NEW!! Fitting In With The Crowd by Phil Williams: 2020

Fitting in with the Crowd

by Phil Williams

Last Sunday, Samut Prakan City played away at Muangthong United, with my wife and I in attendance as part of the travelling contingent.

During the half-time interval, we were enjoying a soft drink behind the stand, when a beefy arm swung across my shoulder. It belonged to a Samut Prakan fan I had never spoken to before but recognised as a ‘drummer’ - one of a group of hardcore fans who go to most home and away games, drink copious amounts of beer and then during the 90 minutes of football, bang drums, sing into megaphones and wave enormous flags, often with their backs to the actual pitch.

The drummer asked to have a photo taken of he and I together. Afterwards, he patted me on the chest, turned to my wife and said “Mr Phil is a Samut Prakan super fan. He’s one of us” And that was pretty much the end of the conversation. Because actually, I’m not one of them and I never will be.

There are about 40-50 of these hardcore fans who I’m friendly with. We nod our hellos or ‘wai’ each other in various fan zones before each match, we follow each other on Facebook, we sometimes click the ‘like’ button, and we occasionally take selfies together. But I never truly feel part of the group. I will always be something of a novelty, a strange oddity if you like, - one of the few foreigners who goes to watch Samut Prakan play.

I don’t even know any of their names. To me they are ‘top boy’, ‘the girl with the hoopy ear-rings’, ‘the woman in the purple baseball cap’, ‘the Muslim couple’ and ‘the paper-thrower’. They refer to me as ‘Phil’ or ‘William’ if they’ve looked at my Facebook page and been unable to distinguish my first name from my second.

I’ve thought long and hard about why our match day relationships only go so far because I’m fascinated by the whole topic of social interaction. I’m convinced it’s not a language issue. Although I’m yet to hear one of them brave enough to attempt a sentence or two in English, I speak enough Thai to hold a decent conversation. But I don’t really know what to say because we haven’t been successful in establishing a ‘common ground’.

I’ve tried going the Thai football route.

“What about Buriram losing at home last week?”

“Did you see Ibson Melo’’s fantastic goal for Sukhothai?”

“Do you think Chiang Rai will win the league again this year?”

These are opening conversational gambits that have all fallen on stony ground as they say in the good book. The interest just doesn’t seem to be there. In a Thai football pub quiz, I’m not sure I’d want them anywhere near my team.

What about the boring small talk stuff? I’m talking about the mind-numbing questions such as ‘how did you get to the match today?’ or ‘who have you come with?’ Naaah, I just can’t ask those questions and manage to sound interested at the same time. And if they answer with ‘three of us came in a car’ I’ve then got to come up with a supplementary question. I could ask what colour the car was I suppose.

Not unexpectedly, I’ve had minor successes with shifting the conversation towards the English Premier League. If I know someone is a Liverpool or Man United fan, chances are always good of getting a reaction to ‘who do you think will win the Manchester or Merseyside derby?’

But I’ve always had a problem with taking the easy and obvious way out. I like challenges.

It’s a cultural issue isn’t it? A cultural gap that can’t be bridged.

Like many of you reading this, I grew up going to football matches in England. The match day experience followed a ritualistic pattern. You sipped a pre-match pint in the pub whilst watching Football Focus on the big screen TV. On the walk to the ground you’d stop on the footpath to peruse a vendor’s wares to see if he had any interesting lapel badges. You flicked through the match day programme and scoffed chips and curry sauce off a polystyrene tray with a wooden chip fork. You goaded the away fans and sang obscene songs at the well-endowed blonde piece as she made her way gingerly down the touchline.

But once the game kicks off, unless you’re a hooligan purely there for a tear up, you give that match your 100% undivided attention. The match itself is what everything else has been leading up to, and whether your team wins, draws or loses – the result matters! It defines your mood for the following couple of days.

I’m not convinced that the outcome of a game matters that much to Samut Prakan fans and therein lies the rub. I’ve witnessed the first team get cheered and applauded off the pitch after the kind of performance where had I been the manager, I’d have made the starting eleven, along with the two substitutes, fucking walk home.

I once made the grave mistake of saying exactly this on the unofficial Samut Prakan fan page. It came after a 5-2 defeat at Ratchaburi when we had been 2 goals up at one stage. My negative comments were deleted within minutes. You just don’t criticize your team in public, not in Thai culture anyway – and I found that out the hard way.  

For Thai fans, is the final result as important as it is to us foreigners? Or are the beers, the drums, the flags and the chance to be among friends what really count? This is what I still can’t grasp.

At risk of coming across as a tad snobbish, I’ve never taken the supporters club coach to an away game. I may enjoy it, but then again I might not. I’m scared to take the risk. I might be left sitting alone with everyone else on board afraid to talk to me. I’d be the scowling farang at the rear of the bus, analyzing today’s team line-up while everyone else munches meat-on-a-stick, guzzles beer from cans and discusses reputable money lenders. Who gives a toss about the team line-up?  

But I’m in no way resentful. I secretly enjoy my minor celebrity status as one of the few foreign faces down at Bang Plee and usually the only pale-faced Westerner at away games.

But if I truly want to fit in, the only solution is to get meself a drum.