Dancing Lightly On The Dark Side

By Ben Knight Globe & Mail On Soccer

Knight: Dancing lightly on the dark side
Columbus – Final Part

The second half was different.

TFC were playing towards us now, pressing hard to eliminate that pesky one-goal deficit. Jim Brennan missed by inches. Maurice Edu cracked a low, sizzling rocket just a foot wide of the right post.

A scanning glance across the crowd revealed that almost all the smiles were gone.

The projectiles started to fly. Oh, things had been leaping out of the seats before the break, but those were mostly just clouds of streamers meant to obstruct Columbus Crew corner kicks. That goes both ways, of course. At one point, Toronto goalie Brian Edwards had five red streamers wrapped around his legs as he tried to set up to thwart the next attack.

I’m guessing we were an hour into the game when the first smoke bomb flew. “Bomb” overstates it a bit. We’re talking a cardboard tube filled with chemicals, which belches smoke when ignited by a soccer fan.

Standing in the front row, watching these idiot bombs fly, I was getting angry. It’s not just that I don’t like having inebriated yobs decide when and whether I should get a face full of chemical smoke. I was also hoping the next one wouldn’t be a flare. Today, it wasn’t. Another time, it will.

A full cup of beer flew over my head just after the restart. By game’s end, half a dozen empty beer bottles had landed on the turf. One was actually rolling around in the goalmouth. That’s the kind of thing that gets huge, powerful European clubs stripped of points and playing home games in empty stadiums.

The chants took on a harder, rougher edge as well.

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