Toby Young Toby Young

I took my wife to a Millwall match – and it didn’t go well

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The fighting started just as Caroline turned right on to the Uxbridge Road after emerging from QPR’s stadium on Loftus Road. About 25 football fans began punching and kicking each other in the middle of the road, forcing the pedestrians on the crowded pavement to surge backwards to avoid being caught up in the mêlée. Caroline suddenly found herself pinned against a shop window along with two of our sons, barely able to move. I was still on Loftus Road with our third son, struggling to re-attach the wheel of his bicycle, which he’d left locked up outside the stadium. I glanced up when I heard the commotion and saw police running towards the Uxbridge Road, batons held aloft. ‘Oh God,’ I thought. ‘I hope Caroline’s not caught up in that.’

I’d been trying to persuade her to come to a QPR game for years, hoping she’d finally develop an interest in football, and naively thought our match against Millwall would be a good advertisement for the sport. After all, there’s nothing like a London derby to get the juices flowing. The Kiyan Prince Foundation Stadium would likely be packed, and not just because Millwall are one of our closest rivals. It was our first game of the 2021-22 season and for the majority of fans it would be our first opportunity to go to a match since March 2020. I had a niggling worry that some would stay away for fear of catching Covid, but as we threaded our way along the Uxbridge Road at 2.45 p.m. those doubts disappeared. QPR fans were streaming toward the ground from all directions, like ants returning to a colony.

I had my first inkling that bringing Caroline to this game might not have been a great idea when we saw the police vehicles lined up outside the stadium.

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