Millwall FC: From the Outside Looking In
American sports journalist Sheridan Lambrook reflects on her first experience of English football culture in Millwall’s North Stand as we examine the club’s turbulent history
The day started out with the fork in the road of which team will lead you to your destiny. Will you choose to rejoice and join the passionate away fans who have traveled from the Midlands to see their Super Rams thankfully not play Forest? Or will you choose a home seat in the Den to chant “No one likes us, we don’t care” with the notorious Millwall fanbase?
It was once said that Millwall “has always been super-league at violence but only minor-league at football.” As a club and as a community, they have a formidable reputation. For many in England, and even across the channel, Millwall is football hooliganism incarnate.
It is a reputation that, while not being unfounded, the club has tried harder than most to transform. That being said, Millwall has had more to change than most. Yet, despite being awarded silver under the EFL’s Family Excellence status system and crowned the Football League’s Family Club of the Year in 2017, alongside commendations from London Mayor Sadiq Khan for their community programmes, a trip to the Den remains a daunting prospect.
A separate entrance for the away and home team was the first culture shock of the day as an American at their first English football match.
Growing up in Oakland, I spent years supporting the then-Oakland Raiders from The Black Hole in the Coliseum. When searching for a new team to support that would feel like home, I was directed to the open arms of Millwall.
Testing out the waters, having heard about the reputation, I went as a visitor taking the away team’s path. This time.
The Den is a stone’s throw from South Bermondsey station. The redesigned stadium approach has a separate pathway for away supporters, affectionately known as ‘Cowards Way’, to distance opposing fans en route to the ground. Abuse is still hurled from afar, but it’s far removed from Millwall’s hooliganist pomp, where escaping the ground was “like being on manoeuvres in some enemy-infested outpost of Vietnam,” as one Arsenal fanzine gracefully put it.
After some time on the road, this match was the “Homecoming” game for Millwall. A very fitting theme reminding me of the classic cliché that is homecoming games in the States.
In a gated patio, away fans are able to engage in pre-match festivities, singing chants, enjoying pints and hot dogs, even being bolstered up by fellow fans to add tongue-in-cheek stickers to the wall. Similarities could be found in the American tradition of a tailgate, where, at the stadium before the match, supporters camp out with barbecues, music, and especially beer.
Alcohol and footballing violence have made for uncomfortable bedfellows since the early days of hooligan culture in the 1960s. The consumption of alcohol in view of the pitch was banned in 1985 under Thatcher in order to stem the tide of hooliganism.
The decision coincides with the Heysel Stadium Disaster, but also with an infamous episode in Millwall’s history; on March 13th 1985, drunken and armed gangs infiltrated the crowd at Kenilworth Road as Millwall took on Luton in the FA Cup. The game had to be halted more than once, before a riot erupted on the final whistle. 81 people were injured, including 31 police officers, one of whom, Sergeant Colin Cooke, had been hit repeatedly on the back of the head with a brick in the centre circle and had to be resuscitated by a fellow officer.
Into the Lions’ Den
Close to kick off it was time to find our seats. Walking up to section 26 to see the pitch up close and personal with the sun shining, I felt like a little kid once again.
The match itself was a good watch. To have never seen these teams before but to be so invested shouting at the referee, throwing arms up, and getting the words to the chants. Standing the whole time, as we would be on the edge of our seats the whole match. With Derby 1-0 up, Millwall quickly returned a goal and the Den shook. The fans erupted, taking their shirts off and helicopter-ing them in the air, rubbing the goal into the face of Derby fans. The game ended in a 1-1 draw.
In the rumors and reputations of the ‘Lions’ fans, I saw a piece of the misunderstood Raiders fans. Passionate people with their friends and family who love a team and are given to ‘traditional’ antics. The best part was in the pub post-match, where I was able to wear my Millwall kit and people came up to me cheering, “Millwall, Millwall!” Instantly I felt welcomed, like I was home.
Millwall fan culture is well documented, and often maligned. It can be as impenetrable as it is foreboding, and if you’re not in, you are most certainly out. The landscape, however, is shifting.
Photography initiatives such as Jérôme Favre’s book No One Likes Us and the Black Millwall project seek to reevaluate the club’s position within “contemporary football culture”. As a group notorious for its history of racial abuse towards both fans and players, be they opposition or friendly, Millwall’s community has had to confront its difficult past head on.
Campaigns like ‘Lions Have Pride, Not Prejudice’ and Millwall’s links to Show Racism the Red Card are indications of a genuine desire for change, but the problems with ‘tradition’ can still rear their ugly heads. One only has to look at 2019’s FA Cup clash with Everton to see.
Leaving the match, content with the score, the away fans were asked to wait. Yet another culture shock. Waiting at the gates for Millwall fans to get their trains and leave the venue, they would look through the fence to make ‘smart’ comments and lewd hand gestures.
In comparison to the American sports culture, there are similarities with passion; fans who root for their teams, yell at the referees, walk out of the stands in frustration. But from having experiences in both atmospheres, the English football atmosphere is other worldly. Parallel to the Championship, in America we have the Minor Leagues, a game never known to sell out, especially the away seats.
The crowd and fanbase is what really differentiates the two countries’ sports culture. Besides the chants and the celebrations inside the stadium, you can see the love of football everywhere you look in London. It’s in the pubs, parks, stores, and classrooms.
Football, unlike many sports, is available to all walks of life. You can get a ball and play by yourself or get a group together for a pickup game at the park.
Witnessing this culture from an outside perspective is really quite beautiful.
Millwall’s reputation has at times felt like a self-fulfilling prophecy. ‘If the establishment says we’re a bunch of unruly hooligans, that’s what we’ll be.’ Ergo, “No one likes us, and we don’t care.” If Radio 5 Live wanted to cover “Earthquakes, Wars and Millwall reports as they happen,” Millwall fans were often only too happy to oblige.
Now, change appears to be afoot. The Den is still a fortress, but the garrison is smaller and less armed. As Favre noted: “It still feels like a family club.” People come “not only for the football, but for the sense of community and togetherness.”
Millwall’s North Stand remains a perilous voyage for an away fan, but the sharpest edges seem to be softening.
Dare I say, football in the UK is bigger than American football in the US. Football is one of those sports where its power lies in its ubiquity.
For the next match I am excited to sit with the Millwall fans. Derby will still have a special place in my heart, but the strange allure of The Den will always entice me.
