‘People are realising that they actually like Millwall’
Behind the tough image, finds a community club striving to stay afloat in a changing area ahead of Spurs Cup tie
The area around the Den is the kind of place your mother always used to warn you about. An area where the vast brick buildings and wrought-iron fences cast their shadows in menacing lattices, where the rumble of the railway disquiets the stomach. Dense housing estates rub against peeling industrial estates; roads end without warning. We are two miles from the centre of one of the world’s busiest cities, and nowhere.
Near the stadium, a stack of plush yuppie flats is going up. “Be A Part Of The Exciting New Bermondsey Regeneration Project,” a sign reads.
Round these parts they have been regenerating hope since 1885. It is a freezing Tuesday night, and a few of Millwall’s staff have gathered in the main reception to keep warm. Peterborough are the visitors in League One, but all the talk is of the forthcoming trip to White Hart Lane in the FA Cup, and Tottenham’s attempts to restrict Millwall’s ticket allocation.
“They don’t want us there,” a receptionist says. “I don’t want us there,” a security guard retorts. “I’m worried what might happen.”
Across the road, fans are gathering around the glowing counters of the Millwall Cafe. For Chris Drewell, this is his pre-match routine: drive down from his home in Chelmsford, park up nearby, and grab a quick bite to eat.
“The fish is very good,” he explains, between mouthfuls of cod, chips and beans. “The market around the corner supplies some of London’s top restaurants.”
Chris is retired, and no longer travels to away games. But he has been coming to the Den, in its various incarnations, for 50 years. “I’ll tell you how I know it was 50,” he says. “I went to see them play Tottenham last time, in the 1967 FA Cup. We drew 0-0 at the Den, then lost the replay 1-0.”
Millwall have never won a major trophy or played in the Premier League. And so its moments of euphoria have been cruelly fleeting: a handful of promotions (offseting a handful of relegations), an FA Cup final in 2004, two golden top-flight seasons in the 1980s. This is not much to show for half a century of devotion.
So what keeps Chris coming back to Millwall, week after week, Peterborough after Peterborough, fish supper after fish supper? “You always think it’s going to get better, don’t you?” he says.
The short-lived Channel 5 quiz show once posed the question: “Who destroyed the Parthenon?” The four multiplechoice answers were: “The Romans”, “The Babylonians”, “The Venetians” and – to peals of laughter from the audience – “Millwall fans”.
Every club have some troublemakers. Doubtless Millwall still have a few, too. But for some reason, Millwall’s troublemakers will always capture the imagination. Perhaps it is a hangover from the days when the club genuinely did have some deeply unsavoury followers. As the club’s chief executive, Steve Kavanagh, puts it: “We carry a history.”
Police have designated the Tottenham game tomorrow as a high-risk fixture. Millwall are confident the game will pass without incident. “You always want the focus to be on football,” Kavanagh says. “There is a small minority in society – not just Millwall, society – that overstep that line. Anyone who pretends they’re a Millwall fan and tries to overstep the line under our auspices: they’re not welcome. We don’t want them.”
The flip side of this is that for decades Millwall’s fans have created an atmosphere like no other in English football: one that startles opposing teams and occasionally gets turned on their own players.
“If you ain’t showing your worth, they will show it,” says club captain Tony Craig, a lifelong Millwall fan who used to sit in the Cold Blow Lane end. “But put your body on the line and show a bit of passion, and you’ll get that passion back.”
On this night, however, the famous Lions’ roar is stifled. At 8,000, the crowd is less than halfcapacity, and Millwall scrape a 1-0 win thanks to a Lee Gregory penalty. Still, another three points, another clean sheet, and another foothold in the clamber towards promotion. Under club legend Neil Harris, Millwall have not been beaten in almost three months.
In a league dominated by short-term deals and wandering journeymen, Millwall’s trust in continuity stands out. The average player has been at the club for four years. Academy graduates make up around a third of the squad, and Kavanagh says the eventual goal is to raise that to 50 per cent.
“If you develop your talent, they have a connection with the fans, an understanding of what the club’s about,” he says. “To play for Millwall, you have to have a mentality. You can be a good footballer. It doesn’t make you a Millwall footballer.”
You soon realise about Millwall that this is not just a club, but a place and a time. For decades that time used to be Saturday 3.15pm, to allow the dockers to arrive after their morning shifts. But the place is changing. Gentrification has already come to Peckham, Camberwell, New Cross and much of Bermondsey. Walk down from London Bridge on a Saturday afternoon and you will see grinning hipsters and their ironic tattoos rubbing shoulders with grizzled locals and their unironic tattoos.