Beach Seagull
New member
- Jan 2, 2010
- 1,310
None. If your offended by chanting don't go to football.
None. If your offended by chanting don't go to football.
No offensive as such, but at a game at Withdean, in the south stand, when Micky Adams was managing either Coventry or Leicester agasnt us a guy in the row in front of me, a few seats to the right suddenly piped up, all by himself at the top of his voice;
Micky Adams is a gay homosexual,
Micky Adams is a gay homosexual,
Micky Adams is a gay homosexual,
Until he was calmed down by his neighbour, he then skulked off and I don’t recall ever seeing him again.
It is difficult for me to enjoy the Palace and Brighton rivalry at the best of times, nights like last night almost ruins it for me.
It’s not the match itself, it is the absolute state of a (to be fair, shrinking) number of our fans who in 2018 still want to yell homophobic abuse at the Brighton fans. It makes watching the game, with my lesbian sister standing next to me, almost unbearable.
My sister is unable to, and shouldn’t have to, hold her tongue. She introduces herself to the person behind us in the first ten seconds of the match to the first person to throw homophobic abuse. “Hi, gay Palace fan here” she politely says with a big smile. “You’re alright” is his awkward and baffling response.
Next up, “let’s batter these queer boys” from someone a few rows behind us. This time I look at him and simply shake my head. This appears to trigger him and his mate to up the ante with his insults. Eventually, after a few heated words, one comes down and apologises, the other continues grinning like a Cheshire cat and lowers the volume on his insults so that he is just saying them to the people around him. That is somehow worse. I know this guy’s name, I know where he sits, I see him at every away game. Palace is his life. 24 hours later and I am still fighting the urge to report him to the Club. I still don’t know if I will/should or not.
We could have reported him at the time, stewards came running over to see what the arguments were about. We politely told them to sod off and that we were self-policing and they’re not needed. Are we right to do that? Should we throw him under the bus? Should “he’s Palace” be a blocker on doing the right thing?
Perhaps the most entertaining piece of homophobic abuse of the night was a Palace fan that was so triggered by a Brighton fan giving to him from 100 feet away, that he ran to the front and screamed at the stewards; “are you going to do anything about him. He’s been inciting us all game… who’s your manager? I want that person thrown out [doesn’t get the response he wants and retreats up the stairs screaming] of course you won’t do anything, you’re too busy putting your bollocks up each other’s arses.”
What was touching was the couple of people that came over and apologised on behalf of people they do not even know. “I am sorry you have to put up with this. You’re handling it very well” and other comments along those lines.
People all over the stand last night were making homophobic jokes or laughing at ones made by others. Most of these people were probably outraged by the banana being thrown at Aubameyang on the weekend, but their behaviour suggests that if they were thirty years younger, they would have been throwing banana skins at black players.
I wonder how many of you read that last paragraph and thought “that’s not the same thing.”
In a season that has heard Tommy Robinson chants in the Holmesdale and seen Football Lads Alliance leaflets being handed out outside the stadium, it’s going to take a lot more than the Holmesdale Fanatics returning for me to claim that we are the best fans in the division.
They score three, we scored one thanks for ruining all our fun.
http://rednbluearmy.co.uk/match-reports/2018-19/brighton-3-1-crystal-palace
Christ, what a depressing read that was. Good on the Palace fan for speaking out.