Fan-tastic Sporting Stories E-Book

Graham Sharpe

• Herausgeber: The Robson Press
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Seitenzahl: 255

Beschreibung

For some fans, a ringside seat just isn't close enough to the action. Stretching from the benign to the malign, from the entertaining to the insane, and from the sublime to the ridiculous, this compelling compendium contains over 300 true tales of fanatical fans who stole the spotlight from their sporting heroes. This is the good, the bad and the ugly side of spectator intervention - from streakers to rioters, and beyond. We've all felt the thrill of cheering on our sporting heroes, but there's a fine line between the mere fan and the true fanatic and this absorbing new book from Graham Sharpe well and truly crosses it. With its weird and wild tales of fan participation, Fan-tastic Sporting Stories! is essential reading for fans of any and every sport. Whatever your team, whatever your game, you won't help but find this collection absolutely fan-tastic!

Leseprobe

To Charlie Walker, fellow Wealdstone FC and racing fan, a pal from way back who was always there until, shockingly, he no longer was.

Contents

Title PageDedicationIntroductionFan-tastic Sporting Stories!BibliographyCopyright

INTRODUCTION

We may not all be participants in sport, but most of us are quite happy to take part vicariously, giving advice and criticism from the sidelines, enjoying what’s going on if it is going our way, moaning, ranting or raving a bit if it isn’t. That is generally the full extent of our input. We rarely contemplate becoming more involved in the event ourselves, becoming part of the action, even influencing the outcome, or creating a situation in which the fan becomes the story.

‘Fan’ – of course, the word is commonly used to describe a supporter or follower of various sporting events. But where did this usage come from?

Most, if asked for an opinion, would probably suggest it has become an accepted abbreviation of the word ‘fanatic’, originally from the Latin ‘fanaticus’, meaning ‘insanely but divinely inspired’, illustrating a rather extreme form of interest in something, above and beyond that of the usual casual viewer.

Another suggestion, which is rather intriguing, is put forward by Graeme Kent in his book Boxing Shorts, where he tells of his suspicion that the term ‘is derived from the “Fancy”, the name given to the aristocratic backers of the early prize ring’.

But those early days are so long ago – back in the eighteenth century – that it is more than possible that the already well-used description was lazily applied to the followers, aristocratic or otherwise, of other sports as they were invented.

The reasons that people become fans, and in particular sports fans, have been studied by psychologists such as Dan Wann at Kentucky’s Murray State University, one of four authors of Sports Fans: The Psychology and Social Impact of Spectators.

Wann and his fellow scholars attribute people becoming fans to a number of factors: one element is entertainment, because sports spectatorship is a form of leisure. But sport is also a form of escapism, and being a fan provides an excuse to shout and rant at something and/or someone, an activity that may be constrained in other areas of one’s life.

Fan activities offer participants a combination of euphoria and stress (usually about the potential for their team to lose) for which the word ‘eustress’ was coined. Fans experience euphoria during moments when play is going well for their team, and stress when play is going against their team. This tension between the two emotions generates an unusual sense of pleasure or heightened sensations.

Wann also points out that those not involved in sport as fans often ‘hold a negative view of sports fans and spectators. They perceive them as beer-drinking couch potatoes, with a pathological obsession with a trivial and socially disruptive activity.’

I’m pleased to tell you that this is the type of fan you’ll find well represented in this collection.

Very few of us live up to the fanatical aspect of being a fan. As Patrick Collins of the Mail on Sunday put it in a December 2012 column about fans in sport, we usually ‘recognise the convention by which the watchers watch and the performers perform’.

But not all do. And these are the rare animals this book will introduce you to, from the benign to the malign. From the wonderful Erika Roe to the loathsome Aaron Crawley; from the barely believable Michael O’Brien, to the literally incredible James Jarrett Miller.

All they have in common is that they should not have been part of an event but somehow imposed their presence on the spectacle and either enhanced or traduced it.

We’ve all seen this happen, I’m sure. I remember being at the Swiss Derby at a racecourse near Zurich when one of the runners broke loose and ran a couple of circuits of the track watched by thousands, all of us wondering when he’d tire and slow down to be caught.

One race fan wasn’t prepared to wait for that to happen. He swaggered slowly and ostentatiously down to the rails, ducked under them, waited patiently for the runaway colt to head back in front of the stands, raised his hands confidently to stop him – and was promptly mown down as the horse sped up, trampled over him and set off for another circuit, leaving the local medics to rush over with a stretcher on which our battered, bruised and bleeding wannabe hero was carried off…

I mentioned Erika Roe – those of, er, a certain age will be aware of the impact of this young lady who decided to enliven the action during a rugby union international between England and Australia. I was at the game, which was played at Twickenham, when Ms Roe made her bid for immortality. I’d already been staggered by the different attitude between opposing supporters at rugby, compared with football. Having ended up alongside some hefty Aussie fans, I’d feared the worst when I trod on the toes of one particularly burly specimen during an exciting passage of play – only to have my breath taken away, not by an Antipodean punch, but by his apology for getting in my way. As for Ms Roe – well, she brightened up a dull afternoon by stripping off and streaking across the pitch; although I was at the opposite end, where we had to stand on tiptoe and crick our necks to see past the idiot dancing in front of us dressed as a gorilla in order to glimpse Erika in all her glory…

The pal I had gone to the game with, John Maule, a Brit turned Aussie, told me of another fan intervention incident he had witnessed: ‘I was on the hill at the Sydney Cricket Ground when they put a piglet over the fence, wearing a little Botham jumper – he took some catching!’

One of the earliest examples of a fan finding himself making as much news as the sport he was following occurred in 1882, when Australia beat England by seven runs at the Oval – the match which would lead to the inauguration of the Ashes phenomenon – and an England fan was so overcome by the excitement of the whole thing that he suffered a heart attack and perished.

Even earlier than this, it is recorded that Roman Emperor Theodosius had to abandon the Olympic Games of 393 AD when spectator riots broke out after Greek athletes alleged that Roman competitors were professionals.

The previously mentioned Mail on Sunday writer Patrick Collins’s Among the Fans was short-listed for the prestigious William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award. The excellent volume dealt with several sports, including tennis, cricket, speedway, greyhound racing, darts, rugby, golf and snooker, with Collins defining fans as ‘people who make our sports both possible and pleasurable’ and asking, ‘What are they doing there? How do they behave? Are they there to see or be seen?’

Fellow sports writer, Roger Alton, executive editor at The Times, also proffered a plausible explanation for foul football fan behaviour in October 2012: ‘Once footballers started being paid obscene salaries … it broke the link with communities and warped any sense of duty and responsibility. Players and managers now seem to operate (with) little concept of responsibility, and the moral boundaries of barbarians. And this sets an example to the fans.’

In this book we will be looking at the fans who are very much there to be seen, heard or even to participate in the event and by doing so influence what is happening on the pitch, track, court or in the arena.

When they do so as individuals, the outcome is sometimes unpredictable, but usually relatively easily contained.

But when groups, gangs or mobs of fans form, their influence over the outcome of an event or even on whether it actually takes place or plays out to a conclusion is often of a malign nature.

It is difficult ever to imagine a time when sportspeople would pay to encourage fans to support them, but for all that, major sporting events would be pointless without fans – and the presence of supporters, spectators, fans is essential to create the atmosphere from which the sportspeople feed.

Although he clearly did not like it, Rafa Benitez, then Chelsea’s interim manager, was clearly suffering from the effects of the fans’ opinion of him when he let rip at them in February 2013 after he had seen his side win at Middlesbrough in the FA Cup.

A large contingent of Chelsea fans had made their antipathy towards the appointment of Benitez obvious since his arrival and virtually every game was marked by booing and singing of anti-Rafa songs.

He bore it stoically until snapping and letting his true feelings come out, which is very unusual as most bosses are well aware that once they ‘lose’ the fans the risk of losing their job increases exponentially. This time, though, the fans had got to the boss – which, of course, is the ultimate objective of such behaviour.

However, Benitez got off lightly: in October 2013, fans of Levski Sofia stormed a press conference held to unveil new boss Ivaylo Petev, whom they believed to be a supporter of rivals CSKA. Petev was stripped of his club top and forced out of the room. He resigned.

With the ever escalating cost of admission to major sporting events one can envisage fans eventually being priced out of the market – but without them, watching televised events would be much diminished.

So perhaps the inevitable consequence of rising prices and fan disillusionment will be computer-generated crowds for TV sport – and then the days of fan misbehaviour will be well and truly over!

But for now, let us delve into the long tradition of fan madness that has enriched sporting experience since balls were first kicked, racquets swung, and races contested…

GREAT COACHING

After suffering a 3–2 defeat at the hands of Accrington Stanley in 2012–13, and facing up to potential relegation, it can hardly have been a jolly journey for Barnet’s die-hard devotees on the 200-plus-mile drive home – and the thirty-six fans on the supporters’ club coach felt even worse when they broke down on the M6.

But help was at hand from an unlikely source – Dutch player-manager Edgar Davids.

When the Barnet team’s bus spotted the stranded fans shivering on the hard shoulder waiting for a replacement coach, Davids ordered the driver to stop at the next service station and told his players to disembark.

The former Champions League winner, who had earlier been red-carded, then sent the team bus back up the M6 to collect the Barnet fans and bring them to the service station, where he bought them coffee while they waited for their transport home to be repaired.

MORT-IFIED

A grandmother was banned from supporting her village rugby club for ‘loutish behaviour’. A passionate fan of Pyle Rugby Club, near Bridgend, South Wales, for more than fifty years, Lillian Mort, seventy-four, brought her team into disrepute with her frequent foul language and abusive outbursts directed at the unfortunate referee. When her behaviour earned the club a £50 fine in March 2013, enough was enough, and they barred Mort from watching the side for three months. Not to be put off, the pensioner took to watching matches through the steel railings around the field.

BORUC HAS BOTTLE

Southampton keeper Artur Boruc said racist abuse from his own fans resulted in him throwing a water bottle at them during a match in 2012. It happened on his home debut against Tottenham Hotspur as the Saints went down 2–1. The club took no action after Boruc told them, ‘I won’t say I regret it, because I heard insults from the stands. Racist ones.’

DEADLY SHOOT-OUT

Who knew that watching a penalty shoot-out can kill fans? That’s what was claimed in 2000 by researchers at the University Medical Centre in Utrecht, Holland, after they looked at deaths on the day in June 1996 when the Dutch were beaten on penalties by France, thus being knocked out of the European Championships. They compared death rates with the five days before and after the match, and compared the same period with other years.

Deaths from heart attacks or strokes in men, but not women, rose 50 per cent.

In the British Medical Journal, Prof. Diedrick Grobbee said that unusual mental or emotional stress and high alcohol consumption are recognised triggers for strokes and heart attacks. However, suicide as a result of sporting event is rare. But the death of a thirty-year-old man who fell 65ft at the Atlanta Braves’ Turner Field baseball park in August 2013, during a rain delay in a game, was ruled a suicide by the Medical Examiner’s Office.

TASTY BURGERS

Fans of German side Hamburger SV received a unique gesture from their club following their 9–2 defeat to Bundesliga leaders Bayern Munich on Saturday 30 March 2013.

As an apology to supporters who had had to endure the drubbing, the club invited fans to a barbecue at their training centre, all paid for by the players.

Any hamburgers on the menu, one wonders?

BADLY LET DOWN?

Lifelong Cleveland Browns fan Scott E. Entsminger left one final request for the somewhat unsuccessful club he had followed for so long when he passed away aged fifty-five in Ohio in July 2013.

In an obituary published in his local newspaper, Mr Entsminger’s last wish was quoted: ‘He respectfully requests six Cleveland Browns pallbearers…’

However, his request to the American football club carried a sting in the tail: ‘…so the Browns can let him down one last time.’

The Browns are not noted for their triumphs these days – their last NFL Championship was gained in 1964, and among supporters their First Energy stadium is known not as the ‘Theatre of Dreams’ but as the ‘Factory of Sadness’.

Unsurprisingly enough, the club was not keen to go along with Scott’s dying wish, but to show they bore him no ill feeling, they presented his family with a team shirt bearing the name of his favourite player, Lou Graza.

ALL TOO TRAGIC

It reads like the script for a violent Hollywood horror movie, but the events played out during a football match in Brazil in June 2013 were apparently all too true.

The game was taking place at a ground in the state of Maranhão in north-east Brazil, and the flashpoint began after referee Otavia Jordão da Silva, 20, sent off player Josenir Abreu, 30.

The red card resulted in official and player becoming involved in a fist fight – at which point, according to a report by the Press Association, Mr Silva ‘took out a knife and stabbed Mr Abreu, who died on his way to hospital’.

At this point, fans watching the game ‘rushed into the field, stoned the referee to death and quartered his body’.

Local media reports alleged that the spectators also decapitated the arbiter ‘and stuck the referee’s head on a stake in the middle of the football field’.

Police reportedly later arrested a 27-year-old suspect. Police chief Valter Costa was quoted as saying, ‘One crime will never justify another.’

FAN JUMPS TO IT

Roger Federer was leading 6–1, 2–1 against Sweden’s Robin Söderling at the 2009 French Open when, as Federer prepared to serve, a spectator dressed in red and white and brandishing a Barcelona FC flag climbed over the courtside wall, rushed up to him – and tried to place a red hat on his head.

Security guards chased the fan, who ran off before eventually being brought down and carried from the court.

As he was being taken away he was heard claiming that he had wanted to pay homage to Federer and make a gesture against dethroned Spanish champion Rafael Nadal, a fan of Barcelona’s arch-rivals Real Madrid.

Federer, who still managed to win the match, remembered that it had not been the first time such an incident had happened to him during a match, recalling similar intrusions at Wimbledon and Montreal.

‘I didn’t know what had happened until I heard the crowd react,’ he said. ‘So that gave me a fright seeing him so close right away. Normally they look at you and say “sorry, I have to do this”, but this guy looked at me and I was not sure what he wanted. He seemed to want to give me something. It was a touch scary.’

The fan was revealed to be a serial intruder at sporting events, going by the name of Jimmy Jump (real name Jaume Marquet i Cot), who boasts his own self-promotional website on which he sells T-shirts with his own logo on it.

His dedication to the Barcelona cause has taken him far and wide. During the UEFA Euro 2004 final between Greece and Portugal in Lisbon, he threw a Barcelona flag at the Portuguese captain, Luís Figo, who had left that team to join Real Madrid four years earlier. He has invaded the pitch at Champions League, Euro and World Cup semi-finals and finals in England, Switzerland, South Africa and Hungary, to name just a few.

Not a man to limit himself, Jump doesn’t confine his appearances to Barcelona-related events. During the 2006 Champions League semi-final between Villareal and Arsenal, he ran onto the pitch just before the second half began. When on the pitch, he tossed a Barcelona jersey at Arsenal striker Thierry Henry, with Henry’s name and number 14 printed on the back. (On 25 June 2007, Henry was transferred to Barcelona from Arsenal and given his lucky number 14.) Jimmy was apprehended and taken into custody by stadium security, and later fined by Spain’s anti-violence commission.

Another one of his ‘raids’ was at the end of the Euro 2008 semi-final match between Germany and Turkey in Basel, Switzerland; this time he had a Tibetan flag and wore a T-shirt with the slogan ‘Tibet is not China’.

Nor indeed does Jimmy restrict himself to disrupting football games. He ran through the starting grid during the parade lap of the 2004 Spanish Grand Prix; entered the court during a basketball game between Memphis Grizzlies and FC Barcelona Bàsquet, attempting to confront a player; and invaded the pitch at the start of the second half of the 2007 Rugby World Cup final between England and South Africa.

He is also one of the few pitch invaders, fans or streakers to interrupt a water polo game, making his aquatic debut when he jumped into the CN Sant Andreu pool during the 2010 Copa del Rey final between CN Sabadell and CN Barcelona.

In 2012, his friend and Irish musician Rob Smith (who is also a well-known fan of Barcelona) wrote and recorded a song about him called ‘Salta Salta (The Jimmy Jump Song)’, which featured a small part of Barcelona FC’s anthem ‘El Cant del Barça’ during the outro.

PEAR STOPS PLAY

A Swedish league football match was abandoned after a player was hit in the stomach by a pear.

Gbenga Arokoyo, a Mjällby defender, doubled up in pain after being hit by the flying fruit as he and his teammates celebrated a goal at Djurgården’s home stadium in Stockholm in April 2013.

The game was called off as a hail of bottles, coins and fruit was hurled at players by the home fans.

FANS SUPPORT WITH PRIDE

The Chicago Cubs flew the flag for Gay Pride when they hosted nearly 350 gay and lesbian fans for the Cubs’ game against the Los Angeles Dodgers in August 2013. A feature of Out at Wrigley, the largest LGBT-attended major league sports event, the game marked the thirteenth year in a row that the Cubs had taken on hosting duties for the event.

Laura Ricketts, Chicago Cubs co-owner, board member and Chicago Cubs Charities chair, said before the game: ‘We’re immensely proud to be flying the Pride flag above Wrigley field.’

Ricketts became the first openly gay Major League Baseball owner when her family took ownership of the Cubs from the Tribune Company in 2009.

‘The LGBT community happens to be a big part of the Cubs community. We have a lot of LGBT fans and, of course, it’s important to me personally because I happen to be a part of the LGBT community,’ said Ricketts. ‘Owning a team itself is a bit surreal and a big responsibility, but I feel an even greater responsibility because I’m a woman, an out woman. For me it’s an incredible source of pride and it’s very humbling.’

TALEFANS

Brazilian football champions Fluminense intervened when, in an apparent excess of fighting spirit, fans launched the ‘Be a Taliban Warrior’ campaign. Disgusted with their team’s loss in a Copa Libertadores match, the Fluminense fans had taken to Twitter to ask players and fans to take and post photographs of themselves dressed as Taliban fighters to ‘show their warrior spirit’.

Several players, among them Brazil striker Fred, posted photos with their faces partially covered by scarves in club colours, while some Brazilian fans started turning up to matches carrying flags depicting controversial figures such as Ayatollah Khomeini, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden in the colours of their clubs.

But with Brazil preparing to host the 2014 World Cup, the football authorities were beginning to fear that the fans’ attitude could damage the country’s image. In a statement, they denounced the campaign, which they said would only glorify terrorism.

The statement read: ‘The intentions of those who began this movement and have joined it clash with the Taliban’s image, who are terrorists and not healthy warriors.’

The club described the ‘Be a Taliban Warrior’ campaign as a ‘call for violence’.

PHIL-THY HABIT

A spectator who spat at sixteen-time World Champion Phil Taylor during a Premier League darts match in Glasgow in March 2013 was immediately banned by the sport’s governing body.

Taylor had been walking to the stage to take on Raymond van Barneveld and expressed his ‘disgust’ at being hit on the ear when a fan spat at him. ‘I wanted to give the fans a show, so it is a shame if one tries to spoil it,’ said Taylor. Darts chief Barry Hearn said, ‘It was disgraceful, cowardly behaviour – the guy was ejected immediately and won’t be back to watch darts. There were 8,000 people there but you always get the odd idiot.’

RED-FACED RIDE

Liverpool defender Martin Skrtel was the victim of fan fury in March 2008. Having jumped into a cab in Liverpool and asked to be taken home, the Slovak defender was stunned to be thrown out of the taxi by the cabbie, who told him he was an Everton fan!

POWERFUL FAN

Notorious trickster Karl Power from Droylsden, Manchester, gained himself a reputation as a true fanatic when he began inveigling his way into sporting events by pretending to be a player. He first came to attention when he appeared in the Manchester United team photo before a UEFA Champions League match against Bayern Munich in 2001.

Power gained access to the pitch by pretending to be with a TV crew, then took his place in the stands again afterwards to watch the game.

When the England cricket team played against Australia at Headingley in 2001, Power walked out to bat with the team. Moments after entering the field, he removed his helmet and was immediately recognised.

At Silverstone in 2002, he beat Michael Schumacher to the winners’ podium at the British Grand Prix.

Power managed to get onto Centre Court at Wimbledon in 2002 and began to hit balls to an accomplice, Tommy Dun, prior to a Tim Henman match.

On 5 April 2003, Power and several friends invaded the Old Trafford pitch ahead of Manchester United’s game with Liverpool. Dressed in full United kit, Power and company re-enacted a goal scored by Diego Forlán against Liverpool at Anfield earlier that season.

Following this stunt Power was banned for life by Manchester United.

YOU’RE KIDDING…

A band of young cricket fans found themselves the centre of unexpected attention when they started an impromptu match among themselves during a rain break at the third Ashes Test match at Old Trafford in August 2013.

Shortly after play commenced behind a stand at Old Trafford, the young amateurs were warned by stewards to stop on ‘health and safety’ grounds.

But their supporters weren’t standing for it: hundreds of adult fans backed them up, showing their disapproval by chanting ‘Are you Aussies in disguise?’ at the heavy-handed officials.

‘People were singing at the stewards,’ said BBC journalist Ian Shoesmith, who was among those watching the game.

He said one adult fan was ejected from the ground for bowling at one of the children during their game.

‘People were telling them, “This is ridiculous – Old Trafford is a home of cricket”,’ said Mr Shoesmith. ‘Eventually a club official in a suit came up to them and told them to turn a blind eye.’

FANTASY GIRL

Fans of American football star Manti Te’o, playing for Indiana’s Notre Dame University, were ‘heartbroken’ to hear that the player’s girlfriend was dying from leukaemia. And even more so when they discovered that not only was she not dying, but that she didn’t really exist at all!

After Te’o took his team to sporting victory on the very evening of his girlfriend’s funeral, his story made national news. Te’o gave a series of interviews telling how his grief had spurred him on to victory, and the inspirational tale was held up as an example of achievement in the face of adversity. But when the media investigated further, they discovered that his so-called soulmate, ‘Lennay Kekua’, had never existed.

According to Te’o’s team, the 21-year-old had been ‘duped into an online relationship’ with a woman whose illness was ‘faked by perpetrators of an elaborate hoax’.

FANS IN A FINE MESS

A sneaky sheriff used match day to good effect when he spent the time investigating the cars parked outside an August 2013 Aussie Rules game at Melbourne Cricket Ground between Collingwood and Essendon.

In total, twenty-seven cars were found to have fines attached to their registrations, including speeding tickets and parking infringements, when Victorian sheriff Brendan Facey used an automatic number plate recognition system to detect offenders at the game, attended by 68,821 people.

One driver, reportedly owing almost AUD$26,000, had his car clamped and Sheriff Facey said ‘there was a very stern conversation had before the car could be returned’.

Mr Facey said it was an ‘honourable draw’ between Essendon and Collingwood supporters for outstanding fines.

BANKING ON IT

After being charged with robbing twenty-four California banks during 1991, Claude Dawson Jones admitted that he had pulled off the raids in order to finance his trips to watch his favourite American football team, the Los Angeles, er, Raiders.

RALLY UNUSUAL

Not a sport one might associate with fan skulduggery, perhaps, but the 1994 RAC Rally was rocked by allegations of chicanery designed to help land a British win, which was eventually achieved by Scotland’s Colin McRae.

During the final day of the competition, two tree trunks were placed across the path of contender Carlos Sainz of Spain – and when he duly went into a ditch, the spectators who came to help somehow took all of thirty minutes to haul the car and driver out, drawing a wry comment from former winner Juha Kankkunen that ‘a lot of people were trying to help – but I’m not sure how hard’.

ICE-SCALATING VIOLENCE

It started with the suspension of top Montreal Canadiens ice hockey player Maurice Richard, after he whacked a match official over the head with his stick – and ended with a full-scale fan riot with looting, a blaze and millions of dollars’ worth of damage as fans’ protests about Richard’s suspension at the end of the 1954–55 season got somewhat out of hand.

DIVORCED FOR BEING A FAN

A woman identified only by the name Rowley brought her marriage to an end in 1981 on the grounds that her husband was too big a fan of cricket to be a good husband.

She told Wolverhampton Divorce Court that she had initiated the proceedings on the basis of her other half’s ‘excessive obsession with cricket, both participatively and statistically’.

The court accepted the claim and permitted the divorce.

SINKING FEELING

‘The friends of competitors sometimes manoeuvred large boats or barges into their opponents’ paths or positioned themselves on bridges over the racecourse in order to drop heavy stones into their opponents’ boats as they passed underneath.’

– Author Daniel James Brown, in his 2013 book The Boys in the Boat, on eighteenth-century boat races among London watermen on the Thames, in which unscrupulous fans helped out their favourite crew.

FAN INVASION

When England played Scotland on 6 April 1891, the game took place at Blackburn Rovers’ Ewood Park ground, with the home side prevailing narrowly by 2–1.

But when the local paper, the Northern Daily Telegraph, wrote about the match, they were more concerned with the crowd than the result – and, in particular, with the activities of the visiting Scotland fans. Interestingly enough, local football fans were not that concerned with the match as they were still smarting from the fact that no members of the Rovers side, which had recently won the FA Cup, had been deemed good enough to play for the nation, and the majority of the 10,000 crowd was from north of the border.

As the Northern Daily put it,

It is estimated that about 5,000 men travelled by the excursion from Glasgow and Edinburgh and they commenced to arrive as early as four o’clock in the morning.

Soon after this hour, sleeping townsmen were alarmed by shrieking war whoops and riotous singing, accompanied in several places with the crash of glass and smash of door panels.

One tradesman in a principal street on drawing aside his blind to see the occasion of the blood-curdling tumult, was startled to perceive a ‘braw Scot’ perched on the top of the pole supporting one end of his sun-blind, and coolly smoking a cigar; while another gentleman was making vigorous efforts to climb up the other standard.

In King William Street a stubbornly contested football game was in full swing before six o’clock, every kick being signalised by a perfect storm of howls and shrieks.

Scores of householders found drunken men asleep in their doorways and passages when they came down to breakfast. Long before dinner time drunken men were staggering about the streets in all directions, and the accommodation afforded by the police cells was tested to the bursting point.

Soon after midday, the majority of the visitors went off to Ewood Park to witness the match, and the remarkable spectacle was witnessed by scores of Scotchmen, in all stages of intoxication, sprawling on the seats of the stands, either asleep or sleepily quarrelsome.

The return train got away at about midnight after indescribable scenes, many of the passengers having to make distressing spurts to cover the distance between police stations and the railway in the short time allowed them by the guardians of the peace. Large numbers never caught the trains at all.