No such thing as a West Ham friendly

Click here to watch a video of the crowd trouble

Reading the newspaper reports of crowd trouble in the game between West Ham and Columbus Crew reminded me of another friendly that caught fire some years ago. Julian Dicks' testimonial against Athletic Bilbao was an excruciatingly boring game until the man himself lumbered on to the pitch, his knees shot to hell. He came to a halt near the left touchline, received the ball - to a polite cheer from the crowd - and was instantly cut in half by an insane tackle by an opponent, sparking outrage in the stand and a 19-man brawl on the pitch. Belying his fiery reputation, Dicks himself limped in a studiously straight line directly away from the fracas. In his place, Paolo di Canio took the fight to the enemy and was invited to leave the field by a bewildered referee. It was as if a baton had been passed.

The Columbus trouble, on the other hand, was all 'off the pitch'. I must admit, my heart sank when I heard about it, but rather than a return to the thuggish violence of West Ham's past, the story seems to be a product of a quiet news day. Reports of 100 fans of the American team fighting 30 travelling Londoners appear to have been exaggerated, with eyewitnesses talking about some taunting followed by a small, half-hearted fight, and authorities making just one arrest. Violence is ugly and always unacceptable, but this looks to have been a very minor disturbance talked up by journalists bored to tears by watching a sluggish pre-season West Ham taking on Columbus Crew's second string side. Yes, preseason is hell, and any excitement is a welcome distraction, but while there's nothing at stake on the pitch, there's still plenty at stake off it. West Ham fans' reputation for trouble is diminishing by the season. A little less sensationalism couldn't hurt.

An entertaining post script to this story, reported in The Times, is that Columbus Crew (which sounds like a hooligan firm in the first place) has a "boisterous" group of fans called the Hudson Street Hooligans, named after the US title of the film known in this country as Green Street. That film, starring the wide-eyed hobbit Elijah Wood, was centred around West Ham United. It's almost sweet that US fans are taking the hooligan side of football to heart,  and perfectly possible that, based on their knowledge of the film, the local fans were looking forward to meeting the West Ham contingent with a view to a rumble, as I believe they call them in America. If so, they would have been shocked by the Hammers fans, as they tend to be significantly larger (especially in the x axis) less photogenic and more untintelligible than their on-screen counterparts. (The RADA cockney accents in Green Street* were a particular highlight).

In any case, the football took a back seat, and that's fair enough for a warm-up game like this. The question is, has West Ham's mission to capture hearts and minds in the emerging football market of America been damaged or enhanced by the incident?

(*I must admit that I took my wife to see Green Street, watched it in an empty auditorium, and enjoyed every minute.)

Douglas Carter