The thing about West ham fans is they can dislike your club while still having a beer with you and treating you as an individual on your own merits. I've had many beers with Hammers fans, lots of banter but genuinely good eggs and they tend to know their football. Never any aggro. Can't do the same with Spurs fans and with Liverpool fans it inevitably goes tits up after the 4th pint.
I mentioned before we used to have a box at the Emirates. I'll tell you a story now. The box used to cost the company over £200k a year once you factored in all the food etc so we were under pressure from the leaders of the company to maximise our investment and make sure we got prospects to all matches. I remember once Arsenal had drawn Leyton Orient in the Carling Cup and had drawn at their place so there was a replay at the Emirates in midweek and it was a nasty cold time of year.
As you can imagine this wasn't easy to get punters in for, in the end one of our clients had a brother who was an Orient fan and he was up for it, plus wanted to bring a mate. 'Okay then, invite them and I'll be happy to host them'.
So the 2 lads turn up. The Orient fan mentions he goes to all their away League matches but never the home matches (alarm bells going off in my head here). His mate was a Millwall supporter. Both were fine, both cockneys but watched the game with me and Arsenal won something like 5-1 or so from memory. No drama (yet).
Anyway after the match we walk down Holloway Road towards Angel & Islington station and decide to grab a pint in an Arsenal pub about halfway between the Emirates and the station. We're having a pint when one obnoxious Gooner clocks some Orient fans walking towards the station and runs toward the door shouting something like 'fuck off home, back to playing Grimsby now, hahahah' or something like that.
At this point the Millwall fan, in one smooth motion calmly puts his beer on the table, headbuts the Arsenal fan, as he's collapsing he kicks him in the head and once he's on the floor spits on him. he then picks up the beer again and takes a sip and carries on talking as if nothing had happened whilst this Gooner is twitching away on the floor at his feet.
I could see in the corner of my eye other Gooners looking at this, and making the decision that the Millwall fan was an absolute lunatic plus the fallen gooner kind of deserved it for being a cockwomble and so they just decided to give it a wide berth!
Anyway at this point I'm thinking I'm either going to get done for hooliganism, or the Millwall fan is going to go on a rampage so I tried to cut it short 'oh look at the time, don't want to miss the train etc'. At that time Iived in Streatham Hill in South London which meant I then had to share a train back to Victoria with the Millwall nutter and I was anxiously studying any Arsenal fans on the train in case they did anything to provoke this absolute lunatic! I also made a mental note to never go to Millwall away!
