Who Are Yer? – 22/12/14

I went to a family party last night still on a high following Brentford’s wonderful win at Cardiff, but I was soon brought crashing down to earth.

There were several guests there who purported to be serious football fans, so naturally I gravitated towards them to exchange gossip and perhaps even bask in the glow of our recent achievements.

Surely they would be up to date about our progress and be full of admiration and praise?

To my surprise and disappointment any mention of Brentford – or Brentwood as some clown insisted on calling us – produced shrugs of dismissal and total ignorance and disinterest.

The nation, or certainly this small cross-section of it, has not taken much or, indeed, any note of our progress to date, and to those few who had heard of us at all we were plainly still “Little Old Brentford”.

Nobody I spoke to had any idea which league we were playing in let alone how we were taking the football world by storm.

When I started to put them straight I saw their eyes glaze over and smug little patronising smiles appear on their faces.

They had little or no interest in discussing or even finding out about anyone or anything that existed outside the cloistered and hallowed halls of the Premier League.

Football at a lower level did not register with them and in their eyes did not even count, or exist.

Whilst the overwhelming majority of the people I approached scuttled away from me as fast as their legs could carry them, relieved at their close call, a few stopped to listen after I succeeded in cornering them and cutting off their escape route.

I fully realise that I shouldn’t have expected anything different, but their comments were totally demoralising and merely highlighted their indifference to our mere existence:

Aren’t you the club with a pub on all four corners of the ground?

Now what league do you play in?

Brentford Nylons isn’t it?

Doesn’t that German bloke manage you?

Has Trotta taken any more penalties for you?

And best of all:

How’s Ron Noades doing these days?

Nobody I spoke to had any conception of the club we were developing into or our massive growth and progress over the past couple of years.

Initially I was innately depressed by what I had heard, but on further thought I think it was all to the good.

We are like a stealth bomber, flying deadly but undetected, well under the radar, or the outsider making a late run to come home on the rails.

Nobody knows, or even cares who we are or where we are going, and they are totally unprepared for what we Brentford fans know will happen over the coming years – or maybe even months!

Our momentum appears to be unstoppable – and so few people outside our rapidly growing fan base have any idea what is actually happening under their very nose!

That being said, seeing is believing.

I have done my best to show my missionary zeal by trying to convert a few of the sceptical, ignorant and uninitiated to the true faith.

This season I took a Liverpool supporter to the Brighton and Sheffield Wednesday matches, an Arsenal fanatic to the Derby County game, a Queens Park Rangers supporter to the Fulham local derby (I smuggled her into the ground under a vow of silence) and finally, a West Ham season ticket holder to witness the thrashing of Wolves.

None of them had ever visited Griffin Park beforehand and I had not given any of them a big build up about the team, its style of play, and what to expect.

I could see their bemused and irritated expressions when they had to fight their way through the packed crowds in the Braemar Road forecourt to get hold of a tepid cup of stewed tea and I had to apologise repeatedly for the long, snaking queue for the toilets which resulted in some desperate leg crossing on the part of some of my guests.

They were all used to the semi-comfort of The Emirates Stadium and Anfield and were taken aback by the grassroots reality of the matchday experience Brentford-style.

The Griffin though did merit universal approval as they appreciated the chance to enjoy a pre-match drink and mix safely with supporters from both teams, something that is unheard of nowadays in the anodyne, segregated sterility of the Premier League.

What all my guests also shared in common was a sense of utter disbelief, amazement and appreciation at the quality of the fare that they were privileged to watch.

Brentford’s positive approach, total attacking policy and the sheer quality on display came as a real surprise to all of them.

None of them believed that football of this quality was on offer outside the Premier League – or indeed, too often within it!

Alex Pritchard recently commented that we played in the same manner and nearly as well as Spurs and you could almost see some of my guests nodding their heads in agreement.

Andre Gray, Alex Pritchard and Jota in particular were all picked out as potential Premier League stars, not that you need to be a super-scout to predict their likely futures.

They were nonplussed when I remarked we had many more of that ilk currently bubbling under and coming nicely to the boil in our burgeoning Academy.

The West Ham fan said that he had seen more efforts on goal in one match than in the entire season to date at Upton Park.

Surprisingly, what they all commented upon was our policy of leaving a minimum of two players in attack when we were defending a corner, something that none of them had ever seen before and they admired our chutzpah, without really appreciating that we are, in fact, more dangerous from opposition corners than our own.

The atmosphere generated by ten thousand roaring Bees fans was also commented on by my guests who acknowledged how intimidating a packed Griffin Park was to the opposition.

They all left the ground wreathed in smiles and excited at the level of pure entertainment they had been fortunate enough to witness.

What’s more they have all expressed an interest in coming again before the end of the season, so real progress is being made.

We are pathfinders and proselytisers and each of us has the responsibility of educating our friends about just how good we are.

Not that many of them are ready, or have the interest or imagination, to really care.