London Calling: An American Stoke City Fan in Millwall’s Lion’s Den

By Stew Magnuson

Seeing how Millwall is traveling north to play Stoke this weekend, I thought it was time I finally wrote down my memorable day in South London watching my beloved Stoke City FC play the infamous Millwall on Oct. 26.

I say “infamous” because as soon as I knew I would be attending an away game there with my wife, more knowledgeable fans than I started issuing warnings.

“I would think twice about bringing your wife,” my friend, a Burnley supporter, said. Don’t wear your Stoke jersey around the neighborhood. Go incognito.

“Awful people,” said a Bristol City supporter and her husband who invited me to share a drink with them in the Holiday Inn in Stoke after the Stoke-Bristol match, Sept. 14. They traveled all over England following Bristol, but she said they would never return to Millwall after being there once.

I got similar comments when I mentioned I was traveling to Millwall on the Facebook Stoke fan pages. Apparently, when British TV and movie writers need to portray some kind of violent football fan, Millwall supporters are their go-to hooligans!

Amongst all these comments, a news article was published online declaring that Stoke was number one in all of England when it came to “football related arrests.” Port Vale was third and Millwall was nowhere to be found on the list. “Hey, who’s supposed to be afraid of who here?” I thought.

Contrast this with a game I attended earlier in the week Oct. 22 at Hillsborough Stadium to see Sheffield Wednesday. No one issued me any warnings, so I walked proudly around the stadium prior to the match wearing my full red & white garb and hat. No problem. Not only that, a couple of nice Wednesday fans — seeing a confused look on my face as I searched for the away team gate — stopped and asked if I needed directions.

Fast forward to the Millwall game.

It was a chilly, rainy Saturday and my wife had been battling a cold all week, so I let her off the hook and went on my own.

I’m a former foreign correspondent. I never reported from war zones, but I did cover some riots and a three-day coup d’etat. I’m not going to let a rough neighborhood scare me. Nor was I looking for trouble at age 56. My fighting days are behind me. I did indeed stuff my jersey under my jacket and take my hat off as the train approached Bermondsey Station.

As I streamed out of the station with the Millwall fans, to my right was a phalanx of mounted police — an imposing wall of horseflesh and a man barking that all Stoke fans must go behind the police line to the away gate.

I wanted to see the rest of the stadium and check out the team store, so I ignored him and followed the Millwall crowd through the neighborhood to get to the main gate. It really looked like an ordinary lot of fans. There were families. No one was drinking. Everyone was just shuffling along. Maybe all the warnings were for nothing.

(Bear with me. The scene after the match was a completely different story).

Eventually I did make my way to the away gate, where I chatted with a couple of Stokies who had come down from Birmingham. I was determined to give my wife’s ticket away to some lucky Stoke supporter, which was harder than I thought it would be. But I finally found a guy walking up the ticket office on his own. He was very grateful for the freebie. Pay it forward, mate!

Of course, all the people I encountered asked me the same question: How did an American become a Stoke fan? For that, link here and read my previous blog in case you missed it.

Thanks to the great staff at the Stoke ticket office, I had a seat in the away section for the Millwall and the Sheffield Wednesday games. The staff also gave me the royal treatment with a tour of the Bet365 Stadium pitch prior to the Bristol City game, one of the highlights of my life as a fan.

Inside “The Den” as the stadium is known, they played Oasis, A Town Called Malice by The Jam and finally London Calling by the Clash before the match got underway. Being a geezer who spent a formative summer in London back in 1983, I thought that was great.

We lost, of course. I was 0-3 in the three games I attended this fall. I was hoping I would be some kind of good luck charm, but I wasn’t. The Stoke fans on the north end and the Millwall supporters next to them spent the last half trading insults and graphic hand gestures.

The Arlington Soccer Association where I live is putting together a “once in a lifetime” tour of EPL games this spring for its youth members and sends me emails about it occasionally. Every time I get one, I think back to the three games I attended, “Those kids are going to learn some interesting new vocabulary words.”

On the way out of the stadium, the police were there in full force. I again zipped my jacket up and put
away my cap. It’s a small train station and there were thousands of fans making their way there.

I noticed a young father holding the hand of a boy of about three years in front of me, then I got distracted by some Millwall fans giving an older Stokie bravely wearing his colors a lot of grief.

All of the sudden, the dad was holding the boy in his arms while threatening to fight another, much older, but bigger man. I don’t know what the beef was about. I don’t think it was a Stoke/Millwall thing. I believe it was two Millwall fans. But it was pretty disturbing. I mean, who threatens to fight someone while holding a toddler? The antagonist was no better, yelling “run boy, run” at the terrified kid. All along,

other people in the crowd are telling the two to knock it off: “You’re scaring the little one!”

A female bobby put herself between the two, ensuring the exchange of words didn’t escalate as they climbed up the stairs to the platform.

That’s the last I saw of them: but the terrified look in that little boy’s face still haunts me.

I made my way farther down the platform. It was raining so I put my cap back on.

A friendly Millwall fan struck up a conversation. After the train pulled up and we sat down, he asked if I was headed back to Stoke. “No actually, flying back to the States tomorrow.” Which led to the same, how did you become a Stoke fan question.

Just as I was answering it, a brouhaha broke out in the train car doorway.

A group of about 10 Millwall supporters were being shoved into the car by a smaller group of bobbies. A full-on shoving match was suddenly underway a couple feet in front of me. I stuck my hat under my jacket and moved to the back of the car.

For an American, witnessing someone assaulting a police officer and yelling the f-bomb in their face is pretty shocking. The bobbies seemed to be determined to get this lot off the platform and into the train.

The doors closed, leaving all us peace-loving fans alone with the ruffians, where we had to pretend to ignore them all the way back to London Bridge Station. Fortunately, it was only one stop. They sang and chanted obscenities the whole way.

A police escort was on the platform waiting for them. The cops followed them all the way to the Underground, where — just my luck — they were headed to the same line as me. I made sure not to get in the same car with them. When I got off at the Old Street stop, I could still hear them singing in the carriage ahead of me.

There is a postscript to the story.

My other passion is baseball. Within 24 hours of the end of the Millwall match, I was back in Washington, D.C., sitting in Nationals Park for Game Five of the World Series. I landed at Dulles Airport at 4: 30 p.m., dropped my bags off at home, and went right to the game. (Thank God the plane was on time.) While we lost that game, the Nats went on to win the series and bring the nation’s capital its first baseball championship since 1924.

Stew Magnuson is the author of three editions of The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down U.S. Route 83. His book The Death of Raymond Yellow Thunder, winner of the 2009 Nebraska nonfiction book of the year award, was recently named one of the state's 150 most important literary works. Contact him at stewmag (a) yahoo.com.
There is no truth to the rumor that he will be taking over the role of the team mascot next year as he plans on going on a diet!