CROYDON COMMENTARY: Season ticket-holder PETER GILLMAN had been looking forward to the Ipswich match all week, but in the queue at the gate something happened which left him questioning his club’s approach
No place like Holmesdale: but Peter Gillman was shaken by his shakedown
At the age of 83, a milestone I somehow passed last week, I was not expecting to be pulled out of the queue at Crystal Palace and given a shakedown for drugs.
But that is what happened to me last Saturday.
I attended my first match at Selhurst Park in 1957 and have followed my beloved team, through thick and thin, ever since. I was looking forward to Palace’s home match with Ipswich, hoping that we could sustain our stunning run of form, with nine wins in the last 12 games. My son and I joined the queue for the Upper Holmesdale, where we have season ticket seats. There was a jovial mood around us in anticipation of yet another win.
I became aware of a dog sniffing around my legs. It was on a leash held by a young man wearing a woven black tie. There was nothing on him or the dog’s harness to indicate who they were. The dog continued to sniff and I asked the man: “Who are you?”
He told me that the dog had found something of interest.
I asked again: “Who are you?”
He again declined to reply, asking me if I was carrying anything I shouldn’t have.
I said no, and for the third time asked: “Who are you?”
To my astonishment, he now asked me if I was refusing to be searched. My son attempted to intervene, saying: “Don’t be ridiculous. He’s 83.”
The man took no notice and I realised that this was the moment of truth. In such encounters, you have to decide whether to stand your ground and risk a further escalation. Or, knowing that you are not carrying anything that you remotely shouldn’t have, comply and get the farce over as quickly as possible and avoid missing the start of the match. I selected the latter.
As the man steered me away, my son again called out: “He’s 83.” The man ignored him and I could feel eyes on me as I was guided through the queues towards the end of the entrance section. Then the man started asking about my medical history and what medications I took. I mentioned several tablets, including statins. He asked if I had any heart problems.
It felt utterly bizarre, to be standing in the middle of the Holmesdale Road discussing my medical conditions with someone who had refused to identify himself. I declined to answer any further and was taken to a wooden table where a second man was standing.
He was wearing a grubby light-coloured jacket which I guessed was to give him an air of medical authority. He asked me to give him my hat, which he proceeded to search, then patted my shoulders, arms and pockets.
“It’s ok,” he said. “You can go.”
“So I’m clean?” I asked. Since no one had told me what they were searching for, I assumed it had to be illegal drugs. However, when I later read the long list of prohibited items at football grounds, I found that it included knives, firearms, explosives, air horns, fireworks and flares – but not drugs. So I remained unclear what the dog thought it had found.
A slight, middle-aged woman now joined the three of us. She asked if I was OK. I asked her who she was and she said she was a Crystal Palace steward. I said I was upset at what had happened and she apologised.
“So who are these other people?” I asked her.
To my astonishment, the steward said she didn’t know. I asked if they were private security guards and she said thought they were. In that case, I said, they should be wearing some kind of identification. She agreed and said she would take the matter up with Crystal Palace. She led me to the head of the queue, along with my son, so that we did not have to wait any longer.
The incident preyed upon me during the first-half of the match, as I wondered if I had made the right moves. I remained puzzled by the man’s refusal to say who he was. He was clearly working his way through a script of responses, which had somehow failed to equip him for the most basic question of all.
Maybe he felt I was channelling the notorious “who are you?” football chant. Or perhaps he felt threatened by the question’s fundamental existentialist premise.
News hound: Crystal Palace’s press department agreed that the security staff working with sniffer dogs should properly identify themselves
I felt dismayed that the club I had passionately supported for most of my life could have treated me this way. But when Palace scored their late winner, my upset dissipated and I walked home on the usual cloud that follows a victory.
On Monday, I asked Crystal Palace’s media office to account for what had happened.
It swiftly conceded my principal point, namely that the man with the dog should have been “clearly identified” and should have told me “who they are, what they are doing and why”.
It said that it would remind its “contractor” (unnamed) to ensure its employees did so in future. They said that they understood why I “may have been distressed” and apologised “for any upset” I had experienced.
It also explained that the dog handler had asked about my medical history because the dog might have thought I was carrying medication which it interpreted as an illegal substance. And it reminded me that it was a “condition of entry” that the club had the right to carry out these searches.
I looked at the conditions of entry, and found that under item 6 I had indeed implicitly acknowledged the club’s right to search me – and if I had refused to agree, I could have been refused entry. So my instinctive decision not to object proved correct.
At this very late stage I decided to search the pockets of the trousers I had been wearing. I found, tucked away, two paracetamol tablets that I had stashed there long ago in case I had a recurrence of the back pain that is an 83-year-old’s lot. So the dog must have felt it was on to something, even if it failed to appreciate the niceties of the law differentiating between medications and recreational substances.
At the next home match, against Brighton on April 5, I will look out for the man with the dog to see if he can be identified. And if the dog thinks it has found something, I will pat it on the head and meekly comply.
- Peter Gillman is a journalist and a former member of the Sunday Times Insight team. His latest book, Murder In Cairo: Solving a Cold War Spy Mystery, written with Emanuele Midolo, is published later this month by Biteback (£20)
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