#isthmian

Insect Bell Pendant, 400-1100

Isthmian Region (Panama), Coclé, 5th century-12th century

gold, cast

Overall: w. 2.20 cm (13/16 inches)

Dulwich Hamlet FC 2 - Lowestoft Town FC 0 Champion Hill, South London. Sat 10th Aug 2013.

Dulwich Hamlet emerge victorious on the first day of the Rymans Premier League 2013/14 season thanks to goals from Ellis Green and Erhun Oztumer (pen).

(TiDP co-host Robert is too excited about the start of the new football season to do anything other than tell you all about it.)

I saw someone in a skull & crossbones FC St. Pauli shirt in Peckham recently. I turned to him and piped, "Alright mate, come see Dulwich Hamlet!" He tried to walk past. Hang about. "We got links with [Hamburg non-league side that a lot of St. Pauli fans adopt as a second, more leftist, team] Altona 93..." He looked at me baffled. “Dulwich Hamlet Football Club, about twelve minutes walk that way..." Confusion etched on this poor sod's face. "Football! Do you like football?!" His eyes begged me to leave him alone. I chased him chanting "Football motherfucker! Football!" past no doubt several postcolonially-Jay-Rayner-reviewed bistros. What's strange about this story isn't how this has parallels with the curious fashion for wearing band t-shirts as brand t-shirts, nor my possibly eccentric behaviour (indeed I deeply regret not following him home and ransacking the place). Rather, what I found interesting was how I now found it unusual for someone to not know about Dulwich Hamlet. A few seasons ago the opposite was true. Back then no-one seemed to recognise the pink & blue paraphernalia. But nowadays people come up to me to talk about DHFC. "C'mon Dulwich!... Looking forward to the new season... oh, you're the crazy ones, I've heard about you..." On the podcast there is always a danger of disappearing into the abstract. Truth is we are first and foremost passionate and sometimes drunk football fans. Indeed, me & Joe met at Champion Hill. The season kicks off tomorrow and I am very, very excited.

This isn't the usual begging letter trying to guilt you into going to a struggling non-league football club. No, it is you that I pity, the uninitiated, the unHamleteered. We can struggle-by with or without you. The 1980s financialization of football has made it difficult for small clubs regardless so your one attendance won't make much difference either way. But I find myself contorting into some old gossiper fused with an evangelical missionary: I genuinely don't want you to miss out. Something special is happening down Champion Hill, something that perhaps extends beyond the mere homodox winning* of football matches: sociability and creativity. Old-school fans, some of whom have supported the club across five decades, describe this as the best atmosphere they've ever experienced. Our chants numerically rival religious hymnbooks. Our flags and banners challenge medieval battlefields. The mingling on the terraces apes ambassadorial receptions. The fan fundraising shames Bob Geldolf. And the Supporters Trust grows quicker than the House of Lords party donor list. Bloody hell, even the indulgent fan-written self-published review of last season is very readable. You can occasionally hear the creaking wood at our level of football (Isthmian Premier, since you ask) as they struggle to cope with our developing fandom. They're not really used to it, I guess. Hated rivals Tooting & Mitcham were so aghast (jealous?) at our boisterousness last March that they complained to the FA (under Rule 76b, which prohibits any fun being had at football grounds and has been strictly enforced across the top divisions).

I don’t like pre-season friendlies (though this is probably fetishization of league systems**) but two very interesting things happened at them this summer. First, in fairly lifeless game against a Huddersfield Town side, our much-loved Erhun Oztumer*** scored a second half goal that sparked us into a spontaneous and unexpected delirium. It was as if, without words and within microseconds, we had collectively decided fast-forward narrative straight to euphoria. This wasn’t the irony of “let’s go fucking mental!” but something different. Less postmodern, more… pre-modern? For a joyous moment we had purified football via an infectiously euphoric wave. Even Erhun went crazy, kicking the hell out of a corner flag. It felt like… like… football culture achievement unlocked. 

And secondly, an equally meaningless and slightly freakshowy friendly this week against a strong Crystal Palace side… They had a lot of fans at the Hill, many of whom eyed the Hamlet fans’ eccentricities with utter befuddlement and even defensive scorn. Our chants that turned into trance-like frenzies, “weirdo” banners with “strange words”, perhaps even our beautiful faces. A lot of Palace fans simply couldn’t comprehend. How bizarre, I thought, to spend so much money and to be so excited about your team’s coming season of almost inevitable struggle in the ‘best league in the world’ Premier League, but not be able to get your head round even slightly unorthodox fandom. 

This isn’t a dig at Palace fans. If it was I’d be using words like ‘Nigel’ and ‘kung-fu kick fodder’. Indeed, with the Holmesdale ‘ultras’, Palace probably represent one of the more interesting fandoms at the top end of English football. Oh dear.

Now obviously if your view of football extends only to quantifying the extent to which you’d get humiliatingly dismantled by the current AC Real Bayernelona United genetically-modified turbo-charged speedball champions, sure, a middling televisual club like Palace are miles better than the turpitude-writhing non-league debauchery of Dulwich Hamlet. But if, for you, football extends beyond that damned grass rectangle, onto the terraces, into the minds and out of the mouths… then I genuinely doubt there is a team in the land as mighty, as glorious, as bloody-well epoch-defining as the beautiful Pink & Blues down Champion Hill. South London's finest cultural institution. #ForFutureFootball

* = Though, rather disappointingly for my ‘football is subjective’ argument, we have also been winning. Bastards.

** = An actual historical process in association football. Even Herbert Chapman, who did so much to develop dominant teams in England, wrote privately of his regret at the increasing importance of final league position rather than individual matches.