Lower league smugness (From Croydon Guardian)

Lower league smugness

2:57pm Wednesday 13th February 2008

• Print
• Email

When the news broke that Premiership matches are to be taken abroad I must admit I couldn't help but feel a tad smug.

The disgustingly rich and overhyped Premieship is about to get even more disgustingly rich and overhyped, and as I can safely say this plan is never going to affect Brentford I'm not going to waste too much time worrying about it.

No serious money has ever filtered down to help smaller, struggling clubs thus far and the chance of that changing in the near future is about as likely as Dwayne Chambers winning the BBC Sports Personality of the Year. So while this money-mad scheme is clearly awful, as a fan of a financially destitute club, I couldn't help but find the wailing and gnashing of teeth from a whole host of Premiership fans (many of whom I'd wager barely go and watch their team anyway) hilarious.

Unfortunately, my smugness at being a salt of the earth lower league fan was quickly put into harsh perspective. Trips to Underhill tend to do that, despite Brentford picking up another excellent three points on the road.

With the counterfeit Bees seemingly not used to attracting a crowd, Barnet displayed their non-league credentials expertly. The decision was made to only opening two away turnstiles, meaning a number of the thousand-strong travelling support missed a decent chunk of Tuesday night's game. Once inside things didn't get much better with the view from the terrace being about as good as the view I had from the car park.

Give me a nice warm stadium in Singapore anyday.