Whoever plans the football fixtures could have done better today. I arrived at Waterloo just as a train pulled in from the South coast. I thought it was Charlton supporters coming back from the Portsmouth game, but there were a lot of police there for Charlton supporters.

Then I realised it was Millwall supporters coming back from Southampton, which explained the police and the dogs and everything.

The thing is that a train from Portsmouth must be due in about the same time, and all the Charlton fans will be going across to Waterloo East to get the same trains out to South-East London.

I do have a bit of sympathy for the Milwall fans though. Some of them do not live in the New Cross/Lewisham area but they were all still being corralled towards Waterloo East when some of them really wanted to just leave the station or get a train back out towards Clapham, or catch a tube elsewhere. As you can imagine, that really cheered them up… and being bottom of the table after losing 2-0 today they were not in the best of moods anyway.

UPDATE: Well just colour me stupid! Charlton were playing Portsmouth at home… I must have just assumed Pompey were at home because they have so many home games at the end of the season. I still think the police were being a bit heavy-handed the way they forced everyone to go the same way. It reminds me of when I went to a West Ham/Chelsea came in the late 70s/early 80s with friends from both camps. We watched the game from our own ends and had a hell of a time trying to meet up afterwards as the police were intent on segregating fans.