Their song claims no one likes them, but I think Millwall are magic

By Ian Winwood

Published 13:00 02/09/11

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On Saturday afternoon the Millwall fans were singing their famous refrain. To the tune of Rod Stewart’s Sailing , 8000 or so South Londoners could be heard bellowing “no one likes us, no one likes us, no one likes us, we don’t care.”

I always thinks its very special when a team has a song that is particular only to them.

Just one thing, though. In the case of Millwall, it isn’t true. It’s not true because I like them.

It is a cliché that you go to your first football match with your dad. In my case this isn’t true either, I first went to see Barnsley, the team we both support, with my mum. In fact, I still do.

Because the last Saturday in August is close to her birthday, she and I went into Millwall’s Executive Lounge for a slightly different matchday experience. The Lions were playing Barnsley in what is as far away from a glamour tie as it’s possible to be. It didn’t cost all that much – certainly less than a halfway decent seat at the Emirates – and the absence of prawn sandwiches meant that even the most earthy football fan couldn’t feel guilty in these surroundings.

On the one hand there wasn’t really that much that was all that different about the Millwall executive experience. The big screen televisions showed Aston Villa holding Wolves to a nil-nil draw. The beer pumps dispensed alcohol at relatively cheap prices. Cups of tea were served with slices of cake.

But what other clubs with similar set-ups cannot legislate for is the sheer amount of fun and good-humour that Millwall seem to have about their club. You read that correctly. It’s as if everyone involved in the set-up is aware of the dreadful – and only very occasionally deserved – reputation of their fanbase and is acting in a way that stands as far away from this as can possibly be.

Parts of the afternoon were simply off the wall. Andrew Hawkes is a close up magician of such skill and dexterity that you could spend the rest of your life wondering how he does his tricks. He will place a deck of cards into your hand only for this deck to transform itself into a Perspex block. He will ask you to sign a card of your choice and place the card back into the deck from which it came. He will then produce the card from his wallet, situated in his back pocket. As he moves on to the next table, perfect strangers will speak to each other in a tone of amazement about what they have just seen.

Andrew Hawkes’ magic is just that, magic, and is made all the more enjoyable because the man himself is a Millwall fan. But what is really magical is a football club having enough imagination to hire him in the first place.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a magician on earth that could have transformed the game everyone had come to see into something worth watching, and while both teams at least aspired to play decent football the lack of quality on offer meant a nil-nil draw was a certainty long before the final whistle blew.

Back in the executive lounge, the gallows humour was at work, as it always is at the most likeable clubs. The MC was reading out the answer to the general knowledge quiz he’d started before the match began.

“The booby prize,” he announced, “is a DVD of the match we’ve just seen.”

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