Originally Posted by
NY Hoop
Obviously I meant the fans and you dont understand what they're like. What part of london you from then?
Again:
Here's an extract form Patrick West's "Beating them at their own game".
In the late 1970’s and 80’s, the London [Chelsea] club’s fans were notorious not only for displays of hooliganism, but for elements who attached themselves to the far right and indeed the Loyalist cause. When Chelsea’s first black player, Paul Canoville, made his debut in April 1982, coming on as a substitute against Crystal Palace, he was met with a chorus of boos, hisses and racist chants – from his own fans.
During these dark days, many of the team’s supporters, by wearing, “No Surrender” scarves and hats, and chanting anti-Irish slogans, openly aligned themselves with Glasgow Rangers and Linfield with some creating an organisation called the “Blues Brothers”, linking all three clubs.
Songs such as “No Surrender to the IRA”, “Hello, Hello, We Are the Billy Boys” and – neatly combining two prejudices for the price of one “I’d Rather Be a Darkie than a Tim” were sometimes heard.
Unlike Liverpool, Arsenal or Millwall, who had a sizeable contingent of Irish and second-generation Irish fans, and Irish players, Chelsea were regarded not merely as not an “Irish team” but as a positively anti-Irish team.
I remember standing in “the Shed” at Stamford Bridge as a teenager in the late 1980’s and having to listen to the man next to me spend the ninety minutes shouting abuse at Tony Cascarino, calling him a “f__king Fenian *******” whenever the Millwall player (who, incidentally has no Irish blood in him and was later to play for Chelsea) touched the ball.
Until the 1980’s the club’s only Irish-born Republic of Ireland internationals had been Dick Whittaker, who played once for Ireland in 1959, and Pat Mulligan, a defender who spent three years at Chelsea between 1969 and 1972.
On the other hand, Chelsea had always employed the services of Irish northern Protestants, pre- and post-war, from Johnny Kirwan, who turned out for Ireland in 1906, to Sam Irving, wing-half back of the 1920’s and 1930’s, and a moustachioed Kevin Wilson in the 1980’s. Their only Irish manager to date is Ulsterman Danny Blanchflower.
KOH
