REVIEW

INGERLAND – Travels with a football nation

by Mark Perryman

Simon & Shuster 2006. ISBN 0-7432-6873-3

INGERLAND, Travels with a football nation, is a timely book. Though sometimes overstating his arguments with the dull thud of repetition, it is a treatise that should be read (but most certainly will not be) by all those who hate football and/or think that all England fans are no good, are lesser forms of human life, etc., ie. not like you and I.

Mark Perryman, by his own admission, is a comparatively newcomer to travelling the world following his football team, England. In the ten years since Euro 96 in England in which he has followed the team to all parts of the world, he has become an acknowledged fan representative, recently appearing on both BBC1 and Radio 5Live to talk about the appointment of the new national team manager.

His time as an England supporter has seen many changes in domestic and international attitudes towards fans, not least the growing awareness by the F.A. of the positive things that fans bring to the sport and their needs as bone fide travellers. Perryman describes many of the meetings fans’ groups have had with the FA, the changeover from the Union Jack to the St George Cross as the flag of the England team and of the potential for cultural exchanges as an integral part of any away trip. Two of the best examples he describes are fans’ football tournaments in the USA and visits to schools in up-country Portugal.

Primarily this is a book that celebrates the England fan and what comes from this is the diversity of those who follow the team. He writes about the experiences of fathers and sons travelling together; the women, the children, the Asians, the Afro-Caribbeans who travel as one. While Perryman and his interviewees are remorselessly positive about their travel, they do not hide the difficulties that they sometimes face abroad with the policing or the now thankfully small number of English ‘hooligans’. These reminiscences are often funny, sometimes scary, but never enough to stop them going.

There are other chapters on the problems fans have had with distorted stories in the press and how hard it has been to overcome the blinkered views of fans as hooligans. Bad news sells papers and one small incident can wreck a multitude of good deeds. At least the FA and some members of the press are catching on.

Finally, have you ever wondered about those national flags at England away matches formed by each spectator holding up an appropriate card? I would never have guessed but it is through the work of travelling England fans, arriving at the crack of dawn at the stadium armed with elastic bands and thousands of pieces of plastic and attaching each to every seat to a previously agreed format? Note that – England fans do the home country as well.

Germany 2006 should be a lot of fun.

John Coventon 27 May 2006