Toeing the line
Jeremy Clarke
I’m down in the bar underneath the stand at half time and everyone’s exceedingly jolly. The team isn’t playing badly for a change. At least we’re trying. Plus, we’ve got a new bloke who can actually pitch over an accurate corner kick. And the sun’s shining.
The police run a tight ship at football matches these days. We aren’t allowed to stand up during the game, or smoke, or consume alcohol. And we have to watch what we say or sing because certain subjects are strictly off-limits. Shirt-sleeved policemen sitting in a control room closely monitor our behaviour on CCTV screens. They are assisted in this task by hundreds of matchday stewards who crouch in front of the wall separating us from the pitch, watching and listening.
I once knew a man who served a prison sentence in Albania for throwing a photograph of Enver Hoxha in the bin. This puts into perspective the small losses to our personal liberty that we submit to at football matches. Going without a pint of lager or a cigarette for 45 minutes can be done. Watching a football match sitting down is ridiculous, but the kind of person that can afford to pay £63 to see a game probably prefers it. So we don’t grumble or get upset. We make the best of it. It’s bad enough watching a rubbish football team every week, without worrying about your civil liberties as well. Still, it’s a pleasant relief when the referee blows his whistle for half time and we can troop downstairs to the bar and top up our alcohol levels (and maybe sneak a crafty fag) away from prying eyes and ears. I’m down in the bar with my nose in my pint, then, along with a couple of hundred other punters gratefully doing the same, when I notice that the chaps next to me have fired up a joint of marijuana. It’s an appallingly rolled joint, the work of an amateur, too tight at one end and too loose at the other, and the smoke is billowing out of the end like smoke from a garden bonfire.
The women serving behind the bar are holding their noses and flapping the smoke away with their hands. The blokes sharing the joint are squabbling inanely about whose turn it is to smoke it next. Then one of them makes a grab for it, sticks it in his mouth and runs away, and the others go sprinting after him. Unbelievably, these blokes are in their thirties and forties.
The next time I look up from my pint I can see two stewards and a great big metropolitan policeman heading my way with speed and purpose. The copper is built like a Norman keep. His biceps are so overdeveloped, his arms won’t hang down by his sides. He singles me out with a beady eye, marches up, and thrusts his big face right in mine. And what a face it is. Cauliflower ear, broken nose, front tooth missing, evidence on left cheek of having been glassed in his youth. It’s an old boxer’s face. His sweatbeaded forehead is resting against mine and we’re eyeball to eyeball.
In some ways it’s gratifying to know that this kind of ferocious, hands-on bobby still exists. So many policemen these days look and sound like ingratiating curates. This one is the most hostile, most violent looking individual I’ve seen for a long time. Plenty of ugly customers are drinking at the bar. The bar is in fact well known as an ugly customers’ rendezvous. It attracts sightseers on account of it. But this peeler looks like he could take on the lot with one arm tied behind his back. He must save the club tens of thousands of pounds in match day policing fees. They only need him. Any crowd trouble and the lads in the control room can simply launch him at it like a long-range torpedo.
He seems to be trying to make up his mind whether to nut me, deliberately break every bone in my body, or just tear my head off and spit in the hole. His face is so close to mine that if I pushed out my lips I could probably kiss him goodbye first. Finally he says, ‘I hear you’ve been smoking.’ I don’t dispute it. ‘I also hear that when a steward told you to put it out, you became leary.’ Again I don’t dispute it. ‘If I hear that you have become leary again, you’ll have me to deal with. Understand?’ I nod my head about 15 times. ‘Good lad,’ he says, keeping his face in mine for a few more slow seconds for good measure.
Why he picked on me is impossible to fathom.
But like I say, it’s no good grumbling or getting upset. We’ve enough on our plates with the team playing as badly as it is at the moment.
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