September 16 2014

Dirty Northern Bastards

Tim Marshall, the diplomatic editor of Sky News, has written a book: Dirty Northern Bastards and other Tales from the Terraces. Here's his view on Crystal Palace's songs...

Could be worse. You could be Newcastle. But it’s looking like a long season. Still, I reckon you’ll still be turning up week in week out even if it’s a battle against relegation followed by a bid for midtable respectability.

As an outsider it seems to me Palace have re-invented themselves fan wise. When I first ventured to Selhurst Park in the 1980s, the rain came through the roof of the stands, the away fans stood on terraces without cover, and the most exciting thing which ever happened was the teams running out at three o'clock ahead of 90 minutes of tedium.

There was very little singing, and that wasn’t just because there was so little to sing about.

Now though, it’s all changed. The leaks been fixed, the drum brought in, and the volume turned up. Oh, and I love the eagle.

Kayla flying the length of the pitch before the game is the sort of thing which gives Palace character. I hope when she flies up to that great eyrie in the sky (where else) you get another.

The drum? I don’t like it, but it’s very effective. My team has a song which you may have heard ‘We’re Leeds United – we don’t need a drum’.

Leeds fans don’t go in for drums, trumpets, bands, or eagles, most of us think it’s all a bit fancy dandy, all a bit suspect. But it seems to work for you and there’s now a cracking atmosphere down South London way.

However, your ground remains one of the worst in the country to get to. It’s like a mirage; you drive and drive, and drive, and see signs saying Crystal Palace which recede into the distance the closer you get to them.

Then you end up there before some knowing local shakes their head and explains that Crystal Palace don’t actually play in Crystal Palace (that would be silly!) and then give you impossible directions to Selhurst which appear to be in three locations simultaneously – Bromley, Croydon, and Lewisham.

On the singing front I see you parted company with Kagisho Dikgacoi. I hope you came up with chant for him before he left. Zaha? There’s a name to conjure a song up – and a player you might yet re-sign. Mr Warnock?

We sort of liked him a bit when he worked for us, but his name was rarely sung – he’d been to Warnockesque about Leeds during his time at Sheffield United.

For my money (£30 last time Leeds played at Selhurst) your best song by a mile is ‘We love you!’ I don’t know if you nicked it off Celtic, who by 2008 had nicked it from St Pauli in Hamburg, but you do a fine version.

There’s a lot of internet negativity about the song – I think it’s great and was very impressed when I first heard Palace sing it at Elland Road in September 2011.

It was my (then) nine-year-old daughter’s first game and I remember her asking ‘Why are that lot making so much noise?’

You’re allowed to nick songs. Apart from Sunderland, all football fans are magpies. We all do it. Last season Brentford nicked ‘Knees Up Mother Brown’.

They were already promoted and news came through of Fulham’s relegation. Up went the song - ‘Bees up - Fulham down’. This is genius in short form and part of what make the English leagues the best in the world for songs.

Even Edward Elgar’s had a go. The man who wrote the tune for Land and Hope Glory also penned ‘He banged the leather for goal’ for Wolves.

This lacked the nuance and power of, say ‘Are you watching Rotherham scum?’ and so never caught on, but while researching my book ‘Dirty Northern Bastards’ it did provide me with the image of Elgar, chest puffed out, standing on a stanchion and leading Molineux in a chant of ‘Who art thou?’

In 1898 the Times were a bit sniffy about the song writing that ‘the melody may be complex for the Grandstand’ which is a bloody cheek seeing as we’ve all managed to get our tonsils around Verdi’s ‘La donna e mobile’ from Rigoletto with ‘Your ground's too big for you’ and such like.

I see Selhurst is almost getting too small for you. It’s more or less full most games – long may it remain so.

Tim Marshall’s Dirty Northern Bastards and other Tales from the Terraces’ is on sale now. Buy a copy on Amazon here.