Mr Grealish knocked over

One of the maddest experiences of my life was going to a Birmingham derby at Villa Park as an honorary Blues fan for a day. There are a few Birmingham lads leaving in West Cork, most of them with Irish connections and most of them blues. A few of them, including the guy who brought two of us over to stay at his dad's, were Zulus. My mate was, like a lot of Zulus, West Indian. It is how they got the name. I had previously assumed that Birmingham's 'Irish' team were Villa, but the vast majority of Zulus seemed to be black and Irish.

We went over on the tear on the Saturday with the game being an early kick-off on the Sunday. At 8 o'clock on the Sunday morning, after no sleep and a lot of speed, we went to his local pub which was in the shadow of St.Andrews. A knock on the window and the noise inside went quite, the door opened and in we walked into the pub that was the template for 'The Jockey' in 'Shameless'. There was a pool table that was being simultaneously used for its intended purpose and for the consumption of a cocktail of drugs. The music was a mixture of big beat rave, The Stone Roses and The Specials. People were completely f**ked and every white man there told me he was Irish and every black man told me told me we were brothers. 

Money was not being taken at the bar, it was 'included' in the tenner we paid for the bus to Villa Park. I got the impression that some of the 'top boys' made their living in a manner that didn't avoid paying tax and that this was their payback. I didn't think the pub was going to make it through the day. 

We had to wait for a police escort to get on the bus where our match tickets were checked and everybody was searched (all substances were safely stored). There was then a ten minute stand-off as someone tried to bring a slab on the bus.

The bus journey across the city was, as you would expect, f**king mental. I wasn't too surprised that any flash of claret and blue was met with an attempt to put the windows in from the inside, or that most of the chants and songs were about defecating on Aston Villa. I did not, however,  expect a rousing rendition of 'I'd rather be a sausage than an egg', apparently  a popular away day ditty. 

The match itself was the 5-1 spanking by MON's Villa that was still being sung about by the away fans  yesterday. Blues fans ripped up seats and tried to get out of the stand, something the police had decided against . Pandemonium.

Once we were kettled back on to the bus, we went back to the still closed pub(it stayed closed all day) to sing more breakfast related chants .Later in the evening we were offered to join some of the lads for 'a stroll' to a Villa pub. How they were capable of even looking for a fight was beyond me at that stage.

It was a very, very mad day. I would say that Blues fans are possibly the maddest in England. Certainly madder than Millwall, who might be more dangerous or racist, but definitely have fewer lunatics. Then again, I have never been to Millwall-West Ham Birmingham has some absolute mental cases and most of them seem to be Blue. 

That story has f**k all to do with yesterday, mind you. Just my way of agreeing that Birmingham City fans are absolutely mental.