Monday 5thSeptember 2011 (International Friendly)
Brazil 1 (Leandro Damiao 45) Ghana 0
Attendance: 22,700 (official figure)
This was easily the most difficult game I have
ever stewarded at Craven Cottage. It started off OK, though a few
people turned up with tickets for the wrong section of the stand, and even the
wrong stand altogether.
I noticed that, as kickoff approached, the
stand was still not full, which surprised me as we had been told that about
20,000 tickets had been sold so, with walkups, the game should have had close
to a sellout crowd. It soon became clear after kickoff that a lot of people
were still outside and that they had tickets for seats that were already
occupied. This was partly because people had just sat down anywhere, ignoring
the number on their ticket, but in one particular case a couple supporting Brazil
had exactly the same tickets as a gentleman with his son. I should have sorted
out the problem immediately but decided to wait until half-time.
Usually, this would not have been a problem
but, as I was told by one of the supporters, there were ticketing problems
outside the ground, meaning that there were huge delays in gaining entry.
Unfortunately, the rush of people meant that I didn’t have a chance to help my
Brazilian couple though, thankfully, my superviser was able to sort it out.
I was constantly required to sort out some
sort of misunderstanding, and my job wasn’t helped by a small number of
uncooperative supporters. There was no trouble, but they were not a
well-behaved crowd at all and I’ll be happy to deal with the relatively angelic
Blackburn Rovers fans on Sunday.
Since Monday, there have been a lot of
articles in the press about the congestion outside. It seems that if, like my
brother in the Hammersmith end, you paid cash on the gate, there was no
problem. However, anyone who booked online and had to collect tickets on the
night was faced with a severe lack of ticket office staff and very little crowd
control. By all accounts, the crush was quite serious at times, and many people
missed the first half, while some didn’t even get in at all.
As many of these late arrivals had tickets for
the Putney stand, it would been a great help if we’d been given some kind of
warning that there were still many ticket holders outside the ground at
kickoff. Why on earth the kickoff was not delayed is a very important question
that needs to be answered.
Needless to say, I didn’t see much of the game
and wasn’t even sure of the result, never mind that one of the Ghan players got
a red card in the first half and that Brazil scored quite a good goal on the
stroke of half time. Towards the end of the game, I saw a few magic moments
from Brazil as, luckily, they were attacking the Putney end in the second half,
and it was good to see Ronaldinho at such close quarters.
After the match, there was a bit of a commotion
as I was walking towards the school to sign out, when Danny Alves was spotted
walking to a car on Finlay Street, closely followed by the Chelsea defender
David Luiz.
Before leaving the Cottage, I walked down to
the players entrance to see what was going on to see Neymar milking the adulation
from the fans outside the Brazil team bus.
Before the game, we were warned that there were going to be a lot of Wisla fans at the game, which wasn't a major surprise considering the number of Poles in this country, but nothing really prepared us for the ferocity of the support.
As I am writing this a couple of months later, the game would turn out to be my last Europa League fixture, as I missed the crucial game at home to Odense in December, when Fulham crashed out on the last kick of the game. Such a shame to miss out on a possible glamour tie after having to endure teams from some of the less fashionable leagues in Europe.
