Chelsea Ranger

Hoisted up onto the table. Mike and Raf push me above the crowd easier and quicker than I thought they would. I thought that they’d struggle, that I’d have more time to think. But I turn and only now do I realise just how high I am. Feeling naked, the full length of my body visible above the crowd, faces turned to me expectantly. Wait for the clamour to die down, a mischievous smile growing on my lips because I’ve wanted to do this for a while. 

Go for it.

“I wanna be a Chelsea ranger!”

My voice comes out hoarse, like someone else’s, tearing up my throat on the way out. The pub chants the line back to me as one and I know the stupid grin on my face will be belying the aggression that the song needs to be sung with. I unravel through the lines quicker than I should. I’m swinging my arm back and forth so fast it must be a blur as I chant the line about chasing Tottenham supporters up and down the street. It’s partly nerves and partly because I can see a bouncer out the corner of my eye making his way over to my perch on top the table. 

The Pensioner is a sweaty pub. Especially with perhaps a hundred steaming Chelsea packed in, bellowing out their songs. I didn’t like it when it first appeared. So near the ground, on the site of the old Black Bull, but now with a name with even clearer connotations to the Club, it seemed almost too conventional, too obvious. Besides, I usually much prefer to have a booze and a chat than a sing-song before most games. I was never one for the SoBar. A May bank holiday Monday match against Spurs to stop them winning the league though? This counts as special circumstances. 

When I first arrived I had a Meantime London Lager. It’s something different, slightly darker, rather than the same lager you’ve had a hundred times before. It doesn’t last long though. The heat and the noise of the Pensioner means I switch to Heineken as quick as I can, bought in tandem with Matt, one after the other. Lighter, colder, easier to throw down your throat and replace the fluids.

Chants start up, they surge through the crowd with a domino effect until you find the person that you were deep in conversation with suddenly shouting lyrics instead and you’ve no choice but to join in. But then it’s like a song I don’t recognise and I realise something’s amiss. There’s no tune, it’s just an animal roar, an outpouring of aggression. My head whips round and it seems to take me half a second longer than anyone else to realise what’s happening. 

Then the flags and the blinds over the windows are ripped up, almost off their bindings, and the outside of the Fulham road is revealed with the huge Tottenham mob outside, a police horse reeling back and forth between us and them. I find myself up against the window, banging the glass with an open palm again and again, only realising some time later how much it should hurt, my hand bright red and throbbing. 

“North London cunts!” I’m shouting over and over, face screwed up. We’d made our den in the pub. A little private slice of where we came from, what we were about, what made us unique. Our pub, our jokes, our songs. And then came this mob from Tottenham, dressing ever so slightly different, different backgrounds, different ways of looking at things. Chelsea against Tottenham. King’s Road and the Tottenham High Road. Surrey versus Hertfordshire.  The hate and the spite bubbling over.

A couple of pints earlier and I might not have cared. Laughed it off. They’re just like us though really, aren’t they? White and blue instead of blue and white. But I don’t, I bang at the window and glare at my opposite number. The door to my right slams open and some of the older heads spill out onto the road, wanting to test the mettle of the police and the yids at closer range. You can hear the police Alsatians above the general chaos, their barks at a different pitch to the angry shouts of football fans. And then just like that, they’ve been escorted along the road and into the ground. Another song starts up, and it’s like they were never there.

___

“Just one more. I’ll just have one more” I promise, wheeling away, jogging a path through the slow lurch of the crowd, up to the Fin and another pint. A draw that felt like a win and then some. I don’t want the night to end. Buying multiple pints on card because I’ve run out of cash and drinking them too quickly.

It’s only on the train back, after I’ve changed at Clapham, that a pang of guilt hits me and crawls all over my skin. I’ve acted like an idiot all day and got away with it. Just like Chelsea playing awful all season and still keeping our record against Spurs. I’m home and dry, completely scot free. Got carried away and in my paranoid mind I think that surely it’s only a matter of time until I’m punched or banned or nicked. I’m sure karma will catch up with me one day, but hopefully not for a while.

@JJReid13

See your mates, have a drink

My old primary school is at the end of my road. I walk past my pre-school. The college where I sat my A-Levels is further down the street towards town. It’s not in the right order, seeing as the school where I got my GCSEs is the other side of town, but the walk to the station is like a run-down of where I spent my childhood. On that same theme, I’m going to the station, changing at Clapham Junction and going to Chelsea. 

I remember rushing back from my own football games on a Saturday, getting dad’s car filthy with mud, showering and then rushing back out to catch the train up. Or we might drive then get a tube at Southfields. The carriages absolutely packed, even more so than they are today after games, or so it seemed. The old District Line thudding along the track from Wimbledon to Earl's Court and back again. Thud-THUD, thud-THUD. It doesn't make the same noise anymore now that they've upgraded it.

I’m up in central nice and early today, miserable grey skies as joyless tourists scurry around me. Station concourse loiterers cling to paper cups like they might float away otherwise, chugging down caffeine first thing. The morning drug; just until lunchtime and back onto the alcohol, normal service resumed.

On to the Finborough and dad is there. The Old Man. Shakes my hand and I clap him on the back. Making sure he’s healthy, that he’s still there. He thanks me sincerely for the pint I buy him and I just shake my head, not really able to formulate what I’m thinking into words. “Don’t be stupid” seems to be closest, so I blurt that out in the middle of the noisy pub. I wonder how many pints of beer warrant suitable reparations for however many years of bed, board and football tickets that he’s given me. 

We discuss football. But not Chelsea and the media and the culture and everything else, the actual football, nothing refracted. I mention that we hardly do this. Seeing as we go to the same games, see it from the same angle, I assume he has the same opinions as myself. Luckily, it turns out for the most part, he does. A wave of relief swells over me and I feel a calmness which has been absent ever since my barber suggested midweek that we should sell Diego Costa as soon as possible and that Baba Rahman is world class.

Alex and Rich are present too and it’s all brilliant for short while, because we’re all Chelsea together. I think back to the excitement you used to feel back at school when someone else had a Chelsea pencil case and you could immediately become best friends. Or summers spent bringing a ball to the park and asking “who do you support?” almost immediately after “what’s your name?”. Of course, kids who weren’t really into football would be forced to answer “England”. Right now I’m empty of everything but the football. No work worries or health problems or anything else. Today, for a few hours at least, we’ll be carefree. It doesn’t even matter that City tonk us 3-0. 

There’s not many days like this left at this incarnation of Stamford Bridge though. The change that Conte promises to bring in on the field will no doubt pale into insignificance compared to a wider cultural change brought on by the Wembley proposals.  Pubs will close or change hands, some fans may be priced out, or just drift away. All we can do is enjoy it while we can, this season and the next. If you get a chance, take your time, get there earlier and watch the otherwise quiet area around Stamford Bridge change as football arrives, just as it has done for the entirety of Chelsea’s 110-year history. Stroke a police horse, buy your mates a drink, take it all in. It won’t be here forever. ­

@JJReid13