End Of The Road

‘MUSTN’T grumble. In 33 years of supporting Crystal Palace I have never been ripped off. The players, by and large, have done their best, and the prices have never been extortionate. Over the past decade, while football has been experiencing hyper-inflation, with Chelsea and Arsenal fans forking out hundreds – even thousands – of pounds on season tickets and merchandise, Palace have been the opposite of reassuringly expensive.

”I might miss the odd goal or ten, but I’ll miss you more”

My season tickets have cost me around £120 a season. The beer is cheap, should you choose to avail yourself of the surprisingly luxurious new Holmesdale bar. Our record fee received for a player is the meagre £4 million-and-a-sack-of-coal paid by Birmingham City for Clinton Morrison just in time for the new season. The most exotic item in the club shop is ”P. Nut” – a small, modestly-priced model of a peanut wearing a Palace scarf. The most way-out item of clothing produced by the club was a t-shirt with a strange family of leering acid house-style faces above the legend: PALACE – THE FAMILY CLUB.

Admittedly, we had a few up-market sponsors: Virgin, TDK and now Churchill Insurance. We even signed the god-like Lombardo, who, if he achieved nothing else during his stay at Palace, at least became a cracker of a quiz question. (Which player who won a Champions league medal with Juventus, was transferred to Crystal Palace, becoming player-manager in the same season, was relegated to the Nationwide League and then transferred to Lazio, where he won the Italian Championship?)

In fact, the past decade or so, with its periodic crises (including receivership) has been the most successful in the club’s history. But in a way this has made the club’s ultimate failure even worse. The only trophy in the boardroom is Wimbledon’s miniature replica FA Cup – a constant reminder of our chronic lack of achievement.

We are a club that in 1979 had an attendance of almost 52,000 for a second division promotion game and yet we have been outperformed by a club with a supporter base a fraction of our size. Yet it’s not simply a matter of underachievement. We could have fulfilled our potential and ended up like Spurs or Aston Villa: clubs frustratingly close to the serious action but never in with a chance of winning.

And what’s the point of that? I supported Palace because I wanted them to win the league – something which, believe it or not, was just about plausible in the days when Derby, Ipswich and Forest were winning cups, league titles and even European honours. But now Palace have no chance of anything other than a place in the Premiership, where they will fulfil their allotted task of providing Arsenal and Manchester United with a tithe of six points each per season. Occasionally they will have a run in the FA Cup or – heaven forbid – the Worthington, and that’s it.

Who needs it? Not me – life’s too short. So I cancelled my season ticket and gave up this summer. On Tuesday I had the strange experience of listening to a home game on the radio, and although I could feel myself being drawn in, I managed to keep calm and affect an indifferent air. It’s a 12-step programme and I’m not cured yet. But I want to be, and I know that eventually I’ll prevail. ‘

Posted: 16th, August 2002 | In: Back pages Comment | TrackBack | Permalink