondsey Station, you’re shepherded immediately onto a pathway which, upon completion, deposits you right by the turnstile. They don’t want anyone unfamiliar with the area getting lost, they really don’t.

Throughout the match, there will be people standing at the ends of the stand making ‘I’m going to slit your throat’ gestures while paying literally no attention to the match whatsoever. Considering how little actual throat-slitting goes on at Millwall matches (I mean, it never gets mentioned anywhere in dispatches, does it?), I can only assume this to be a local tradition akin to saluting a magpie and saying “Good morning, Mr Magpie”, should you see one. A bit odd, but ultimately harmless.

There even used to be an element of jeopardy to going home afterwards, since London Bridge Station also had a reputation for being a potential flashpoint area after matches. It’s certainly not as bad as it used to be, of course, nothing like it, but a trip to Millwall does remain one of English football’s more bracing experiences.

At least ahead of this match, Millwall saw fit to let the crowd know in advance so they could stay in the bar should they choose to. By the looks of it (and if you click only one link on this piece, make it this one - you won’t be disappointed), the vast majority decided to give it a swerve and stay in the stand instead, while those who didn’t made their feelings more than clear.

Nights like this aren’t for light shows and phat beats. Nights like this are for a dull, sullen deadweight of atmosphere to hang over everything, for Let ‘em Come to be blaring out over a tinny PA, for the smell of sensationally bad food to waft in and out of your nostrils, and for young men in a uniform which has barely changed in the last 25-30 years—seriously, has any fashion ever changed as little over such a lengthy period of time as the football lad’s affinity to Stone Island jumpers?—to goad each other through barbed-wire topped fences. It comes with a jellied eels, a glass of beer, and a hint of menace. You want Fatboy Slim? Go stand on Brighton beach.

Yeah, I know how all this sounds, though I don’t really feel as though I’m being much of a fuddy-duddy, here. After all, Right Here Right Now is 25 years old this year, while light shows are straight out of the 1970s. And no, I don’t want to go back to the early 1980s, either. The grounds were death traps, matches were frequently violent in a way that would be considered almost unimaginable these days, racism was everywhere, and Liverpool won all the time. 

Crowds were plummeting to a point that the gaps in the terraces where people used to stand but didn’t any more had become extremely obvious. The football was often extremely negative. If you weren’t a footy lad on the piss, it could be a miserable experience. That’s why crowds fell as low as they did in the first place. Everybody had a story of a kid whose dad just wouldn’t take them to the football, and it wasn’t really considered an unreasonable position. 

But do football’s rough edges all have to be planed away? The crackle that hangs over a match like this is what makes it what it is. The Den was a bearpit last night once the ELO impersontions stopped and the actual football started, with an old fashioned explosion greeting Japhet Tanganga’s 40th minute opening goal, which turned out to be the only one of the night. By the final ten minutes, there was a wall of noise around three sides of the ground. And at the final whistle, Let ‘Em Come blared out over the PA system as the home supporters celebrated their win. Jellied eels and glasses of beer thoroughly well earned. And it was enough. Football doesn't always have to be An Event.