O’Brien deal done with Pompey

[drummerboy]

Pompey complete deal for O'Brien



O'Brien's career statistics

Portsmouth have signed defender Andy O'Brien from Newcastle United for an undisclosed fee.

The 25-year-old Republic of Ireland international had spent four years on Tyneside after joining from Bradford City for £1m in 2001.

O'Brien made 172 appearances for Newcastle, 11 as a substitute.

He appeared to be staying at St James' Park when he signed a year's contract extension in January, but boss Graeme Souness has now allowed him to leave.

[Dawn_Run]

Portsmouth have signed defender Andy O'Brien from Newcastle United for an undisclosed fee. .

1.5 million according to rte.ie

[tetsujin1979]

1.5 million according to rte.ie

Bit of a steal for an experienced international IMO, disregarding bias here BTW

[thejollyrodger]

I dont know much about the club.. will o brien get regularly first team football at
Portsmouth ? Have they a good chance of staying up this season ? Good news for Irelnad I think.. Newcastle is a mess. he was getting serious stick from the supporters

[Fergie's Son]

I think it's a good move for him. He should get regular football and Portsmouth have a chance of "doing a Bolton"...

He might, of course, be dragged into a relegation fight.

[Eirambler]

Its not a bad move. He had all but lost his place at Newcastle and if Souness really prefers Bramble then O'Brien needed to go.

[Poor Student]

Hmmmm, who is his competition there? De Zeeuw, Unsworth, Stefanovic. Do people reckon he is likely to be an automatic starter?

I'm not a keen follower of the EPL but if Souness rated him behind Bramble then it is definately time to go.

[brine3]

What a waste. This man deserves to be playing at a higher level.

[superfrank]

There's Primus also. I think he will get his game. De Zeeuw must be in his mid-thirties now. And Unsworth spent the best part of last season on loan.

[superfrank]

They've got a new manager and obviously if he's bringing Andy in, he's looking to change things.

[superfrank]

How can Bramble be better then him?? The chap can't defend and looks lost on the pitch. I remember when Andy was at Bradford, I thought he looked deadly back then. I didn't think he was given enough of a chance last season. But, hey, it's a new start for him. Hopefully it will improve his International form too.....

[OwlsFan]

Poor Andy is getting slated by Newcastle fans on a Pompey Board. If you scroll down there's a horrific photo of a ball smashing into his face:

http://boards.footymad.net/mboard/fm...mid=2139813431

[Plastic Paddy]

This (long but well worth it) article from the excellent Observer Sports Monthly magazine of August 2003 tells you all you need to know about some Portsmouth fans. Not nice people. I'm sure they're not all like that though...

PP

---

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/osm/s...009777,00.html

Up Pompey

Hooligans, unbridled passion - and no executive boxes. Portsmouth are a reminder of how football used to be before the corporate takeover - and that's no bad thing, say Ed Vulliamy and Brian Oliver in this special report

When Roy Keane made his remarks about prawn sandwiches, and those who eat them at football matches, three years ago, he was lifted in the estimation of hundreds of thousands of supporters. Not many footballers speak out against the corporate makeover, or takeover, of English football.

One assumes that Keane would have approved of the behaviour in the Old Trafford executive boxes during Manchester United's third-round FA Cup tie against Portsmouth last January. Not many prawn sandwiches were eaten. Many of United's more affluent fans could not be bothered with so lowly a fixture, which meant that there was plenty of corporate space for the visitors.

'So,' says Shaun Hearn, one of the 9,000 Portsmouth fans who had left home at dawn for the noon kick-off, 'we had a five-course meal, half a bottle of wine each guaranteed - of course that didn't last, but they kept bringing more, credit where it's due. By the end, in our bit, there was 20 tables, only two of them United and the other 18 all Pompey, standing on the chairs and tables, completely ****ed, all in suits, singing.'

Portsmouth lost 4-1, but it was a great day out.

Vince Hilaire, one of the first established black players in English football, has seen it several times over. Hilaire, who works on the club's hospitality staff, says: 'I travel with corporate guests to executive boxes at away grounds. And it doesn't matter that they're drinking Dom Perignon and wearing ties - they're still standing on tables, giving it some. Only Pompey. We're the only ones who behave like that at that level.'

Hilaire played for Portsmouth during their last brief visit to the top division, in 1987-88. He decided to settle in the city in preference to other places he played in: his native London (Crystal Palace) or Leeds ('no way').

'There's a special Portsmouth thing,' he says. 'I stayed here because I've never known a place as mad about their club. There are people in this town who've never seen the team and don't even follow the results, but they'll still say: "I'm a Pompey fan, through and through".'

Those who can afford it will be back on the tables at Old Trafford again this season, even if there won't be so many places for visiting fans.

Hearn and his old friend Simon Guy have decided to watch all away games from hospitality seats (and tables).

'It'll cost 200 quid a game to get in, but it's the only way to get a ticket and have a good day out on the ****,' Hearn says.

And they'll be up on the tables in executive boxes at all the Premiership grounds except one: their own. Fratton Park has never had a single executive box, and if Pompey go straight back down, as they did last time, maybe it never will. But will the fans care about that? They're Pompey. They like being different.

Chelsea's millions, United's executive boxes, Arsenal's Frenchification, the Champions League, the collapse of Leeds, £30m transfer fees - that's all football's present and near future. Portsmouth bring something entirely different to the Premiership: football's past. This is one of Britain's most ardent football cities: think Liverpool or Newcastle in miniature, wound back three decades. Think back to what the corporate makeover people, and many of today's fans, would regard as the bad old days.

Promotion will bring to the world's most glamorous football league those such as Mark Dewing, cabbie and co-organiser of the Pompey independent supporters club, who says: 'Portsmouth proudly presents to the Premier League a ground where away fans get ****ed on in the rain and yuppies from Man United will be sitting in the worst seats they've ever sat in. Go to Old Trafford now, it's like going to the ****ing opera. Football is not opera.'

His brother, Barry, says: 'We have more affinity with Rochdale than with Man United. If they make Fratton Park too swanky there's going to be something of the passion of Pompey that's lost in the Premier. Can't stand up, can't smoke, can't fart because we're in the Premier League. What is this ********?'If Pompey are a singular team withsingular fans, it is because they come from a singular place. Portsmouth is one of the most anomalous cities in Britain. Packed as it is on to Portsea Island, one of the most densely populated urban areas of Europe, it is also one of the most pugnacious. And that's being kind.

'This is a city,' says local newspaper columnist and crime writer Graham Hurley, 'whose fortunes are inextricably connected to war. For centuries, Portsmouth's life has been that of the Royal Navy and a dockyard that once employed 28,000 but now has 1,800 on the payroll. It is a city that needs war, a martial city. It's the fighting city it always was - "If in doubt, have a fight". And you can see this in the football culture, the 6.57 [a notorious hooligan firm] and the raw pleasure of reckless anarchy. These were mad guys from the South Coast who took on impossible odds. To what end? To Pompey's end.'

It has apparently been thus for 250 years. 'The necessity of living in the midst of the diabolical citizens of Portsmouth,' wrote General James Wolfe in 1758, 'is a real and unavoidable calamity. It is a doubt to me if there is such another collection of demons upon the whole earth.'

The quotation is selected with relish in a new book, Rolling with the 6.57, about the gang who take their name from the time of the first train up to London on a Saturday, with connections north in time for a drink and a punch-up. It is co-written by one of the 6.57's core members, Rob Silvester, who would probably be proud to be described as a 'diabolical citizen', though perhaps not by a general of the armed forces.

'Britain is an island on its own, and we're an island on the island,' says Silvester. 'We're coming off an island when we go to London, just like England come off an island to kick it off in Europe. We're on our own.'

Silvester is a builder further qualified by borstal and five prison sentences, 'all for violence'. The volume has sold well, aided by a campaign in the local paper headlined: 'We Don't Want Thug Book Here'.

'What better advertising?' says Silvester, who had returned the previous night from a weekend marching in Belfast on the Twelfth of July - 'British behaviour at its best'. He carefully hangs up his jacket and orange sash marked 'LOL' - Loyal Orange Lodge.

'We were always right wing,' he says of the 6.57, 'giving it that "Sieg Heil" ******** for a lark, not knowing what it was about. Now I'm a true Orangeman. It's a strong tradition here, since loyalist sailors were stationed from Glasgow, Belfast or Liverpool, and settled. During World War II there were 14 Orange Lodges in Portsmouth. What else is there if you don't want to be in the BNP? I'm not one of those. I'm a patriot who loves my Queen and country.'

For the general election of 1987, the 6.57 even had its own candidate in Portsmouth South, Marty 'Docker' Hughes. He stood on a hybrid platform blending militant Ulster loyalism with demands for magistrates qualified by prison terms, and duty-free booze on the Gosport ferry.

Some of the 6.57's antics are renowned in hooligan lore. For a game at Cambridge, they took bicycles in order to mock the local students. Eddie Crispin recalls: 'We piled the bikes up outside a pub and told a load of Japanese and American tourists it was our art project. So they all starts taking photographs ...'

Police forces around the country will be relieved to hear that Silvester is pessimistic about the 6.57's prospects for causing mayhem in the Premiership. 'Nowadays it's all CCTV, helicopters and police intelligence networks,' he complains. Then, there's the ticket problem. 'We used to take 10,000 to an away game, of which you'd have a thousand willing to start off. Now, it'll be 3,000, which'll cut the ratio of thugs to non-thugs. Your hooligan-per-fan ratio is going to be lower.' He laughs. 'Things really are going downhill, aren't they?'

Portsmouth counts 186,000 people in a landscape that belongs between Merseyside and Manchester, but sits on the resort-strewn Channel coast. Behind it, the South Downs tumble gently towards the sea, only to bump into the city suburbs of Paulsgrove, scene of the anti-paedophile riots two years ago, and Leigh Park, where street children terrorise residents.

'A very unusual place, and not always for the better; cut-off, mulish and inward-looking,' is the description of Hurley, who has lived for 25 years in the city. His books are a key with which to unlock and enter Portsmouth.

'If I say it's one of the toughest places in Britain, I mean that as a compliment,' he continues. 'I love the place because of its refusal to kow-tow to the style gurus, because it doesn't care a toss for the likes of Peter Mandelson. Tony Blair's rebranded Britain hasn't got this far, and thank God for that. It's a city uncursed by money, with a problem moving into the twenty-first century.' (...cont.)

[Plastic Paddy]

(...cont.) How tough is it? One man who knows, says Hurley, is a friend of his, an ex-policeman called John Roberts. The RMA (Royal Marine Academy) Tavern is full on a Tuesday to watch a nine-piece jig-'n'-reel band. The singer with long hair and beard is Roberts, or 'JR' - 31 years a cop, and most of those at the sharp end of Portsmouth's drug squad. He is also the only police officer to be banned from Fratton Park.

'It was Millwall, I was on uniform duty. They were chucking everything they had, the money in their pockets, which I picked up and said "Thanks lads, two pound thirty, enough for a couple of pints". The Super threw me out. I was never allowed on match duty again.'

There were always quirks to the job in Pompey. 'I had my fortieth birthday party in a rough pub, and quite a few people turned up who I'd nicked or put in prison. I went to the bar and the manager told me I had 18 pints, paid for, from people who, shall we say, didn't want to be seen hanging around. I may have been a copper, but I was their copper. Very Portsmouth, that.

'There's parts of this city running hot-and-cold with junk [heroin], and shocking poverty round here. But there's no basic thought goes into doing anything about it. You'll have a dog ****ting all over the floor, and no furniture, but there's a 26-inch telly and they're off to Sainsbury's in a taxi. And as for domestic violence: all the signs are there, but they'll accept it - never report it. Either too scared or just think that's how life is; these women's mothers were going through the same.'

There have been surveys, says Hurley, in which citizens described their birthplace as 'aggressive and tribal', while a group of young people were asked what frightened them most. First came paedophiles; second, street drunks, and third: 'the French'. Hurley has a friend from France, Liliane Hewitt, who married an Englishman and recalls: 'I moved to a terraced house [in Portsmouth] and thought "This is going to be fantastic. I'm going to be living in Coronation Street and I'm going to have cups of tea with the neighbours." No one spoke to me for six months.'



Yet the football club's owner is foreign, a Serb. They have a Nigerian and a Bulgarian in the forward line, a Trinidadian and a Dutchman at the back, and have just bought a Croatian. And a Frenchman. His team-mates even talk to him. Surely, the football club can be a force for cosmopolitan good, a sign of a city that welcomes outsiders?

This is the dilemma facing the chairman, Milan Mandaric, as he takes Portsmouth's fervour into the Premiership. Mandaric is a hero in the town: he has an honorary doctorate in law at Portsmouth University and there is talk of keys to the city and a Mandaric Road.

'I've never known a place where people are so proud of their club,' he says.

Mandaric, who invested £20 million from his own purse into Portsmouth, is adamant that he will proceed with stage-by-stage modernisation.

'My first task is to stabilise the team in the Premiership,' he says. 'If we finish seventeenth next season, I'll be happy. Meanwhile, I will be looking to re-organise the club, build an infrastructure that was not there. A financial division and a full-time financial officer.

'Then, it will be a big project to build a new stadium with shopping centre and hotel. More stuff to sell to bring in that extra revenue [41,000 shirts last year wasn't bad for a club with a 20,000 capacity]. I think people can see what is happening with other clubs, and realise that unless you have these things, you are simply not going to be able to compete. I'm working with people, I'm trying to educate them to this new world of football.'

This is a view that does not sit well with the old-time fans. Mick, a key member of the 6.57, says: 'It's an old-fashioned working-class town with an old-fashioned working-class team followed by old-fashioned working-class fans.'

Mandaric is equally emphatic that Portsmouth's hallmark of rowdiness is a thing of the past.

'I'm going to be putting a lot of effort into this. We want to show the world what classy people we are.' 'Classy' is not an adjective often heard in Portsmouth.

'One of my first moves is to get in touch with the chairman at Southampton and arrange for us to make it public. Let's not get nasty. I know there is some rough stuff out there, but I have a lot of influence and I am going to do my best to talk to them. I'll do everything I can to show that we can be civilised people.'



There's a barbecue on the eve of a game - a July friendly at Bournemouth - hosted by the 'House of Burberry' crew of teenagers. The name was chosen as a satire on the current fashion among young hooligans for the usually preppy checked design.

'House of Burberry' - mostly sons of now middle-aged 6.57 members - talk about their escapades and upcoming plans with all the confidence of their parents. Casey is enlisted, having been to 70 football grounds with his dad Eddie over the years.

'I don't have to teach them anything,' says Eddie. 'They do what they like.' But the young Turks have learnt some of the 6.57's code of so-called honour: 'We don't take liberties,' explains Casey. 'There are rules and regulations. Not like Wolves: they'll start off with kids and shirters [fans wearing club shirts]. They even spat at a lady once. Disgusting.'

Whatever happens this season, there's a fracas booked in for Christmas time when Portsmouth play Southampton. It's a particular hatred: Southampton are known as 'Scummers', a term going back to a Portsmouth dock strike in the Fifties, when blackleg labour was brought in from the Solent to breach the picket lines.

'With the Scummers,' say the Burberry boys, 'the rules go out the window.'

The following morning there's no need for the 6.57. The 9.31 from Fratton can get Eddie Crispin and son, and their friends, along the coastline comfortably in time for a few beers and 'a family day out'. There's even room to sit, until the Fareham Urban Guerillas board the train. The change is at Southampton, but no trouble: just a friendly warning that 'Scummers, Scummers, 'ere we come; Scummers, 'ere we come'.

Once in Bournemouth, the 6.57 crew suffer the embarrassment, over a morning pint in the Gander on The Green, of a bunch of 'scarfers' and 'shirters' who are already ****ed and cannot keep their trousers on. 'Antisocial behaviour, innit?' laments a veteran combatant. '****ing pathetic.'

Drinking in the Queens Park, near the ground, is the fan who changed his name by deed poll to 'John Portsmouth Football Club Westwood', serially tattooed, in blue wig and tall hat. Westwood spends his other life pricing 50p paperbacks or leather-bound antiquarian treasures at the Petersfield Bookshop.

'It's a bit Jekyll and Hyde,' he says. 'When I go to a local book fair, I cover up my tattoos and put on a suit. But more often than not, I end up talking to the book dealers about Pompey and it turns out they've got more tattoos than I have.'



Four months after those scenes that Roy Keane would surely have admired at Old Trafford (there's something quite Pompey-like about Keane's rages against the world at large) there was another notable incident involving executive boxes, when Portsmouth visited Ipswich.

They were 3-0 down and on the way to their worst league defeat of the season when Westwood jumped on to the roof of a row of suites. Dressed in full regalia, with belly hanging out of his jester's trousers, he pranced up and down ringing a handbell and leading the singing (to the tune of 'Tom Hark') of 'Top of the league, with Harry and Jim'.

This was one of last season's favourites, a homage to manager Harry Redknapp and his assistant Jim Smith, and it got louder and louder, for longer and longer.

Police and stewards wanted him removed but dared not approach him for fear of a riot, with 5,000 Pompey fans cheering him on. The singing lasted 25 minutes and became the talk of the day.

That's not likely to happen in the Premiership, and not only because Harry and Jim won't be top of the league this year. Executive boxes are not for walking on, nor are their tables for jumping on. And when the new stadium is built and the carpets are laid at the new Fratton Park, the corporate men will finally be able to say: 'We even conquered Portsmouth. The game is now ours.'

To which any self-respecting Pompey fan, provided the revered Mandaric is not within earshot, will have only one response. '********.'

· 'Rolling with the 6.57' is published by Blake Publishing at £16.99.
Graham Hurley's latest novel, 'Deadlight', is published this month by Orion at £9.99.

Six things you never knew about Portsmouth FC

1 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a founder member of Portsmouth FC. He was also the team's first goalkeeper.

2 Fratton Park is the only Premiership ground with no executive boxes. 3 Before the 1934 FA Cup final, music-hall star Bud Flanagan visited Pompey's changing room. The morale-boosting trick didn't work - they lost 2-1.

4 Pompey's original kit was a shocking salmon pink (an old nickname was the Shrimps). The club changed to discreet dark blue in 1909.

5 Robert Blyth was a player, captain, manager, director, vice-chairman and, finally, chairman between 1925-34.

6 Portsmouth axed their supporters club during the 1936/37 season; the number of members had dropped from 1,700 to a mere 143.

· Research by Arindam Rej

[jimbob117]

How can Bramble be better then him?? The chap can't defend and looks lost on the pitch.

He's not, but hes irish,and souness seems to have something against them as he usually gets rid of them.. the only one i've ever heard him try and keep is given.

[eirebhoy]

He's not, but hes irish,and souness seems to have something against them as he usually gets rid of them.. the only one i've ever heard him try and keep is given.

And Duff...

Has looked at Robbie Keane and Paddy Kenny recently. Bought Stephen Reid, gave Thompson a good few games in the Blackburn team, signed Mickey Evans.

[jimbob117]

And Duff...

Has looked at Robbie Keane and Paddy Kenny recently. Bought Stephen Reid, gave Thompson a good few games in the Blackburn team, signed Mickey Evans.

Thompson?? isnt he english??
Didnt he get rid of staunton at his peak aswell as the other irish at liverpool at the time?? He didnt play Stephen Reid too often... and there are only rumours he looked at keane and kenny, wouldnt believe everything i read.

forgot about duff though, but then again, like given, hes class

[eirebhoy]

Thompson?? isnt he english??
Didnt he get rid of staunton at his peak aswell as the other irish at liverpool at the time?? He didnt play Stephen Reid too often... and there are only rumours he looked at keane and kenny, wouldnt believe everything i read.

forgot about duff though, but then again, like given, hes class

Jesus lad, its all rubbish about Souness and his anti-Irish rumours, I wouldn't believe everything you read. Jonathon Douglas I was talking about. Reid was injured which is why he didn't play him often. I am 100% sure he was looking at Paddy Kenny and pretty sure he's interested in Keane.

[Plastic Paddy]

I suspect that this discredited theory about him being anti-Irish only exists because of a certain Glasgow (ie. British) rivalry.

Yet another thin attempt to discredit Celtic supporters hereabouts. I did an online search and the first reference I can find to Souness and his alleged anti-Irish bias can be found in the Glaswegia... no, sorry, the Irish Kickin' magazine of March 6, 2001:

http://www.kickinmagazine.ie/souness632001.htm

PP

---

Souness: I'm no racist - March 6, 2001


Blackburn Rovers manager Graeme Souness has hit out about being called Anti-Irish. The former Liverpool and Scotland midfielder said he was sickened when he heard about the accusations.

Souness tried to justify his actions yesterday but most of his arguments sounded hollow. Since he took over at Blackburn he has got rid of Lee Carsley, sent Ben Burgess to Australia for a year, demoted Ireland's No.1 goalkeeper Alan Kelly to No.3 at the club and told Jeff Kenna that he has no future at the club.

When you take into account that he also got rid of Steve Staunton and Ray Hougton when he took over at Liverpool why is he surprised when people connect all these actions and write about them.

Souness said: "I work in England and I was not aware for some time that certain newpapers were spouting this rubbish about me. Anyone who knows me or my family wouldn't have even attempted that kind of line.

"I grew up in a mixed areas in Edinburgh and my best friend was Peter Marinello, a Catholic who signed for Arsenal.

"My first wife is an Italian Catholic and the kids from that marriage are Catholic. My current wife is Catholic whose name was Kelly and her parents came for Dublin."

It should be pointed out to him that Anti-Irish is not the same as Anti-Catholic. Who cares whether both his wives have been Catholics.

Lets break it down simply. Souness fell out with Lee Carsley and in retaliation he took the captains armband from him and dropped him from the team which in the long term forced the Irish midfielder out of the club.

Jason McAteer also felt the wrath of Souness which saw him left out of the team and told his attitude was wrong. Alan Kelly went from No.1 goalkeeper to forgotten man.

Also Souness all but ended Ben Burgess underage international career by sending him to the other side of the world to play in Australia.

The exceptions to the rule are Damien Duff and on loan midfielder Alan Mahon. Souness rates Duff and wants to sign Mahon on a permanent basis. Yet just a couple of months ago he allowed Carsley to move to Coventry because of the glut of midfielders at the club.

The Blackburn manager is entitled to run the club in whatever style he likes but we also have the right to say that he has an Anti-Irish policy if we believe it.

[dynamo kerry]

what happened to that website?

there's a banner saying 'off for the weekend, see yiz on tuesday"

and thats it?

how odd