Covering Millwall: Going to the wrong Bury, lift with fans to Bristol, most infuriating player &#8211; and favourite game

By John Kelly The train journey seemed a bit quick. For the majority of it , I had been buried in my laptop working on the way to the game, sometimes absent-mindedly gazing out the window at the countryside rolling by as I tried to recall some fact or stat or another. I closed my laptop, got my things and disembarked. It was a beautiful, sunny April day, and, no offence to anyone from there, but Bury wasn’t what I had expected. Not a bad place for a weekend away, by the looks of things. Who would have thought it? I had time for a coffee and wanted to draft a few more things on NewsAtDen before heading to the stadium, so I went into one of those lovely, quaint countryside pubs. I took my laptop out and started to finish a few bits and pieces before heading to the stad...wait, countryside pub? As a deep sense of panic started to set in, I took out my phone and put Gigg Lane into Google Maps. To say my heart skipped a beat when I saw how far away it was would be like saying the Titanic had a brush with an iceberg. Two-hundred-and-twenty miles via the A1. Three-and-a-half hours. I was in Bury St Edmunds . Before leaving the office the previous evening, I remembered I had forgot to book a train to Bury. Gagging for a pint, I quickly went to Trainline, typed London to Bury and, without thinking, and just assuming the train station there was called Bury St Edmunds, clicked on that. I booked my return ticket and went off obliviously to the pub not knowing I would be headed for the cathedral town in Suffolk rather than the de-industrialised metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester the next day. How could I be so thick? There hadn’t even been any Millwall fans on the train, and I’d usually see plenty travelling to games, but it would have been too late by then anyway. Right, I ain’t telling my bosses what’s happened. I ain’t telling Millwall’s media team and asking them to send me the post-match quotes. I ordered a pint. This is a long shot. ‘Jay,’ I texted. ‘I’ve had a last-minute issue and can’t go to Bury. By any chance are you there today and do you have your laptop with you?' Jay Taylor is a Millwall fan and had done plenty of work for NewsAtDen and Southwark News . He knew the ropes, how to upload articles, crop photos, tweet updates and all the rest of it. But come on, why would he bring his laptop when he’s going as a fan? ‘Hi mate,’ came the reply. ‘I do.’ I exhaled a sigh of relief though the embarrassment didn’t exit with it. ‘Brilliant, mate, any chance you could cover the game today?’ ‘No problem, tell me what you need.’ [caption id="attachment_118082" align="aligncenter" width="2560"] Former Millwall boss Neil Harris. Photo: Millwall FC[/caption] I went to a couple of different pubs, followed the Lions game online and actually quite enjoyed the afternoon. Though that was partly down to the pints washing away the guilt. Millwall won 3-1, all but confirming their place in the play-offs. All’s well that ends well. Ahem. (And my bosses still don’t know that story. Well, until now.) Being a football reporter on the club beat can throw up all sorts of things. There was the time I went to Plymouth for a Johnstone’s Paint Trophy game. Millwall won 5-3, I interviewed Neil Harris and one of the players and went back to the press box to upload a quotes article. I was the only Millwall reporter there. There were a handful of local journalists and they slowly trickled out until I was the last one left. The floodlights went off but that’s normal once the groundstaff have finished their work. But then every light in the place went out. Fuck. From my accommodation I had walked through or beside a graveyard – I can’t remember which – to get to Home Park. The return walk was one of the first thoughts that struck me. Only the moonlight helped me navigate my way to a pitch-black concourse. Surely there would be a door open. I felt my way along a wall to the door I had come in by. Locked. Along with a feeling of terror was one of humiliation. Would I have to call one of Millwall’s media team, hoping they were still close by? How embarrassing. Or the police? Feeling really stupid, I pounded on the door with my fist and shouted, “Hello?...Hello?...” Imagine the relief when I got a “Hello, mate” back. “What you doing there, mate, we’ve almost closed up?” It was the Plymouth kitman and he was literally the only person left in the stadium. Thanks showered on him, I faced into my macabre journey back to the hotel and about three hours’ work before sleep. I had a better experience on the last day of the 2016-17 season. It didn't seem like it was going to be that way. It was an early kick-off against Bristol Rovers on the Sunday, so I had booked my train and hotel accommodation for the Saturday. It was the night of the Anthony Joshua-Vladimir Klitschko heavyweight title fight at Wembley Stadium and I'd booked the train nice and early so I could watch it in Bristol. But the British rail service had other plans. The train was packed - what's new? - and then it stopped at Reading. Ten, 20, 30 minutes went by. No updates. No indication when we were going to get going again. Fight time was approaching so I made the decision to get off the train and leg it to a local pub close to the station. Joshua won to go 19-0, I'd an enjoyable four or five pints, went back to the station and hopped on the next train back to London. That night, I tweeted asking if any fans had room to give me a lift to Bristol the next morning. Chris replied, 'yes, mate', and I met him and his two friends in Deptford at 7.30 that Sunday morning. Chris uses up all his holiday days to follow his beloved club. He told me that in 2013 he had asked his boss for a day off to go to the Lions' mid-week FA Cup replay at Blackburn Rovers and after he was told 'no', he quit. That level of dedication is extraordinary. You get to see the interactions of players at the training ground. Jordan Archer was one of the most infuriating. He would be acting the bollocks as you’re interviewing someone else, cracking jokes and laughing. Then when it was his turn to be interviewed he completely changed. Poker face, clichés. Cheers Jordan. Could you not be like you were five minutes ago? Neil Harris was a curious mix of extremely mentally tough combined with a thin skin. He refused to talk to me one time until we switched off the comments section on NewsAtDen . (I’m not giving away a state secret there, I tweeted about it at the time.) That section was a vibrant place, often attracting over 100 comments and the website was less colourful without it. I remember a few Millwall fans thought it was us that turned it off because we didn’t want to hear what they had to say, and one of them proposed meeting in The Five Bells to start a new NewsAtDen . I’m not sure what happened there but if there was an attempt it didn’t get off the ground. I remember standing in the pissing rain on the Deepdale pitch after Millwall had lost 3-2 at Preston North End during that difficult 2018-19 season. A few of us were waiting to talk to Harris. He soon appeared from the tunnel and someone asked him if he was doing his post-match interview. ‘No,’ he snapped. ‘Where’s Dan [McLoone, Millwall’s head of analysis]?’ he asked another member of staff. ‘Tell him to get down here.’ McLoone would usually be perched somewhere high up in the stadium to get the best bird’s eye tactical view. To say I was pissed off was an understatement. It was a Tuesday night, well past 10 o’clock and trains and accommodation are not cheap anywhere in this country, as supporters will well know. ‘I’ve never seen that before,’ the reporter said. He would have been commissioned by an agency to do the match report, plus send a couple of hundred words from both managers. [caption id="attachment_120210" align="aligncenter" width="2560"] The riveting 2017-18 campaign. Photo: Millwall FC[/caption] I’m aware there’s not much empathy of sympathy around for journalists, but most are just trying to do the job as professionally as they can. I know from working for agencies and doing freelance work for nationals how poor the pay can be. The first report I did for The Irish Times was the main match report on the domestic football page. When you cover a match it’s not just the 90 minutes. It’s the travelling there, the research before it and then waiting around for the post-match interviews. A manager might be furious and stay in the dressing room blasting his team for 45 minutes. I remember the excitement when the cheque came through the door. The amount? €25. You might point out I should have asked them the fee before I agreed to do it. You might be right. But as an eager reporter who is going to get their byline in such a prestigious title, you say yes without hesitation. Harris would also not be available at times. You’d ask what time the weekly interview is and be told, not this week. It could be something like a transfer line that was published that annoyed him. ‘Neil won’t be happy with that,’ someone from the club texted me after I reported that they were interested in Murray Wallace. Okay, I should probably have run it by the club but during that time between the end of the season and July you really are sometimes pecking at breadcrumbs the news is so thin on the ground and players are on holidays. Gary Rowett is much more accessible and accommodating, especially during that period in the summer. “How are you, Gary,” I asked him one late May in our weekly chat. “All good, mate, I’m here lying on a sunbed and I’ve no intention of moving for the day.” In one of our first interviews, I asked Rowett how long it took to get over being sacked by Stoke City. He looked at me, bemused. “About a second,” he smiled. Rowett has unshakeable self-confidence. He’s a great talker and pretty open. Not that he’ll tell you everything. When Millwall are linked with a player you try to find out from sources outside the club and if the timing is right – NewsAtDen interviews with Rowett are on a Monday or a Tuesday – you might get a line from Rowett. If the story is completely untrue he’ll say that. If there is something in it he might say, “yeah, he’s a player we’ve monitored before, good player...” That might mean the player is on the list of potential options. If the Lions are actively pursuing the player and it’s at a delicate stage, the manager more than likely won’t say anything. Sometimes you get a surprising answer. Harris was really closely guarded with what he said. But on one occasion I had just heard that Millwall had offered a new deal to Lee Greogry, who was due to be out of contract at the end of the 2018-19 season. I asked Harris not expecting anything back. “Yes,” he said. “We’ve offered Lee a lucrative contract.” Great exclusive. Sometimes a manager will want to put some gentle pressure on a player to hurry them up into making a decision. Managers and recruitment departments are always planning for the next one, two, three transfer windows and need to know where they stand right now. My favourite-ever Lions game might not be an obvious standout. It was on the last day of that glorious 2017-18 season, Millwall’s first back in the top flight after two campaigns in League One. The “steam train” had just run out of momentum and a 3-0 defeat at Middlesbrough on the penultimate day of the season meant there would be no top-six finish. Millwall weren’t mathematically out of it but would have had to beat Aston Villa something like 7-0 and hope other results went their way. The atmosphere at The Den that day was one of the best I’ve ever experienced. It was as if Millwall fans treated it as a day of celebration after a remarkable campaign. They were in such high spirits. The sun was out and the place was buzzing outside an hour before kick-off. With Villa having already secured their play-off place and the Lions’ season being effectively over, you would have been forgiven for thinking there would be a friendly feel to it on the pitch and in the stands. You would have been very wrong. In front of an attendance of 17,195. Millwall tore into their opponents. Harris’ side went ahead though Shaun Williams’ penalty in the 30 th minute after his Biggin Hill neighbour and mate Jed Wallace had been fouled by Henri Lansbury. The noise levels and intensity on the pitch increased as the game went on. Millwall fought for everything and had the chance to add a second but Gregory’s penalty was saved by Mark Bunn. Villa brought on Jack Grealish that day. It was something that happened near the end of the game that just summed up the joy of that campaign and the way that Millwall, particularly after the turn of the year, had approached every challenge. That was literally the case in this instance. Villa had the ball but were deep in their own half trying to get up the pitch. Possession was played out to the Villa left and Ryan Tunnicliffe tore from midfield and flung himself into a tackle, shunting man and ball over the sideline. The Den absolutely erupted. On his way back to his midfield position I saw the biggest smile on Tunnicliffe’s face as he shared a high five with Jed Wallace. Wonderful. You can have all the trophies and titles you want but that’s the stuff that people also cherish. Lions fans seeing players get what their club is about. That moment encapsulated what Millwall and their fans represent. A relative giant of English football down in scrubby South Bermondsey sent home with bruised shins and bruised egos. The important thing is not the destination but the journey. Image: Millwall FC

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