At the moment I am supposedly preparing myself to ride the London Underground in a single day for charity (please donate) but this is by no means my first bonkers challenge. In 2015 I decided to broaden my mind with a literary challenge as I read 52 books in 52 weeks (I recommend Memoirs of a Geisha, Artemis Fowl and Jane Eyre). The year before I had drunk 365 different beers in 365 days (not as easy or as pleasurable as it may sound to some) but my first big bonkers challenge took me almost 5 years and involved visiting every football ground in the English football league.
That’s right, between March 2002 and December 2006 I went to football grounds the length and breadth of England. I saw the big names of the time and historic games like Coventry’s last match at Highfield Road and Alan Shearer’s testimonial for Newcastle United. It was a strange hobby and one that for many of my friends still defines who I am away from storytelling even though I now rarely watch or attend football. The challenge came about because Wimbledon FC (the team I then followed) were about to infamously move to Milton Keynes but it really began one rainy night in a different corner of south London.
Such was (is) my fascination with football that for my university dissertation I set about comparing audience responses to theatre with spectators at football matches. I decided that my field research would be to visit The Den, home of Millwall FC, which was just around the corner from where I lived at the time. For those of you who don’t know about Millwall FC their supporters have what can only be described as an unsavoury reputation. I don’t want to discuss everything I heard in the stands that night but I do want to discuss one particular chant. You see, such is the reputation of the club that their supporters would proudly sing “No one likes us we don’t care”. No one likes us we don’t care. Are you sure?
Having visited a lot of football clubs I can confirm that football fans are a territorial sometimes tribal lot. That’s all very well when its a match but what about off the field? Will the same siege mentality encourage a sense of community pride? This question has even more significance for Millwall when you consider that the club faces an uncertain future with redevelopment threatening to force the Lions out of south London.
Like them or loathe them Millwall Football Club are part of the fabric of their local area; I’d go as far as to say that they are important community assets. Now, in my world, the world of libraries, the threat to community assets is a familiar narrative. I’m always impressed and astounded by the stoic way in which librarians carry on in times of such uncertainty. London is blessed with some superb public libraries but just down the road from Millwall, New X Learning (formerly New Cross Library) is an example of the community taking ownership of a community asset which would have otherwise disappeared. Since the community took it on, New X Learning has become a vibrant community hub with regular arts events, meetings and classes taking place there. I am a big fan of what they do and recommend a visit.
No one likes us we don’t care. What nonsense! of course they care. A football club is about more than their fans and libraries aren’t just for books. Of course I’m not talking about closing a hospital A&E department. Neither a library or a football team will save a life but arguably they will help to make it worth living. These are places for communities and whilst they should be doing everything to reach out to a wider public their survival boils down to this: if you value it, use it or be prepared to lose it.
I hope that organisations like Millwall FC and New X Learning and organisations like them don’t just overcome the challenges they face but that they thrive. To do that though we all need to get behind them and start singing from the same verse sheet “No one likes you? Well, we care” because losing any of these things would be a tragedy.