Tomorrow night two teams will run out at Turf Moor, and only one of them will get a cheer. Not too many people seem to be worried about this, but I still think it’s a disgrace.
Burnley's official policy on the Millwall ban has consistently been that two wrongs make a right. As soon as we were told that Burnley supporters would be banned from Millwall, Burnley FC condemned it, and in the same breath betrayed a lack of basic logic by announcing that they would reciprocate. Yet other clubs did not follow suit. Millwall were allowed to support their team at Portsmouth on Saturday.
And so at 7.45 tomorrow, we will lose any right to complain about Burnley supporters being banned from the match at Millwall in March. By our actions, we obviously approve of away supporter bans. If we think it’s okay to do it, why shouldn’t they? Burnley FC have never been able to mount a coherent defence of this when challenged.
I admit there is some self-interest in my concern. I want to go to the New Den in March, and I'd have preferred it if we'd held onto the moral high ground. If most Burnley supporters don’t seem too bothered by this, I suppose that’s a reflection of the fact that a minority of Clarets go to away games. Most Burnley supporters are content to do their football watching at Turf Moor. So I guess it won’t trouble them, and indeed, as we hope to gain some advantage from playing in front of an exclusively home crowd, they may regard it as a positive move. As for the away match, well, it's tough on the London Clarets, but they'll get over it.
Anyway, it’s not like we’re going to lose much money on the home match, is it? Millwall fans don’t generally travel to Burnley, and certainly few of them would have made the long trip on a Tuesday night. That may be balanced by Clarets supporters taking the opportunity to sit in the over-rated Cricket Field Stand in any case. And it’s only a few Millwall fans, isn’t it?
They’re not the easiest people to speak up for, but I feel sorry for the Millwall supporters. Even if Burnley FC's position didn't make the club look stupid, I would still think it was wrong. Football supporters share common ground, whatever their team is. When the rights of supporters of any club to support their team are infringed, it should concern us all. There will be Millwall supporters as hurt by their inability to follow their team as I will be if I cannot somehow con my way into the New Den in March. And, as will be the case with people I know when we play in South East London in March, any Millwall supporter attempting to do no more than support their team tomorrow will be criminalising themselves, and facing potentially serious action from the law and their club.
I occasionally get accused of being a die-hard traditionalist, but for me football is a brilliantly simple game which is only spoilt by the meddling of those who run it. It is, obviously, the essence of football that two sides compete. You need two teams to make a match. But you also need two sets of supporters to make an atmosphere. That atmosphere may be confrontational when we play Millwall. There may well be unpleasant aspects in it. But I can guarantee that some of the greatest matches you have ever seen will have taken place against a backdrop of confrontation. Atmosphere is one of the things that makes great matches great. Great atmosphere comes when two sets of supporters bounce their chants against each other. Burnley supporters are at their best when they have something to react to. A night match at Turf Moor with two sets of fans giving their all is as atmospheric as it gets.
Beyond this, I worry that precedents are being set in football at the moment. This is why we have to think beyond our team. What may not immediately cause us trouble today may do so tomorrow. The purchase of Wimbledon’s place in the league by the Milton Keynes franchise might not seem our problem, but the precedent it sets means that every club is potentially at risk when it falls into the hands of unscrupulous speculators. That isn’t us now, but who knows about the future? Who knows, with all sort of rumours rife, how near that uncertain future is? Similarly, the banning of away supporters sets a precedent. Away supporters have been banned from Turf Moor once, and now it's easy to do so again. We have been banned from an away match, and ditto. What, now, will be the suggestion if the aggression that is always there boils over in the matches against Preston? What happens the next time we're due to play Blackburn?
It's too late to do anything now, of course, and earlier complaints have fallen on deaf ears. All we can do is hope, and do what little we can to make sure, that tomorrow night is a one-off, rather than a precedent. I hope we win - naturally - but I hope it will be clear on the night that there's something missing.
