"No Problem"...Millwall were a disgrace

By Chris O'Keefe

Millwall chairman, Theo Paphitis, finished his programme notes for last nights game with Liverpool with an interesting thought.

He said: "What an great opportunity this is once again, to show the world a very positive image of Millwall Football Club."

He was right on that count and myself and just about everyone I spoke went with open minds and no worry of trouble ahead. However my thoughts were quickly reminded of Millwall past not long after entering The Den.

Firstly, we were not given appropriate seats. When I asked one steward where my seat was he replied: "Sit anywhere, just fill the seats." That was first for an away trip.

Really it was when Liverpool went a goal up that everything started to escalate.

Millwall fans rsponeded with: "You should have all died at Hillsborough."

As you can imagine this didn't go down too well with some Liverpool fans. Former player Phil Neal, working for Radio City, apologised for not talking for 20 minutes.

He said: "Seeing what happened tonight made me rather subdued"

But that didn't stop Millwall fans who between making references to Hillsborough, Boris Johnson's comments and Ken Bigley, decided to make gestures similar to cutting a throat and pointing to the exit doors as if to incite violence.

Unfortunately a small number of fans rose to the bait and wanted to confront home fans head on. This included seats being thrown and coins thrown towards fans I might add that seemed to revel in it as they looked like it was what they were after the entirety of the night.

One steward said to me he understand the lack of police presence in their Main Stand compared to the line of police in front of the visiting fans.

Despite stewards promisies that any more chanting would result in ejection, it never happened and more home supporters joined in the chants of pure hatrid. From my estimation and comparing with numbers from media, I think that roughly 1,000 fans (maybe more) joined in.

What cemented my new thoughts of "Old Millwall" was the steward trying to eject one the home supporters in the Main Stand Upper Tier. He was perilously close to going over the front of the tier and other fans joined in the beating of the steward as his colleagues looked on and at each other. In general I think stewarding was awful and no semblence of order established at all.

After our coach left - an hour after the final whistle we had extra passengers because one coach had windows smashed - a brick was thrown at the coach as well as many vocal tirades from fans in pubs and walking home. The coach stayed in tact, my faith in Millwall being a civilised group of fans didn't!

The salt in the mental wound of this experience came this morning. Theo Paphitis saying that Liverpool were solely to blame and that his fans were "not a problem." There is no shred of reasonable evidence to back that statement up and diminishes my estimation of man supposedly trying to transform the image tarnished by years of violence and inhumane hatrid.

Surely the FA will fans the violence was ignited by cold blooded and medieval supporters yet to embrace the evolution of the family game of the last ten years.