Cod Almighty | Diary

Actively looking for offence to take

20 February 2018

Open Diary writes: There has always been a downside to supporting Town. We've all seen it. Running riot at Burton when we dropped out of the League. Abusing players has been going on for decades – Mike Cullen used to get it in the neck in the 1950s. And yelling "Sort it Sladey" (or Buckley or Hursty, depending who was in charge) at any opportunity.

It seems that nobody in the club is exempt from this. Those who listened to the Fenty tapes or who viewed the recent fans' forum on video can't fail to have been taken aback by the behaviour of the two board members and the former manager. People at the club may not like this idea, but the truth is that they need to either set an example or rise above the behaviour they see around them.

I watched Rochdale get their draw against Tottenham and I was so impressed by their chairman who spoke well on TV, seemed to be a genuine guy and behaved in the way I would want my club's chairman to behave. Why can't our chairman behave like that?

And that takes us to Saturday. If you've read Tony's match report (and I know not everybody does), it tells you all you need to know. Even after ten minutes those who had been were drawing comparisons with Crawley and waiting for the first goal to go in. And so it did. Heads were shaken and the man next to me observed that the plain truth was that the players simply weren't good enough. It wasn't that they weren't trying or not doing their best; it's more like their best was nowhere near good enough to face even a side as mundane as Cambridge.

Then in the second half it all kicked off. Sitting on the left of the stand we became aware of the "you're not fit to wear the shirt" chanting. At the time it seemed a bit harsh on those on the pitch, because they weren't the worst individuals to turn out for us: names like Heywood, Jamie Clarke and a few others were no better than the back four on show. McKeown, Zak Mills and Reece Hall-Johnson certainly don't deserve to hear that.

Later that evening it all became clear what had seemingly happened with Vernon and his hand movements allegedly seen by children. So, the first thing to ask those who objected to all this was just how come they think that it's OK to chant "Scott Vernon is a wanker" at the tops of their voices in front of said children? Vernon evidently responded to it in a way that, in modern parlance, was "clearly inappropriate". No doubt he will be forced to apologise on Twitter. But those who give it out clearly don't like to take it in return.

If they had kept a dignified silence in the first place it might have been an awful lot more effective. Children would have been protected from events that the perpetrators seem to be all too prepared to take offence at. Vernon would have sensed the cold foreboding from the stands.

Then there were those who walked out. Quite a lot of them. Apart from getting an earlier train home, what does that achieve – except to undermine the confidence of those on the pitch even more? You want us to stay up? Well, start to back those who are going to have to turn things around. The transfer window has closed and we're stuck with what we've got. I know that's fatalistic but that's how it is. I took my own advice and stayed to the end to acknowledge the players who came over to applaud the fans.

Outside the ground I ran into a couple of Cambridge fans who I had met earlier at the station and who had told me which bus to get to the ground. As we strolled back to the bus stop there was a friendly conversation between half a dozen people about the match. Then a couple of guys bailed out of a Grimsby minibus, clearly looking for a fight with another guy who was standing at the bus stop. Apparently they had taken offence at "hand gestures" he had made. Nobody else had seen any hand movements and it was only defused when a woman got between them and the guy on his own and they got back on the coach. The guys in the minibus continued to goad those at the bus stop.

People who witnessed this were amazed. "Is this what your lot come for," asked one of the Cambridge supporters, "to get drunk and start a random fight?" The thing is that some people aren't just quick to take offence: they actively seem to be looking for an offence to take. That was not the only example. The next minute a potential bust-up outside the ground was only broken up by someone who got out of a car and showed a police badge and sent people on their way.

Now you can say that this is just how football is – only it isn't any more. People don't behave like this in the rest of the country. Fans don't abuse their own players in that way. Fans recognise that there's a difference between players of limited ability doing their best and players of ability who aren't giving their all. Above all, fans try to earn the respect of other clubs' fans. Giving them the sense that we'll fill them in as soon as look at them isn't what respect means these days.

I know that people will say that this problem all starts at the top, but if there's no hope of the people at the top of the club setting an example then it needs to start at the bottom. If you want to know how to behave try taking a lead from John Tondeur and Matt Dannatt; if you want to show commitment follow James McKeown's and Danny Collins' example; and if you don't like the look of some random person at a bus stop don't assume that you and your mates filling him in is the right way to solve your problem.