Small club syndrome thrives – but Fulham break free

As the final whistle blew at Villa Park on Sunday, consigning Newcastle to the Championship, a familiar epidemic swept across the terraces at the Stadium of Light Sunderland’s supporters, having just witnessed another pitiful defeat against a Chelsea team playing on autopilot, sung with glee and waved their home-made banners for the television cameras, as the news of their foes’ demise filtered through. What these supporters were suffering from was ‘Small Club Syndrome’. There is just the one symptom; taking pleasure from your rivals’ failure, in an attempt to cover up for your own shortcomings. It is the sister of that other deadly virus that can be found among football supporters, called Sour Grapes. Sunderland have been terrible this season, but no matter. They are the Premier League’s only surviving team in the north east, and for that we can allow them a small party, as they are by no means the worst sufferers.

In my own circle of friends it is the Tottenham fans who like to spend more time looking out for the results of Arsenal and Chelsea as yet again their mid-table mediocrity gave them little to get excited about. Tottenham are a club that printed t-shirts to commemorate their first league win over Chelsea in 18 years, and brought out a collector’s DVD of the 4 – 4 draw with Arsenal this season (the implication that it was some kind of massive achievement). But as The Gunners tumbled out of the Champions League against Manchester United the text messaging and Facebook status updates said it all about these Spurs supporters.

The following evening it was Chelsea’s turn as they succumbed in the last minute to the tournament favourites, Barcelona. The Spurs fans hollered and gloated in the sheer ecstasy of the moment. It did not matter to them that they had surrendered so meekly in the joke that is the UEFA Cup (now Europa League), or the only time they might get the opportunity to play against such glamorous opposition would be in a meaningless pre-season friendly. As far as they were concerned, an Arsenal/Chelsea cock-up equalled a successful season at White Hart Lane.

And now we come to the west-London outfit with the eccentric millionaire at its helm, whose team have produced some of the best football of the season and gave Manchester United a good sound drubbing. No it’s not Chelsea, it is Fulham. At Stamford Bridge you are unlikely to hear any hateful whispers, anti-Fulham songs or witness a pitch invasion should a game between the two produce a Chelsea victory. Fulham are many Chelsea supporters’ ‘second team’. But down at Craven Cottage it is very different. Fulham are a club who have lived in their big brother’s shadow for most of their history. And when they get one over us they love to tell us about it. But I don’t begrudge them that as I would fully welcome a true rivalry between the two clubs. Rangers have Celtic, Sunderland have Newcastle, Arsenal have Spurs, the list goes on. I guess we feel a little bit left out.

So I take my hat off to Roy Hodgson and his team. Last season they produced one of the great escapes from the relegation zone, and they have used it as a springboard into this season. Never once have they looked in trouble, even when they have lost they have played some fantastic football and they have gone about their business quietly and without any unsavoury headlines.

Roy Hodgson has shown what a manager can do with limited resources but an abundance of football knowledge as he made Manchester United’s back four resemble that of a Sunday pub league outfit, keeping the title race interesting in the process.

For that, and for finishing seventh and earning a Europa League place, Fulham are my team of the year.

When it all gets to much

If I don’t watch, then everything will turn out okay. And so it proved for the second year running as Chelsea edged past Liverpool in the Champions League. And for the second year running I spent the majority of the game in blissful ignorance of the drama that was unfolding.

The two rivals have now beaten each other twice as the competition draws them together year after year. Before Riise’s late own goal at Anfield last season I was beginning to think Liverpool were our European bogey team.

But as Chelsea went ahead in last year’s second leg thanks to Frank Lampard and Didier Drogba, I knew we could not be in a better position to end our jinx. What I did next was perhaps cowardly and pathetic. I got up from the sofa and walked out the front door leaving my brother and two friends bewildered as I told them “I’m just going for a walk.”

You see watching Chelsea is rarely enjoyable. Just when everything seems to be under control they can contrive to throw it away – and I do not mind turning my head the other way when it happens. I timed my walk to perfection and walked back threw the front door 15 minutes later to discover Chelsea had made it through. Do I regret not witnessing the dying minutes when Liverpool pulled a goal back? Absolutely not.

This year was even worse. After Chelsea did the unthinkable by winning comfortably at Anfield, neutrals said the tie was over. But us Chelsea supporters know our team much better than that. With Chelsea it is never over.

By winning 3 – 1 in the first leg, Chelsea had eliminated the edginess and cageyness of previous clashes. If they could win 3 – 1 at Liverpool, then why couldn’t Liverpool do exactly the same in London?

With Liverpool having nothing to lose I knew the chances of a boring goalless draw were, sadly for me, small. And my beloved Blues duly went about their business doing their best to make the tie exciting. Liverpool’s two goals and Clive Tyldesly harping on about ‘the spirit of Istanbul’ (come on ITV, a neutral commentary team is not too much to ask for!) made the first 45 minutes a horrible experience.

I decided to wait and see if Guus Hiddink could inspire an instant fightback. But once Drogba had squeezed a goal past Reina, I knew what I had to do. The next 40 minutes would be too much for me, and so I left my brother alone on the sofa and set off out the front door, without my phone.

First I went to the playing field, where I found a football and shot a few penalties into an empty net by moonlight, then I sat on the swings. I checked my watch and to my frustration there was still 30 more minutes to kill before full-time. So I continued on my walk to the end of the road, turned around and headed back. It started to rain so I spent five minutes at the bus shelter until 9.45pm. I strolled up the driveway knowing that the game must be over, unless of course it had gone into extra time. I would know the result just by the look on my brother’s face. He was on the phone, his voice was shaking but he was smiling. We were through!

As ITV replayed the goals I sat in astonishment as I now saw what I had missed. My brother hung up the phone and his next three words confirmed to me that my decision to go walkabout was the correct one: “That was horrible!” he rasped.

My team, my team, had just been involved in one of the most exciting matches in Champions League history and I had deliberately missed almost half of it. Again I admit it is cowardly on my part. But as I listened to Danny Baker’s phone-in on Radio Five Live, I realised I was not alone. Other supporters, both Liverpool and Chelsea, had suddenly felt the urge to take a shower during the second half, while others thought it would be a good idea to check the fence at the bottom of the garden was still there. My brother himself admitted he went to the toilet four times in the last 20 minutes.

You see for supporters like myself, seeing my team throw away what had looked like a stroll through to the semi finals is too unbearable to watch. I would like to say I will have the guts to watch every minute of the semi-final against Barcelona. But the last time Chelsea beat Barcelona I took a shower in the last 10 minutes. I think a pattern is emerging here…

Football and religion

Dr John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, has criticised the Premier League for scheduling games on Easter Sunday, saying it should be a day to spend time with those we love. I like Dr Sentamu. He speaks a lot of sense, most recently suggesting that making St George’s Day a national holiday could promote unity in England. I feel he is wrong, however on this latest issue.

I admit I am not a religious person. Although I do hold Christian values, I am a firm believer that you do not need to go to Church to be good. I know a few people who attend Church every Sunday but are very un-Christian in the way they live their life.

Football dominates my weekend. I play on Saturday afternoons and I set out as usual on Easter morning to watch my local Sunday team play. All the churches I passed on the way had lines of cars parked up outside. Today was a Christian day that Dr Sentamu would like to see on a level playing field (excuse the pun) with Christmas Day. The problem he has though is that for scores of supporters across the world, football is their religion. They may stay at home with their family on Christmas Day, but that is because it is cold outside and there is nothing else to do but stay in to enjoy a hot dinner and the Queen’s speech. They will already be relishing the Boxing Day derby clash with the ‘scum down the road’. In fact they have had one eye on it ever since the fixtures were printed, desperately hoping they would be allowed out the house for a couple of hours with some cold turkey sandwiches in their pocket.

You might make your own judgements, but if you ask the topless, tattooed Geordie regularly pictured at Newcastle games where he’d rather be on Easter Sunday, at home or St James’ Park, I think I could predict his answer.

We live in a free country, tolerant of many different cultures and religions, but to have religion dictating when we can and can’t play sport would be an unwelcome infringement on our freedom of choice.

It should not be forgotten that football league matches were once played on Christmas Day and Boxing Day. While reading the autobiography of Tommy Docherty recently, it was interesting to note how he thought nothing at the time of playing for Preston against Blackpool on Christmas Day, before getting on the train the next day for the return fixture. The pampered stars of today would have difficulty reading a rail timetable accurately, never mind be willing to play two days in a row.

Dr Sentamu’s argument for banning football on Easter Sunday is based on the origins of one of the teams who played this Easter Sunday. He said: “The greatest irony for me is the fact that without the very first Easter Day, the teams involved in today’s matches would not exist at all. “Football has come a long way since members of the Aston Villa Church Bible Class formed a football team in 1874 and the members of St Domingo’s Bible Class started playing football at Stanley Park in 1884.”

I know there are more important things in life than football. But I do not accept that religion is in any way superior to football. They both have large followings, both like to incorporate some form of singing and, sadly, both can lead to unnecessary and fatal acts of extreme violence, so neither can claim to be the moral victor.

One thing I could argue in football supporters’ favour is they do not go round telling people who have no interest in the sport that they should be. On Good Friday a Jehovah’s Witness came to my doorstep. He was smartly dressed, in his early twenties, well-spoken and very polite. I was on my way out and, to be fair, he realised this and did not bore me for too long, but left a couple of leaflets for me to read (I haven’t yet). But if I dressed up in my football kit and started ringing doorbells with the aim of persuading strangers to come and play football at the weekend, well I would expect some funny looks at least. Football, remember, can also be the antidote to conflict, such as in the wartime football matches between British and German troops in No Man’s Land on Christmas Day, 1914.

Life is for living and enjoying, and I am proud to live in a country where we can choose what we do with our weekends. Some will go to church, some will bake cakes, some will go to the pub while others will pursue their sporting interests. I see no reason for any religion to change that.

My Sunday Morning

From a young age I have always been intrigued by the thought of refereeing a football match. How fun it seemed to be involved in a game so close up, watching two teams compete for glory. How many fans would love the opportunity to watch their heroes, not from the grandstand, but from the same patch of turf? There is a catch, of course. That whistle around the neck is no doubt a heavy burden, not to mention that little black notebook and two coloured cards in your pocket.

This morning I had my first taste of what Howard Webb and Co. put themselves through every weekend. I have refereed football games at kids’ parties before and found it a lot of fun. I was now preparing for a very different scenario. Earlier in the week a friend asked me to referee his Sunday team. As I am currently short of cash I agreed to give it a go in exchange for £30.

I walked out on to the pitch, which was gleaming in the spring sunshine. The away team arrived and of course were less than thrilled to find that the referee was a ‘homer’. But such is the decline in the number of amateur officials, they accepted there would be no game without me. Just before the game I received all the expected promises off players from both sides; “we’ll try to give you an easy game” and “we won’t give you any hassle”.

Within a few minutes of the start all that had gone out of the window. Two genuinely honest decisions in favour of the home team led to the predictable shouts of “there’s two teams out here ref!” and “looks like we’re playing against 12”. I managed to ignore them but a big part inside of me wanted to scream in their ear “I am giving everything as I see it!” I was quietly pleased when they opened the scoring early on. Maybe that would help them suppress their anger towards me.

Some chance! Only minutes later a home striker was tripped from behind in the area. I had to make a quick decision – and I did. Penalty. Of course the offender raged that he played the ball. In actual fact he was nowhere near it. The penalty was converted and now I was Public Enemy Number One for the visitors. But I would have made the same decision at the other end.

One of the most difficult things I found was to stay out of the way of the play. I wanted to be as close to the action as possible to give myself the best chance to spot infringements. But I often found myself frantically trying to jump out of the way as the ball or even a player came hurtling towards me.

The visitors went in at halftime 2 – 1 up and, to stay impartial, I sat alone at the break rather than go for a chat with my mates in the home dressing room. I was happy to be 45 minutes away from the final whistle.

As I got the second period underway, it became apparent that just as the away team were trying to influence me by suggesting I was biased, the home team felt I should be doing them a favour and giving more decisions their way. It was really a no-win situation for me.

The hosts equalised with half an hour remaining, before my biggest test of the morning arrived. It was a test I passed in some ways, but I also made what could have been a costly error on another day. I took my eye off the game. It all started when a tussle between a defender and attacker suddenly became aggressive and they both had their arms raised at each other’s throats. I had no interest in producing any cards so I sprinted over and immediately calmed the situation down just as other players were beginning to get involved. I was pleased to have dealt with the situation quickly and effectively. But then I realised my huge mistake. While I was among the brawling players the game had continued and I had not blown my whistle. Luckily the ball was in the goalkeeper’s hands and everybody seemed ready to get on with the game. But what if it had not been that simple? If a goal had been scored I would not have seen it and it would have been purely my fault.

As the clock ticked away until there were just five minutes left, I began to pray inside my head that there would be no more controversial incidents. Both teams could go home with a well-earned point in what was an even contest. However, there was one more heart-in-mouth-moment for me in the very last minute. An attacker for the away team went down just outside the box and I blew for a foul. The respective angry and surprised reactions from the home and away teams made it obvious to me that no foul had been committed. But I had given the kick and watched nervously as the ball was delivered into the box. Thankfully the ball was cleared and as the ball sailed up the pitch I brought the game to an end with three loud blasts on the whistle. It was over. What a relief! And I felt I had done a fairly decent job.

Only a handful of players from each team shook my hand which showed just what a thankless task the referee still has. I have now seen football from both a playing side and an officiating side – and I don’t need to tell you which one I prefer. From a player’s point of view there will always be poor referees. And yes it is frustrating. But they are also a dying breed and they still need more protection if more young officials are to be encouraged into the game.

The Football Association can promote its ‘RESPECT’ campaign all it likes, but until they start clamping down on Rooney’s swearing, Ashley Cole’s arrogance and Ronaldo’s childish petulance, discipline problems will continue to filter down to the lower leagues.

The next time I step out onto the pitch as a player the referee will certainly have my respect. And I hope my team-mates can follow my example. I won’t hold my breath though.