Soccer fan plans to take Tube to game
It’ll take more than a terrorist’s homemade bomb and a hiked U.K. threat level warning of an “imminent attack” to keep superfan Andrew Butterwick, 59, from hopping aboard a train to London and climbing into one of the city’s subway cars to watch his beloved undefeated soccer club, Leeds United, take on Millwall today before a packed stadium in the capital’s southeast.
“I’m not a Londoner but will be in London ... to watch Leeds United,” Butterwick said while explaining his decision to pack into Millwall’s stadium, The Den, along with thousands of other fans.
“Fans of Leeds United are very passionate. We will not be scared off by jihadists and their warped sense of religion,” he said. “Life must go on and show the terrorists they haven’t won.”
Butterwick, a resident of Selby, a small town 160 miles north of London, said he’s concerned that he and the thousands of others in The Den could be an attractive soft target for an attacker seeking to follow up on yesterday’s subway bombing.
“As I’ve said, life goes on,” he said. “They would be mad to target a Millwall-Leeds game. They would get lynched before they got a chance to detonate any device.”
The attack, which was claimed by ISIS, is the fourth in London and the fifth in England this year.
“I am not alone in believing that known jihadists and terrorists should be dealt with more aggressively in the U.K., regardless of the politically correct liberal elite concern over Islamophobia,” Butterwick said, adding that people around him are “very worried and concerned where this will all end.”
Many in England, like Butterwick, are getting on with their daily lives in spite of the critical threat levels and frequent bloodshed.
Asked if the persistent attacks in England could wear away at its people’s resolve to “keep calm and carry on,” Butterwick said: “Not a chance.
“If anything, it strengthens the resolve to resist the jihadists.”