Crystal Palace - Southampton

When Jon asked me if I wanted to watch the Crystal Palace-Southampton match, my first reaction was, "Is Crystal Palace a club? Sounds like a Chinese restaurant!" Anyway for those who like me have not heard of Crystal Palace, it's a football club based in South London.










Sathia & I were joking that at the stadium they'll serve dim sum instead of hot dogs :)

It was Hsu Hsien's idea to watch the match cos he's a Southampton fan. Being surrounded by Crystal Palace fans, Hsu Hsien decided to hide his Southampton jersey under his coat - but a little patch of yellow was peeking out :)













The Southampton away fans were great fun to be around. They were really enthusiastic and were constantly cheering for the team, from the time we walked into the stadium and all through the match. I think away fans generally have much more energy since they are outnumbered, and in most cases have travelled far to watch the match.

And Southampton had some really nice cheers! Hsu Hsien had forwarded the lyrics to us a couple of days before for us to learn. We were all supporting Southampton that day :) My favourite one was "5...4...3...2...1 Let's go disco! La la la la la la la!" When they sing the "la la la" part everyone starts to dance and shimmy :) The other funny one was the song they sang to the home fans "we forgot that you were here!" And when Crystal Palace scored, the Southampton fans started singing (to the tune of Guantanamera) "Sing when you win it, you only sing when you win it..."

As we were sitting at the corner where the two sides meet, more entertainment came when one of the Crystal Palace fans clambered over the wall and stood in the space between the two camps and started jeering at the Southampton fans. The Southampton side started cheering against him and the Crystal Palace fans as a whole "Who are ya, who are ya?"

Then the stewards saw that he was not in the stands and started to chase after him. He saw, turned, climbed back over the wall, and ran among the Crystal Palace fans to escape the stewards. He thought he had lost them and ran up the stairs to the lobby area, but we could see from where we were that he was going to get cornered by around 4-5 stewards who had gathered in that area. When he got there we saw him being chased through the lobby, and eventually went out of our sight. He must have got caught, and definitely got escorted out of the stadium. We then joked that at least Jon wasn't the only person to have gotten chased out of a stadium before haha!










During that whole episode most of the fans were not focusing on the match cos the play wasn't that exciting heh. But then things picked up, and Southampton scored! We were jumping around with the crowd! They were cheering even more loudly and excitedly! It was after they scored that they started singing the Disco cheer :)

Final score 1 all.

2 goals and plenty of cheers later, all the Southampton fans zipped up their coats, hid the yellow, and headed for home :)

Fantastic day out!