"Standing In The Dock at Southampton" | An Interview with Saints Supporter, Alex Daniel
“I love always knowing that probably twice a month between August and May, there’ll be away tickets I need to sort, or train journeys to the other end of the country I need to plan. For people who don’t go to football that probably sounds like a really weird thing to love and enjoy, but it’s all I’ve known for the majority of my life.”
There’s something rather unique about port cities. Port cities seem to bring with them a certain sense of pride, a unique humour and a sort of resistance. Above all else, port cities breed passion and it is often the case that the local football team becomes the embodiment of said passion. If the city is home to only one football club, this passion is intensified further.
Marseille and Naples are the two classic European examples of one-team port cities. If you are reading a Through The Turnstiles article, you are probably already acutely aware of the intense fan culture of Olympique de Marseille and SSC Napoli.
Perhaps a less spoken of but very passionate one-team port city is Southampton. Southampton is a city in Hampshire in the South of England. The local club, Southampton FC is the pride of the city. This week, we caught up with born and bred Southampton fan Alex Daniel to chat about what it means to follow your local club all over the world.
Alex is 23 and currently finds himself “in that weird limbo between finishing university and getting on with actual real and proper life”. As a home and away Southampton supporter, the Coronavirus crisis has impacted Alex’s life rather significantly - “essentially every aspect of my life has changed, my final year of university came to a very abrupt end last March, as did going to football, gigs, seeing mates, going to work, etc”.
We caught up with Alex to chat about his adventures following the Saints all over the globe.
TTT: How did you start following Southampton FC and what can you remember from your first game?
AD: I would love to give some elaborate story about how I came to start following Southampton, but it’s the pretty bog standard generic answer. My Dad supported Saints, so I was handed a life sentence there and then. I don’t remember a lot from my first game, it’s all a bit hazy now, feels somewhat dream-like, which isn’t really surprising as it’s getting on for 18 years ago now. I remember the players coming out of the tunnel, my Dad’s seat was right on the halfway line only a few seats away from the dugouts, I remember that it was a bright blue warm and sunny September day, I do have memory of the aftermath of the two goals (the players walking back to the halfway line) but not the actual goals themselves.
It wasn’t long before Alex got the bug to start following the Saints away from home…
TTT: At what age did you start to follow Southampton away from home? Would you say that there are certain rites of passage as a Southampton away fan?
AD: So my first Saints away game was Manchester United away in December 2004, don’t think you can really top a ground in English football for your first away game really, I was soon brought back down to earth as we got pumped 3-0 haha.
I don’t think there is a right of passage as a Southampton fan really no. Saints support is usually made up of lots of smaller groups of people from all over the city and it’s suburbs, which may differ slightly to other clubs in the country. Those groups can be made up of family members, people you know from your area, people you’ve got to know through social media, or just because you’ve always gone with them.
TTT: What is it about the lifestyle of a home and away fan that appeals to you so much? Is it the camaraderie? Perhaps the feeling of a very different kind of lifestyle?
AD: Yeah the camaraderie is a big one for me...I like the sense of belonging. The group I go with are all a really sound bunch and we always have a good laugh together, win, lose or draw.
It does feel a bit of a different lifestyle yeah, football is in essence an all year round operation, even in the off season you’ll be planning for pre season trips and then when you’re on that trip you might be planning trains for the first month or two of fixtures. I love always knowing that probably twice a month between August and May, they’ll be away tickets I need to sort, or train journeys to the other end of the country I need to plan. For people who don’t go to football that probably sounds like a really weird thing to love and enjoy, but it’s all I’ve known for the majority of my life.
TTT: We think we know the answer to this one already, but what would you consider your favourite away day of all time?
AD: Yes, no surprises with this answer. It is indeed the 2016/17 League Cup semi-final second leg between Liverpool and Southampton at Anfield. For me, that’ll be a once in a generation kind of game, I probably won’t see anything like that again for a very long time, if ever again. We had absolutely battered Liverpool in the first leg at St Mary’s, we should have probably won three or four nil. But Saints being Saints, we decided to make it hard for ourselves.
I’d already accepted we were probably in for a drubbing, we all know the script don’t we? Liverpool, playing at Anfield midweek, in a cup semi-final needing to overturn a deficit, only gonna be one outcome.
I was fully expecting Liverpool to come out the blocks against us and be 3-0 up by half time and have the tie wrapped up, but it wasn’t the case, we ourselves even had a few good chances to double our advantage. Half time whistle blows, 0-0.
I’ll be honest most of the second half was a complete and utter blur to me, I can remember Liverpool having some good chances and thinking it was only a matter of time before they found the equaliser. Perhaps one of the most horrible few seconds I’ve had to endure was when Fraser Forster fumbled a long range shot and had to scramble back to punch the ball off of his line. I’m not a religious man, but after that I remember hoping and praying thinking “please, just this one time can we do it.” Before we knew it the fourth official was holding up his board for stoppage time, I think there was something ridiculous like five or six added minutes, which did wonders for the 4,000 or so nervous wrecks in the away end.
Now onto the moment, a goal that will be talked about for years to come. We’re defending a James Milner corner. He fails to beat the first man, it’s cleared and within a split second the counter attack is on... Josh Sims sprinting away from the helpless Liverpool midfield. On the right wing you’ve got Shane Long bursting away from Dejan Lovren. Now I don’t remember any of what I’ve just described until this bit, the ball is played to Shane just inside the penalty area.. He outstretches, keeps a hold of it and slots it past Karius. What happened next was just sheer joy, elation and a huge outpouring of emotion. I’m getting goosebumps just talking about it. The away end went crazy, we knew there and then we’d done it, for once we hadn’t done ‘a Southampton’. We’d come out on top fighting. I just grabbed the bloke stood next to me, I’d never seen him before and haven’t seen him since. That’s the beauty of football though, two complete strangers in the world, but for that split second we were both able to share that incredible moment, really doesn’t get better does it?
The Moment: Shane Long nets the winner at Anfield | Photo Credit
As well as the domestic away days, there have been some eventful trips on the continent and further afield...
TTT: On your Instagram feed, we saw some of your fantastic photos from your trips abroad following Southampton. The 2016 Europa League run must have been an incredible experience? Did you make it to all three away days?
AD: Yes, I was lucky enough to do all three trips of that campaign. It was an odd experience, like the travelling was unreal, we got drawn with Hapoel Be’er Sheva in Israel. Had a stressful time before that game to say the least. I only booked to go out about a week before the match. For Europa League trips I’ll always fly out on the Wednesday, day before the game, that way if anything goes wrong with the flights you’ve still got a day to get to where you need to be and also gives you a day to familiarise yourself with the new town or city you are visiting. I went to book Wednesday flights coming back on the Friday, and when I did, my jaw hit the floor - £3,000 return flights! I couldn’t believe it, I had my heart said on this trip - Really for a club like us, this was a once in a lifetime trip that, when it comes around you’ve gotta grab the opportunity to go with both hands. The feeling of me knowing I wouldn’t be able to go was quickly setting in and it wasn’t a nice one. Wasn’t until my old dear suggested that I fly out on the Thursday morning that there was a slight glimmer that I may still be able to go. I fired up Skyscanner and changed the dates and by some miracle the flight prices were thankfully affordable (just) to fly out a day later. Before I knew it flights and hotels were booked. All I needed next was spending money and a match ticket.
This is where I encountered my first issue, unsurprisingly not many people from Southampton venture out to Israel, so the demand for Israel shekels is particularly low. Every place in town that you could get foreign currency from had sold out of all of it shekels. Thankfully John Lewis managed to get some ordered from London, so I at least would get my spending money eventually.
Going to get my match ticket was a unique experience as well. I hadn’t been down to buy a ticket from the ticket office in years, it’s a lot easier just to buy them online, but for this game you had to go and purchase your ticket in person, so going up to the window and asking for a ticket for Hapoel Be’er Sheva was a bit of a strange one. Pretty sure that was the last time I went to the ticket office to buy a match ticket as well.
Soon the day of the game and day of travelling rolled around. We were on the 6:30am flight from Luton Airport to Tel Aviv, which due to the time distance and duration of the flight wasn’t due into Ben Gurion Airport until 2pm local time, giving me four hours to get off of the plane, through security, into a taxi to the hotel, check-in, drop the bags off and then take the hour long train journey from Tel Aviv to Be’er Sheva.
The flight itself was fine, we landed on time. When we got security is when things began to go wrong. Israel is notorious for having a very strict immigration policy when entering the country. It must have taken us a good hour to get from the back of the queue to then eventually be questioned.
Once through security all that was on my mind was getting into a taxi as soon as possible - Here is where problem #2 comes in. When the taxi driver asked where I wanted to go, I had forgotten the street name of our digs and to make matters worse my data on my phone wasn’t working. After a painstaking time trying to get connected to the free airport Wi-Fi from the taxi rank I eventually managed to salvage an email with the address on - We were on our way!
Before I knew it we were getting to the outskirts of Tel Aviv city centre - This is when problem #3 made itself known. That weekend was a national holiday in Israel as it was the funeral of a former Prime Minister of theirs. The country was off of work from the day of my arrival, right through the weekend. Conveniently I was staying in a hotel right by the US Embassy, where Barack Obama was visiting as part of his trip for the funeral he would later be attending. This meant that all the roads surrounding the hotel where shut off for security, causing quite a lot of traffic...The kind where you don’t move - Far from ideal when you’re in a race against time to get to your teams first Europa League group game in quite some time!
After dumping our bags off at the hotel, I had what was one of the most stressful 30 minutes of my life. I jumped straight back into a cab to get to Hasanga railway station, I knew that I needed to be on the 4:50 pm train to Be’er Sheva, otherwise I would miss most of the first half. The traffic hadn’t eased, after about ten minutes or so I gave the driver the money that I’d racked up on the meter and decided to make the rest of the journey on foot. My phone was useless as I had no data, so all I had to aid me was a tourist map of Tel Aviv and the help of a few locals in a coffee shop.
Out of pure luck I managed to find the railway station eventually. I was blowing out of my head, having run across Tel Aviv in 35 degree heat - Far from ideal. With about eight minutes to spare I still needed to buy a train ticket and some food and drink as I hadn’t eaten since Luton Airport. The queue to buy tickets was painful, two windows open, but one of the members of staff decided they wanted to go on their phone instead of serving people, so that was nice. In the nick of time I managed to make the train, which had free Wi-Fi. This gave me an opportunity to work out how best to get from the station to the ground. Not too long after pulling out of Hasanga station my phone rang and it was the old dear on the phone. Still to this day not sure why, but I asked her to double check the kick off time. I knew for a fact that it was a 6:00pm kick off - I knew this as firstly I had checked before I flew out to Israel and secondly whenever British clubs play away in the Europa League, it’s a 6:00pm kick off. She had a look and got back to me, confirming it was indeed a 6:00pm kick off. After hanging up the phone the guy sitting opposite me said “are you a Southampton fan?”. Quite bemused to hear this I said “yeah I am” to which he said “It’s an eight o’clock kick off” and proceeded to show me the fixture on his phone where it indeed said Hapoel Be’er Sheva vs Southampton FC - kick off 8:00pm local time. Turns out I’d be viewing the fixture on English time where the game was kicking off at 6:00pm. So after all that stress and running around Tel Aviv like a madman, I arrived in Be’er Sheva with two hours to spare.
Thankfully the Inter Milan and Sparta Prague trips were less eventful. We got lucky with that group draw in terms of trips. For a club who hadn’t been in Europe since 2003 we basically had the ideal draw: The mad once in a lifetime trip (Be’er Sheva), the trip to one of the giants of European football, (Inter) and then finally the cheap and easy trip (Prague).
Unfortunately for us there was a common theme of poor football that followed us through the group. We got a point in Israel, which at the time seemed a good point putting us top of the group with four points after two games played. We lost in the San Siro against Inter, despite having three golden opportunities to score. After then beating them at home in the reverse fixture, we really had qualification in our own hands. But what followed was a bleak performance out over in Prague and a home draw against Hapoel Be’er Sheva, which saw us eliminated from the group on away goals, which is the most Southampton thing to happen to us really.
TTT: It looks as though you’ve put in some distance for friendlies too. What is the maddest trip you’ve ever been on following Southampton?
AD: Yeah I’ve been lucky enough to do a fair few friendly matches abroad. The ‘maddest’ one of the lot probably has to be travelling out to Hong Kong and Macau for our friendly match against Guangzhou R&F. I had wanted to travel to Shanghai the previous summer for our match against Schalke, but it didn’t quite work out, which worked out for perhaps the best as I ended up seeing the World Cup semi-final between England and Croatia in Moscow.
Hong Kong and Macau was an incredible trip though, I’d never been to Asia before, so it was a whole new experience for me, Hong Kong is an incredible place and I would highly recommend anyone to visit there, if they were to ever have the opportunity. Macau is an interesting place to say the least, it is one of only two places in China you can legally gamble (the other place being Happy Valley Racecourse in Hong Kong). It’s essentially a carbon copy of Las Vegas. Despite not being as big as Las Vegas it makes twice as much money as its Nevada counterpart.
There was only six of us stupid enough to travel out from England to Hong Kong and Macau, but I kind of liked that, where there was only a small number of it was nice to be able to share the trip was a few other people, three of who I’d never met before. One of the best things about these pre-season trips is majority of the time they are in locations you wouldn’t usually travel to, Chambery in France for example, in the winter it is a ski resort in the French alps, but when we went there it was a quaint French town sizzling in the summer sun and had everything you wanted from a pre-season destination.
Pre Season 2019 - Southampton in Macau | Photo Credit
TTT: It looks as though you’re into your clothes too. What role does fashion play in terrace culture these days?
AD: I’m unsure really, it's a difficult one I think. I suppose you’re probably always going to have that small element of support of any club in Britain where people’s choice of clothing and footwear is reminiscent of what you would have expected to see in the late 1970s into the early 1980s. As great as that look was, I’m not sure to what extent modern day fashion plays in terrace culture. I guess there’s small pockets of supporters across the country who have their own thing going on, so Everton and Liverpool fans are going to dress very differently to Tottenham and West Ham fans. I think that all boils down to the fact that the local influencers are complete polar opposites. Like you’re not gonna see a fella stood on the Kop or in the Gwladys Street end wearing a flat cap, Barbour jacket, Aquascutum scarf and a pair of Reebok Classics.
I remember having a few conversations with different people in and around the time of the 2018 World Cup when it seemed like most brands were releasing collections that were ‘football inspired’, some being better than others. The general consensus was that the AW18 collections of that year would probably have a lot of influence from football and then that would be it. I’ve been surprised that nearly three years later we’re still seeing a lot of the same thing, not that it’s a bad thing. I think particularly with kit launches it’s made them a bit more interesting at least. Kit launches are really a great opportunity for clubs to show off their cities, it’s supporters and the local culture. I think we’ll see more top clubs go all out with creative campaigns to launch their kits.
A pre-season trip to one of Europe’s most iconic stadiums | Photo Credit
As well as being an avid football and music fan, Alex has an active interest in photography. He shares his own work on his instagram account @__pictures_of_you_.
TTT: We know that you are quite into your photography too. Did the passion for photography stem from taking photos of the match, would you say?
AD: In all honesty taking photos didn’t really stem from taking photos at the match, I kind of wish it did as there've been moments of the years of following Saints that I regret not taking more photos of. I first got into taking photos towards the end of my first year of college, so around 2014 time. Since then I’ve always had an interest in taking photos of a wide range of things I do, whether it be football, gigs, places I visit or local landscapes when I’m out on my bike.
I bought my first camera back in September of last year and managed to take some photos of the two games we were allowed into this season with that. I was inspired to buy myself a film camera last year, after seeing some incredible 35mm photos uploaded to a Saints Archive page on Facebook. I loved how the photos looked and felt, it was almost like I’d been transported back to The Dell in the early eighties when these photos were captured.
It got me thinking, for someone who loves taking photos I don’t take many photos at football, apart from one quick photo on my phone of the match for Instagram. In years to come I want to be able to have boxes full of photos I have taken at football, both during the game and also the before and after bits. In a world that is becoming ever more digital I think it's really important to have something physical to be able to look through, rather than just scrolling through your camera roll.
Will probably be at risk of ticking a few cliche boxes off here, but when I think of the sort of things I would wanna capture at a match, it doesn’t really get any more raw in terms of emotions of people. Like you are so in the moment, when you’re at a football match, the outside world ceases to exist for 90 minutes, all that is on your mind is the game in question and nothing else. With the exception of perhaps live music I’m not sure there are many other human experiences that grips you and brings out scenes in people quite like football does. So I hope to be able to try and capture that in still images when the grounds eventually open again.
We would like to say a massive thank you to Alex for taking the time to chat to us and share his stores. You can find Alex on Instagram - @_alexdaniel. He shares his fantastic photography over on @__pictures_of_you_