Note: This is the fifth part of my American Soccer Road Trip, which will involve me traveling across the country, finding stories that exemplify the diversity that exists in American soccer. Check back soon for further updates.
Tom Dunmore got to go to his first match the way young children get most things they desire – by pestering their parents until they give in. Dunmore had long wanted to see his team, Brighton Hove and Albion, play, and when his mother finally bought him tickets to a match, it turned out to be, he says, the most exciting game of his life.
The tickets Dunmore’s mother had bought were the cheapest available and didn’t provide much of a view, especially for young Tom. Fortunately, the stewards took him, and many other kids, down close to the field, where they could see the match.
Brighton fans at their previous stadium, the Goldstone Ground (photo: View Images)
Late in the match, when Dean Wilkins hit a 25-yard free kick to win it for Brighton, Dunmore and all the other youngsters in the stadium had the best view in the entire stadium. The place went crazy, Dunmore recalls, and prompted a massive pitch invasion. Because the children were right next to the field, they had to be first onto the pitch, and Dunmore recalls fondly being in awe of the experience of rushing the field. (Meanwhile, back on the terraces, his mother was worrying about her child, but Dunmore says, “it didn’t cross my mind that she’d be worried.”)
This early fascination with the pitch invasion has continued to the present day, and provided the inspiration and name for Tom’s informative and entertaining blog on football fan culture. Pitch invasions, Dunmore says, tell so much about the sport of soccer. They have been used as mechanisms of protest (Brighton fans invaded the pitch in 1996 to protest their Goldstone ground being sold) and lack of security in stadiums has often led to forced pitch invasions. Today, of course, they are relatively rare, which Dunmore sees as symbolic of a Premier League that has completely sanitized.
Reading fans invade the pitch in 2006 (photo: ComEnts)
Tom Dunmore came to the US several years ago for graduate school and has remained here ever since. During the past year, he has become a fan of his new local team, the Chicago Fire, and has been documenting his experience for The Offside blog. I passed through Chicago recently as part of my American Soccer Road Trip and spoke with Dunmore about similarities and differences between English and American soccer.
Dunmore told me that when he first came to the US, he barely knew MLS existed. Like many English expats, he continued to follow soccer from his homeland, which he found surprisingly easy to do on TV and through the Internet. He went to a few Fire games the next year, but didn’t really begin to follow the league until the last year or so. Dunmore says that he began to follow the Fire because he missed having a local team to support.
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