Greame shows respect.
No use pretending. It was not just a win for Leeds on Saturday, or even a thumping win. It was a thumping win against Millwall. As such, last season’s embarrassing home defeat can be seen as a one off, since The Lions have a poor record at Leeds down the years. The main reason for feeling pleased above and beyond the result itself is because Millwall have gone out of their way to wind up Leeds fans, the lowlight being the shameful incident last season at the New Den when one of their supporters wore a Galatasaray shirt, mocking the deaths of Kevin Speight and Christopher Loftus and, presumably, to provoke a violent reaction from the Leeds fans. Another fan was ejected from the ground and arrested for waving a Turkish flag. On Saturday, Leeds finally answered any such provocation in the best possible way – by playing their opponents off the park.
About three years ago, I did an interview in the FourFourTwo magazine with fans from Cardiff, Chelsea and Millwall. The point of the article, I suppose, was to show that not all supporters are hooligans. We were asked to meet in theTorture Chamber of The London Dungeon as some kind of visual joke about violence but, despite being potentially cheesy, it was a good, fair interview. We had a chance to give our viewpoints and they were reported honestly. Also, the other blokes were nice guys, which just goes to show.
Representing Millwall was Peter Garston who is a Fan Director at Millwall. No fool, he had seen plenty of action in his time but was and is working very hard to make the hooligan element unwelcome at the club. I’m sure plenty who read this will have a view as to how successful his efforts have been. I don’t think it very likely that peace and love will break out between Leeds and Millwall, for example, because, for each set of fans there is so much history and, to be honest, both clubs have supporters who, in another time, would have found guaranteed employment as storm troopers. Garston, though, made a couple of valid points; firstly that the media has a huge responsibility in not sensationalising violence and that all clubs have a hooligan element. As Leeds fans, we know this well and another strange thing about following football is that we have more in common with ‘the other lot in the corner’ than we do with those people who get their kicks out of IKEA and can’t stand football.
That said, we are fully entitled to bask in the team’s fine win and maybe even to rub it in a little, here and there. And I’m not saying all Leeds fans always behave like gentlemen, which illustrates Garston’s point about every club having problems with some supporters. Yes, there were incidents at E.R. last year after we lost to Millwall but the overwhelming majority took our defeat on the chin and drifted off home.
Football is a miserable sport when your team loses but, pathetic though it might seem to the IKEA outsiders, the whole world is a lot more bearable with one simple thing – a win. Then, when it is an emphatic win, like Saturday, and when it’s against a team who have been annoying you of late, the game of football has everything. Played properly, with a vocal crowd cheering, it has all you need in a spectacle; entertainment, emotion, excitement, skill, passion. And when it all works – and you win well, football is without doubt the greatest game in the world.
Graeme Garvey.
