Yahoo News London's football fringe: How to up your football game with culture, food and drinks
Autumn afternoons are animated by football. If you’re in the orbit of a Premier League stadium, the crescendoing roars and jeers suggest the drama on the pitch. Meanwhile, punters spill out of pubs, and fans with Sky Sports subscriptions vault across living rooms, fist-pumping and occasionally holding back sobs. Inside the grounds, reality is suspended for 90 minutes: the world begins and ends with the beautiful game.
Football’s melodrama has even inspired the arts. The most famous example is, of course, Nick Hornby’s autobiographical Fever Pitch, a meditation on the writer’s relationship with Arsenal — from which the Gooner spun off a screenplay of the same name, which became the 1997 film starring Colin Firth and was then Americanised in 2005 in a film with Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore. Now, it has been re-tooled again: this evening is the opening night of Fever Pitch: the Opera. Only in Islington.
The show will be performed by Highbury Opera Theatre and was scored by Scott Stroman, its artistic director, with a libretto by Tamsin Collison. Singers from Highbury Youth Choir and Islington schools have been drafted in as fans for the chorus.
Gooners will be thrilled: many of the chants that resound around the Emirates have been written in, including “We love you Arsenal, we do”, “We’re the North Bank” and “Arsenal ’til I die”. Hornby is elated. “One of the expected pleasures of my writing has been to observe others making something of my work,” the author said this week.
It’s different, certainly. It also suggests a lateral approach to football fandom that doesn’t necessarily involve paying £100-plus for a Premier League ticket to see a north London derby: a sort of fringe football scene that intersects with the mainstream action but doesn’t require it to function.
It’s symptomatic of a wider trend, with amateur matches that have a carnivalesque atmosphere — think street food, craft booze and high-end restaurants opening near stadiums to cater for a discerning crowd. This is how to up your football game with culture, food and drinks.
Team spirit
Perhaps you are a Chelsea fan; maybe your spirits wax and wane according to the performance of Tottenham Hotspur FC. Your heart will always belong to your main team — no one can rob you of that. But — whisper it — following the fortunes of your main team can be quite a dispiriting, depleting experience. In no small part because it is eye-wateringly expensive and the can feel sappingly corporate.
What you need is a side hustle: a smaller, local London non-league team to restore your faith in the game. The highs and lows are lower stakes — which means they are far more fun.
The capital has plenty of suitable options. South-east Londoners can follow Dulwich Hamlet FC: the team’s pink and blue scarves are coveted accessories. They play at Champion Hill Stadium in East Dulwich and tickets typically cost a tenner — and there are pop-up stands fringing the stadium selling bratwurst and craft beer.
There is a thriving, zealous supporters club, members of whom occasionally create wry artwork in the name of their team (one pink and blue poster declares, “No one knows us, we don’t care”). It’s a foil to the aggressiveness of the Premier League. Moreover, the club has a conscience: it has mounted campaigns against homophobia and fascism. Check out its stickers that take down former Dulwich College boy Nigel Farage.
Activism is a theme of local club football. Clapton FC — whose supporters are bright-eyed, beardy hipsters — is a fervent anti-fascist force that supports refugee charities and makes donations to food banks. And Stonewall FC, the world’s “most successful gay football club” is committed to fighting homophobia, transphobia and biphobia in sport: the club recently launched a rainbow laces campaign, observing that 72 per cent of football fans had heard homophobic language at live games in the past five years. The team plays in Barnes.
“Stonewall FC is the oldest LGBT club in the capital and was established in 1991 as a safe environment for gay players to play football,” explains its chairman, Ben Biggs. A lot has changed since then and Stonewall now has three teams playing in LGBT and mainstream leagues. It welcomes players from all over London, regardless of age, ability or sexuality. It is also active in the international scene, having just got back from the World OutGames in Miami, and the team are hoping to retain their World Gay Games title in Paris next year. The club is incredibly active off the pitch, working closely with the footballing authorities and other advocacy groups to combat homophobia in sport and to ensure that football is open to all.
“The beauty of non-league football is in the unexpected,” explains Rupert Cane, an ardent Kingstonian FC fan. “Teams are generally evenly matched and the players are not consistent enough to ever be sure what you are going to get from them. Non-league is everything the ruthless efficiency of the Premier League is not.”
Those with an eye for dramatic flair should look to Billericay Town. The team’s manager, Glenn Tamplin, is a firebrand with big ambitions to get the local league Essex side into the Premier League within five years. Tamplin is worth around £30 million and has spent more than £2 million on the club, signing former Liverpool players Jermaine Pennant and Paul Konchesky, He broadcasts impassioned team talks on social media and conducts the team to the tune of R Kelly’s The World’s Greatest before games. This one could go all the way.
Female force
The women’s football scene in London is in the ascendant: as well as the majestic Arsenal Ladies there are fan favourites the London Bees and the Millwall Lionesses, whose fans wear their royal blue merch to matches. the fandom is just as fanatical as that for the men’s game — the success of the England Lionnesses in the EUFA Euro 2017 has really awakened the women’s scene, and Watford Ladies — or The Hornets — run community sessions for women who want to get involved.
Post-match fuel
Watching the game can be blood-curdling, which works up an appetite. Conversely, it can be extraordinarily tedious, which merits reward in the form of a large meal. You can do better than a pie and a pint though — especially if you are in the sweep of one of the big clubs. For example, bistro Westerns Laundry sits in the shadow of the Emirates: the menu changes every day but focuses on fresh fish and robust vegetables (34 Drayton Park, N5, westernslaundry.com). After matches long queues of Gooners snake out of Zia Lucia on Holloway Road: the burrata, artichokes and spicy salami is a fan favourite (157 Holloway Road, N7, zialucia.com).
Donuts at Bird will certainly warm you up, even on a Saturday in December (81 Holloway Road, N7, birdrestaurant.com), as will a pie from Piebury Corner named after a famous Arsenal player — lamb and veg with a hint of mint is called the “Aaron Lambsey” and venison and red wine is the “Thierry Henry” (209-211 Holloway Road, N7, pieburycorner.com).
There’s also plenty of fun to be had around the smaller clubs: Leyton Orient’s bar has won a whole shelf of industry awards for its beers. And The Antwerp Arms near White Hart Lane is a gem: a community run pub saved from demolition in 2013 that serves real ale and plump, salty chips. It’s got a huge beer garden for post-match debriefs (168-170 Church Road, N17, antwerparms.co.uk). In south London, Herne Hill Farmers’ Market is within jogging distance of Dulwich Hamlet’s ground: the curries at Taste of Ethiopia will warm you up after a round on the terraces (Railton Road, SE24).
Alternatively, if you’re a five-a-sider, you’ll need a stiff drink: warm down after a game on the popular Powerleague pitches in Shoreditch with a nightcap at Nightjar on City Road (barnightjar.com), or The Jones Family Project on Great Eastern Street (jonesfamilyproject.co.uk).
