Walter Johnson, 34, Dulwich Hamlet FC
I grew up in Dulwich and one day, while playing in a schools five-a-side tournament, I was “scouted” for Dulwich Hamlet. I probably played a couple of dozen games for them before we moved to Brockley, and sadly that was the beginning and the end of my football career. I was about eight.
I’ve looked out for them ever since. My dad was an Arsenal fan and would try very hard to cajole us all to go to the old Highbury with him. But my best friend, Barry Delaney, was a Liverpool fan and wouldn’t allow me to support any other team. I’ve always been a Liverpool fan, but it can be difficult to get to a game if you’re not a season ticket holder; so about 10 years ago I started to go to the odd Dulwich match. You could always get a seat, because there would be only about 150 fans there.
There are a lot of people here who want to develop the club as representative of the community, the whole community. We have a stand in aid of Black History month and we want to kick homophobia firmly out of football. As a non-league club with those values and virtues, we aim to set an example to the country as a whole. When people come to Dulwich, they see a lot of banners, campaigns and collections. Our eventual plan is for a fan-owned club, and the Dulwich Hamlet Supporters’ Trust is a vehicle for that. I’ve been elected to the trust’s board and my job is to expand the community aspect.
People look at me and think, “Why’s this guy supporting a seventh-tier club when he could be a Man U fan or something like that?” For me, a local football club that’s thriving and sustainable is quite amazing. When you go to a Premier League game, you don’t really talk to the away fans. In non-league, you might be going to a stadium with only 100 people there, so you talk to the locals. You can go into the club bar after a game, have a pint of a local brew, and invariably the players will be next to you, perhaps also partaking in the local brew. If you’re fond of a player in non-league, they really do have time for you. You can discuss the game with them – and even give them pointers as to where they’re going wrong.
I do have my favourite corner at the ground and I can’t bring myself to move from it for superstitious reasons – even at half-time. There’s a guy who has stood near me for seven or eight years. He has his coffee; I have my beer. I don’t know his name; he doesn’t know mine. But we chat about the game and have a great time. As long as I’m around good people and I’ve got my local pint, there aren’t many other places on the planet I’d rather be.
Brenda Smith, 66, Somerset Rebels
Both my mum and dad were keen on speedway motorcyle racing, so I was taken to watch Bristol Bulldogs at a very young age. I can dimly remember going to Wembley Stadium as a five-year-old in 1955 for my first world final. We went every year. I even remember the turnstile we always went in: C16, right next to the pit wall that we’d lean over. In those days, the riders wore throwaway goggles. I’ve got a collection of them, discarded by my favourite riders. They were like pop stars to us.
In 1959, my sister was asked what she wanted for her seventh birthday. She wanted to go to Manchester to see her favourite team, Belle Vue Aces. It became an annual pilgrimage every August. My dad got only two weeks’ holiday a year, and our idea of a great family holiday was to travel to various speedway tracks: Monday night was Wimbledon, Tuesday night Southampton, Wednesday night New Cross, Thursday night Oxford, Friday night back to Bristol and Saturday night Swindon. There wasn’t speedway on a Sunday in those days, so we’d rest and then we’d be off to Exeter and Poole and elsewhere the following week.
Twelve years ago, I made a pilgrimage to the Ullevi Stadium in Gothenberg. Going there had been an ambition of mine since I was a teenager, because my favourite rider growing up was the five-time world champion Ove Fundin, who was Swedish. When I got into the stadium for the practice session, I was quite overcome. I had goosebumps. And last year I travelled all the way to Australia to watch four separate speedway meetings.
It’s such an exciting sport. The Oak Tree Arena, where the Rebels race, is acclaimed by the riders as one of the best tracks in the country. The racing’s really close. It’s not always the first out of the gate who wins. Don’t forget, there are no brakes on these bikes – it’s all about throttle control and the way they drift their bikes, the way they line up their wheels. To see our riders either do a cut-back up the inside or blast round the outside is just mind-blowing. When you get home, you can’t go to bed – you’re too hyped up by what you’ve seen.
I crave that speedway smell. It’s addictive. When I smell that Castrol R as the bikes are revving, it just takes me back. I’m not an OAP any more, I’m 10 years old again.
Terrell Lawrence, 17, Plymouth Raiders basketball team
My dad used to play basketball and my mum was a regular at Raiders games. I went along for years and years. Where other families would go for a walk on Dartmoor for a day out, we’d go to Raiders.
I was told at school that I had to play basketball, because I am tall and mixed race. Back then, it was, “You should stick to your stereotype.” Now, people have moved on. I was pretty unfit when I was younger, quite tubby – but I reached a decent level of basketball. I played until I was 14 or 15, but then I started doing gymnastics and dance, and realised I enjoyed that so much more. I felt much freer. By contrast, basketball is very repetitive. You run to one end of the court and you run back.
I realised only a couple of years ago that I was going to Raiders more for the entertainment side of it – for the cheerleaders, the music, the lights. Growing up, I wanted to be a cheerleader. There’s a photo of me at a really young age with pom-poms, so I always knew. When I decided I was going to audition for the squad, I was happier than I’d ever been. Everyone on the cheerleading team seemed pretty cool with it. I’m the only man, but they treat me as one of their own.
On courtside, I can show my support through dancing, but I also know the game, so I appreciate what’s actually going on. There’s always that itch to join in with play. When the team’s not doing so well, I have to resist dropping my pom-poms and running on to the court.
Cheerleading in front of more than 1,000 people isn’t scary, but all eyes are on me. I’m 6ft 2in – a giant next to the girls. I look like Bigfoot. But the way the squad includes me in all the routines shows that you can be different and still have style and presence. It also shows you can pursue anything you have a passion for, regardless of social norms and stereotypes.
Lynda Bacon, 51, Ilkeston FC
My first match was in August 2011. They were at home to Goole. The old club, Ilkeston Town, had gone under and the whole town was in uproar because nobody even knew they were in trouble. So when they were reformed as Ilkeston FC, a lot of people like me and my husband thought we should go and support them.
I was astounded by the turnout. At that first game, there must have been more than a thousand people. Ilkeston Town’s average crowd was about four or five hundred. I didn’t buy a season ticket that first year, because I thought that when it got cold, my husband could go on his own. I don’t know what happened, but within three months I was on the supporters’ group committee, and a couple of months later I was organising the travel to away games. We’ve had season tickets ever since.
I’ve sorted the travel for the last four years. This season, even though it’s killing me to do so, I’ve handed it over to two of the young lads who were on the bus from the word go. They’ve got the enthusiasm, and they’re the next generation of fans.
The away games are better than the home games. On every trip, there will be at least a full 52-seat coach going. With all the camaraderie, it’s like you’re going on holiday together. We arrive an hour and a half before, find a pub with a pool table, and then go to the ground. At a match at Skelmersdale, we had three birthdays on the coach. One of the lads was turning 16, one was 50 and one was 80. It cost me a fortune in bunting and badges. More or less wherever you go in non-league, it’s family-oriented. We took our six-year-old granddaughter to her first match a couple of weeks ago. She loved every minute.
Chris Heinitz, 70, Featherstone Rovers
I was born in Notting Hill and brought up an Arsenal supporter, but when I moved to west Yorkshire, I found I was living in a rugby league area. So I thought I’d try it. It took a very short space of time for me to fall in love with both the sport and the culture.
In football, there can be long periods of a game where nothing of significance happens, and nothing of significance seems to be going to happen. In rugby league, you get the feeling that something dramatic might happen at any moment.
I had three small children and there was no way I would have taken them on to the North Bank at Highbury to watch Arsenal, but I found I could take them to the Featherstone ground at Post Office Road. Everyone was friendly. While in many ways I was the odd one out, I wasn’t made to feel that way.
The love affair became an obsession when the kids grew up a bit and I took them to more and more away matches. Not that away matches tend to be too far away: the M62 is known as the rugby league motorway because so many of the professional teams are within spitting distance of it. Our greatest rivals are Castleford, and their ground is barely two miles away.
The population of Featherstone is about 10,000, so the relationship between the town and the club is utterly different from that in a big city. Many people think the only thing that can bring them glory is supporting a well-financed soccer team, but they’re missing out. When I retired, I potentially had a lot of time on my hands. I’ve never been the sort of person who can sit and do nothing. I used to write for the match-day programme quite a lot, and to my surprise the board asked me to edit the programme. I’d never done anything like that before, but I felt like I wanted to put something back.
John Styles, 69, Nottingham Panthers
I used to watch ice hockey with my mum and dad on our little black-and-white TV – possibly during the Winter Olympics of 1956. But then I got into trainspotting, and then motorbikes. I remember videoing the National Hockey League in the 1980s, because it was on TV late at night.
I used to work building railway carriages in Derby and my workmates from Long Eaton and Nottingham would go on about the Panthers. So I went over to see them and that was it. It was everything I expected – plus some more. The atmosphere was brilliant. I’ve been to every home game since the 1998 season.
It’s an all-action sport. It’s billed as the fastest team game in the world, and it really is. It’s full-on from the word go.
Everybody’s passionate. And it’s a family sport; we don’t tolerate bad language. It is a little bit tribal, but nowhere near as tribal as football – 99.9% of it is all in good spirit. Fans of both teams will drink in the same boozer and eat in the same restaurants. It’s an hour-long game of three 20-minute periods and, in the 15-minute intervals between periods, everyone just mixes together.
Minority sports never get a look-in. Ice hockey will get two paragraphs in the paper at best. Everyone I’ve taken to see a match has said, “Why have I never come before? This is so exciting, so fast.” None of them described it as boring. They all came back.
During my second season as a fan, I thought, “I’ve got to get a Panthers jersey.” Since then, I’ve bought a shirt every season, sometimes both the home and away shirts. Then the club began auctioning game-worn shirts three or four times a year, so I started buying those. I’ll pay a lot of money to stop a shirt going out of the country if it was worn by a player I really like. I’ve bought shirts for less than £100, but the average price is between £200-£300. It’s a way of showing affiliation to the club, of owning a little slice of their history.
Nige Tassell is the author of The Bottom Corner: A Season With The Dreamers Of Non-League Football, published by Yellow Jersey at £12.99.
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