No fans of Uefa: organised protests in the stands became a colourful feature of Palace games, thanks to Holmesdale Fanatics’ activism
Controversial pundit Stan Collymore adds his support, as long-standing fans and youngsters are being forced out of ‘the people’s game’ by corporatist interests of the Premier League and football bodies FIFA and UEFA
Crystal Palace play their first home game of the Premier League season against Manchester City tonight. The atmosphere at Selhurst Park will be different.
The Holmesdale Fanatics, the Selhurst “ultras” who have done so much to shape the atmosphere for home games over the past 20 years, the loud and proud south Londoners who made Wembley “shake” at the 2025 FA Cup final and did it again with noise and tifos at Leipzig in May, have quit.
The Fanatics issued a statement on social media last night in which they said that the Holmesdale Fanatics had “helped write a chapter in the club’s history that many did not believe was possible”.
But they added: “Now is the time for us to recognise we have taken the HF as far as it can go in the current climate. We are therefore choosing to stop all organised activity as the HF inside the stadium.”
The Fanatics were formed out of groups that campaigned for the club’s survival in 2005, and have grown to represent supporters’ views, including opposition to the increasingly corporatist nature of the Premier League and its takeover of “the people’s game”.
The Fanatics are unusual in that all group decisions are handled collectively by roughly 80 core members. Most of them deliberately maintain anonymity, in line with European Ultra culture, although Daniel Grant is the named representative of the Holmesdale Fanatics on Palace’s fan advisory board
It’s all over now baby (red and) blue: the statement that the Holmesdale Fanatics issued last night
The Fanatics have always funded all their activities, including the inspirational and costly banners, or tifos, which caught the eye of television producers and fans across Europe.
The club’s relationship with the Fanatics has been one of, at best, grudging acceptance, with less cooperation or respect than many in the fans’ group had hoped for. Disputes with the club over access, storage of instruments and the Fanatics’ preferred positioning within the stadium had become regular flashpoints.
With Selhurst Park undergoing a £200million rebuild, it appears that the core of fans behind the Fanatics have decided that they cannot, or will not, continue to make the efforts that have transformed their home ground into one of the most hostile venues for away sides in England’s top tier.
“We are proud to have operated 100% independently and have never taken a penny for ourselves. From fighting for the most basic of rights just to take materials into Selhurst and stand up in Block B in the early days, to never-ending problems with the club right up to the present day, we have been uncompromising in fighting for what we believe in and the rights of football supporters everywhere.,” they said last night.
Inevitably, there’s a petition been created to save the Holmesdale Fanatics.
And reactions online have been wholly supportive of the group’s work and in expressing regret for their decision to cease activities.
“Incredibly disappointing news” was how the people behind Five Year Plan, the Palace fanzine, described it. The Holmesdale Fanatics “have been a force for good in our support. Their aims should be supported”.
Jay Crame, the editor of another fanzine, The Eagle’s Beak, wrote, “The HF will be a huge miss and it’s so disappointing that the state of the game in this country has led to the group making this decision.”
One fan reacted by tweeting: “Part of our identity is gone… Selhurst Park will never be the same again.”
Former Palace player Stan Collymore launched into one of his typically angry, lengthy online rants. “Football without hardcore fans is nothing,” he wrote.
‘Football without hardcore fans is nothing’: controversial pundit Stan Collymore
“Clubs are deliberately looking at long-standing supporters, taking away long-fought-for rights and making basic things like season tickets a weapon to remove rather than a part of ‘ownership’ and support of the club…
“… I’m surprised Palace owners have let it get this far because with greatest respect to a club I started at, 90s Palace was old, Surrey-based and ‘nice’. [Holmesdale Fanatics] undoubtedly have made Selhurst a prickly place to play, so their attendance is proof that embracing positive supporter change works. And works well.”
After expressing his own reservations of “mimickery” of European Ultras, Collymore added: “We’ve just come off the $1,000-a-ticket World Cup, we know tourists from afar’s spend is more valuable to clubs that a season ticket-holder who doesn’t need to spend £600 in the shop, and we know that through a cost-of-living crisis, youngsters are finding cheaper teams to support… or move away from football entirely.
“Alas, the Premier League, like FIFA and UEFA want only happy-clappy official broadcasters to ‘tell them how great we are’, so you won’t find [the] HF statement being answered by anyone relevant in football. They just ignore and ride it out. It’s why we are where we are now.
“I hope HF reconsider, and I hope good people like [Steve Parish, the Palace chairman] can find a solution.
“We need more, not less, HF.”
Read more: The anxiety and the ecstasy: one fan’s journal from Leipzig
Read more: We’re South London and very, very proud of our FA Cup team
Read more: Holmesdale fans condemn council as ‘shame of our borough’
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The legal action for defamation by Notts Forest’s Evangelos Marinakis against Palace and “persons unknown” this month having no bearing on this I suppose?