Only Part-Timers Boo Drogba
Posted by Zeno in Chelsea | 28 March 2006
Occasionally, I sit in the Matthew Harding upper. Not always, but I have a couple of mates who don’t always use their seats there, the fools, and the panoramic diagonal view of the SB pitch up there is far better than my own in the West Lower. So up there I sit, wedged in between the ample frames of a pair of chaps that I’ll call Dave and Alan. They may be their real names, they may not.
Dave and Alan have been going to Stamford Bridge for some time. Between them, they conservatively estimate, around 70 years. And there are sections of the crowd, in these modern times, that rile them somewhat. I love sitting up there, despite my 11 stone frame regularly losing out to Dave and Alan’s combined 30-odd stone, because I can indulge my joy of getting good and worked up of a weekend. Not, for me, the joys of bursting a blood vessel over a late email or an all-department memo: no, I prefer to relax in the week and spend my Saturdays howling into a bottle of Coke (with the top unscrewed, in case I use it as some sort of weapon) to the accompaniment of two large South West London boys.
And who, you might ask, is the object of all this sound and fury? On whom do we vent our ire – ire that we’ve built up over the preceding days and now approaching the sort of levels that could very well solve the energy crisis if only we had the wherewithal to harness it – of a sunny afternoon? Our fellow supporters, that’s who.
“Go on then, **** off and get your prawn sandwich, you ****ing part-timer” screams Dave in my right ear, as some luckless punter wanders down the steps past us. I should clarify: it’s ten minutes before half-time, and “early exit” is one of the things that REALLY upsets Dave. “Yeah, go on, **** off and have your nice cup of tea and your sandwich. See you half an hour into the second!” bellows Alan on my left. I try to summon the energy for my own contribution, but god knows I’d only be echoing my neighbours. Leave this to the pros… they’ve been coming here far longer than I have.
Sitting with Dave and Alan might sound like torture to the softer and squidgier among us – you know who you are – but for me, it’s a terribly cathartic experience. I firmly believe most of the things they say, you see, whereas I suspect that they themselves are doing it more to replace the sense of rage that Chelsea have left in them. You see, there’s not much on the pitch to get angry about these days. We’re good, as we demonstrated eminently against Man City on Saturday. We ran possession, we shot, we forced corners, we created chances, and really we should have won by 4 or 5, not the 2 we ended up with. I suspect that the lads were, in a way, happier when they had plenty to whinge about.
But there’s an area where we’re all agreed, and it’s got nothing to do with how many Chelsea win by. Towards the end of the City match, as the clock was ticking away towards another comprehensive Chelsea win, sections of the crowd began to boo our own players. Firstly, as the team passed the ball back to run the time down late in the game, then directly to Drogba as he went down in the area after a finger in the eye from David Sommeil (or whichever hapless City defender it was). D and A were not, repeat not, impressed.
I have no doubt that you can hear for yourselves the stream of invective that was inspired by this turncoat fandom. “Call yourselves Chelsea fans?” was the only printable war cry mustered during an uninterrupted 10-minute spell of ululation.
I agreed. But quietly. You’re best off not trying to compete, in terms of volume, with Dave and Alan.
