Don't be a fool again / they're just a bunch of hooligans

Everyone's familiar (I assume) with the 3am paranoia associated with too much alcohol the evening before - the sudden realisation you're awake, you're alert....and what was it exactly you did last night again?

But you can't blame last night's drinking session with my dad for how I feel this morning. For yesterday was, on balance, a horrible day. On the one hand, I won a toy meercat playing darts at a fairground in Toquay. He is called Malcolm, and he will be coming home with me. It was a proper fairground, with dodgems and plastic ducks which for £2.50 you can hook to win small, underwhelming toys made in China, the kind of fairground that brings back floods of nostalgia first forged in the travelling fair in the Ribblesdale Baths carpark circa 1986. On the other hand, we found ourselves at the City away game yesterday mere metres away from a group that calls itself, inexplicably, Bradford Ointment, and which is, as far as we knew, banned from both home and away games. Too cowardly to go up to them in person and tell them to shut the **** up (probably just as well, as I discovered later) I'm going to go some small distance to making up for this by blogging about it now.

Middle class person that I am (and I realise I shatter this illusion slightly by pronouncing class was a hard "a"), I've always been mildly embarrassed by the behaviour of some City fans at away matches, but it's always been just on the right side of tolerable. Polite Barnet fans, announcing that they would like to welcome the visitors from Bradford, are probably a little dismayed when said visitors then sweep into a chorus of "What the fucking, what the fucking, what the fucking hell is that?" to the tune of "Guide me Oh Thou Great Redeemer" and directed at Barnet's mascot, the man-dressed-as-bee Mr Bumble, but this is in reality quite funny... right? Similarly, when a marginally rotund player for the opposing team is substituted for another and leaves the pitch, they're fair game to be on the receiving end of comments like "Nice one, we can see now." Aren't they? That's just banter. But yesterday a small cluster of "fans" took this to a whole new level, and it wasn't a level I liked one bit.

I've been to more Bradford matches than I can count. I've been to such salubrious locations as Aldershot and Accrington, and yet, apart from the somewhat over-exhuberant use of the f word on occasions and the odd bit of personal abuse, I've never been truly offended by anything, and never have I felt ashamed to wear a City shirt.

Yesterday, though, all that changed. As the announcer at Torqauy generously proclaimed the arrival of the "Visitors" from Bradford, to general jeering and chants about "Southern Pansies" from the assembled mass of which I was a part, a little bit of me though "Oh, heck", but the rest of me was mildly amused. There's no danger, I thought. Torquay haven't conceded a goal in the last 9 of their home matches; they're top of the league. If we're the first team to break their run, well, all I can say is: Nice one, City! If not, well, there's no shame in that. We're at the seaside; it's a bank holiday next weekend. Who cares what happens?

I'm not going to give you a blow-by-blow account of the match because, frankly, I know you couldn't care less, but let's just say that being one goal and one man down ten minutes in is not the start we were hoping for, and this only served to fuel the passions of the group next to us. Bradford Ointment are, I discovered on reading up on them later, a "professional" rent-a-gang, a group of "committed football hooligans" who've proudly asserted on national television their intent to cause general disruption wherever they go, and a group many of whose members are currently banned from going anywhere within five miles of away games. On the evidence of yesterday, those who proudly associate themselves with it (they had displayed an enormous BNP-style England flag which was tied from the top to the bottom of the standing terrace in such a way that a whole exit route was blocked, much to the dismay of my health and safety-obsessed husband) are also, for want of a better word, racists.

Amidst the torrent of carefully constructed criticism that basically ran along the lines of "Taylor, you're ****ing shit!! Your players are ****ing shit!! You're a bunch of ****ing ****s! Are you happy with this shit you ****ing ****?" the ringleader managed to call Torquay player Chris Zebroski (who I'm pleased to say then scored the second goal, securing the home team a comfortable win) something I'm not even going to repeat on a blog for reporting purposes, a word which I've not heard since the 80s and for which I'm both appalled and amazed he wasn't carted off there and then. Later on, after an admittedly half-arsed display by the Bantams, he decided to target the players themselves, screaming at Zesh Rehman for being a "Paki", his tirade culminating in the outburst "You think you're so ****ing good for community ****ing relations!! Why don't you ****ing go home you P*** bastard!"

Nobody did anything. Nobody, including us, dared to, unless you can count me (and, I noted, a few others) talking to a steward, who shrugged his shoulders and said they were "onto him" but there was no police support and there was basically nothing they could do. They are probably right; the group, as they were (this might have been a new contingent altogether) are, as far as I understand it, well known for starting violent fracas both in and out of grounds, and such a fight on a terrace packed with families and with one exit route blocked could have been very dangerous indeed. At the same time, though, I type this with tears of anger and disappointment pricking in my eyes. What must the players have thought of us? And the home supporters? We have a reputation in Bradford as a city bristling with racial tension, but this is untrue; it is unfair. We are a warm, generous, vibrant city. We have faced more than our fair share of social and economic problems but we are bouncing back every day. Thugs like this only serve to enhance this bad and largely undeserved reputation, and at this I am both upset and ashamed. They have no place in football - the FA claim to be taking a hard line on racist abuse - and they have no right to associate themselves with Bradford City.

I didn't stand up to them, because frankly, as I have admitted, I am a coward. But I am doing the best I can to rectify this. I am, as the chant says, City til I Die, and so Bradford Ointment I say this to you: get the hell off my terrace. You are not welcome here. And to Torquay fans: my sincerest apologies.