I am relatively new to the beautiful game, but this week, I've been following the story of one Stuart Astill, a 59-year-old man and lifelong Nottingham Forest supporter. In fact, before this weekend, Mr. Astill had been to 214 consecutive Forest league games, home and away. His streak was in jeopardy because Millwall had decided to ban all away support. Why? Mostly because Millwall has a history of being unable to control themselves. Forest and five other clubs are not allowed to have any away support this season at the New Den, mostly because the Metropolitan Police said they could not effectively police the ground if away support was allowed. The first thing about this that shocks me is how the League would allow such an imbalanced situation to occur. Support has a definite impact on the results of games in any sport. At the very least, if Millwall can not effectively ensure the safety of fans, no one should be allowed to come and the game should be played behind closed doors. This was debated heavily on MatchTalk on BBC Radio Nottingham, which is where I was introduced to the saga of Mr. Astill. Now after hearing this, the Nottingham Evening Post decided to pick Stuart to be the guest writer to compile the fans' player ratings for the game, wanting to continue his run of over 29 years of support for NFFC. This was a totally legitimate job, and the paper obtained two press passes from Millwall, one for Astill, and one for beat writer Michelle Wilson. Apparently, some disgruntled Millwall fans e-mailed the club to complain, and on 4:45 on a Friday, Mr. Astill's press pass had been yanked, even though he was working on a legitimate piece and was certainly not a threatening hooligan. Even more shockingly, club chairman Theo Paphidis had Wilson kicked out of the ground a few hours later for no other reason than that he was "very disappointed and angry" at the Post for attempting to give a diehard supporter a chance to legitimately see his team in action. Paphidis made some more friends by going on Radio Nottingham's MatchDay program and getting into a very combative interview with Robin Chipperfield in which he said, among other things, that fans of the opposing clubs have just as many hooligans as Millwall and demanded that Chipperfield stop attacking him and his policy "on scout's honor". Well, there are a few happy endings to this story. First of all, Forest beat the Millwall scum 2-1 and forced at least a few of those words down the chairman's throat. Also, Mr. Astill didn't seem to like it, but it doesn't appear that he has too many hard feelings. He watched, with Wilson, the "beam-back" of the game to a TV screen in front of the Trent End at the City Ground, and counts it as a half, so he'll head to Derby in two weeks on 214 1/2. This incident has given me two opinions. Sure, I'll agree that the vast majority of Millwall fans are peaceable folks, but that doesn't change the fact that I think their club did a shocking injustice to the sport and to Forest with this. Essentially, they have made and will make four more times, a benefit of their inability to control their own support. How would they like it at the New Den if Forest banned their supporters from visiting? The second is that this Mr. Astill guy is exactly what sport should be about. Ceaseless dedication to one's club, through good times and bad. If I ever get a chance to visit Nottingham, and he's still around, I'll have to say hello, and maybe buy him a pint!
Last season against Man City, Noel and Liam Gallagher (sp?) were in attendance. Also with a ban on away fans. Simple. You need to be rich and famous. Not good to here, but they really do need to do something to reduce the problems down there, but not entirely convinced. Perhaps only allowing people on offical buses or something. And I'd not have thought Forest as being one of the expected clubs in this bracket.
It's things like this that really get my goat. For Paphidis to claim that all teams have hooligans as bad as Milwall's is just lunacy, and to ban genuine fans (especially those as dedicated as Mr. Astill) is just ignoring the problems surrounding his club. If he concentrated his efforts on eliminating the problems at hand, rather than simply banning away fans from the ground (which will only make matters worse, as any visiting troublemakers would simply go to the ground a couple of days before the match and buy tickets in the home end) then he would earn respect from every fan of the game. On another note, Mr. Astill has a long way to go to match the record of Gordon Campbell. It's people like Mr. Astill and Mr. Campbell that make me proud to follow the sport.
I don't think Millwall wanted to ban away fans, it was rather forced upon them by the Met Police saying they might not police high-risk matches at the new den any more. If that had happened the games would not have been able to take place and there was a danger that Millwall could have been thrown out of the league for being unable to fulfill their fixtures. As well as the away fan ban, to get into the new den you have to be a member of a membership scheme whose memebership requirements are pretty stringent, so there is almost no chance of away fans going in the home stands. This also accounts for the large slump in Millwall's crowds. Not only is anyone with certain criminal convictions banned, they have completely lost all their casual support as people can no longer go along on the spur of the moment. ps There a bloke at Reading who has been to every game, home and away, since 1976. He is a bit mental, although I'm not sure what the nexus of cause and effect is regarding those two facts.