Fair game

THE young man clenches his fist, points his finger and jabs his right arm forward with fury. He leans forward to his target and screams: "See you later, you f****** faggot!" Spit flies forth with the abuse.

The young man's eyes bulge with rage. "See you later, you f****** c***! You northern c***! You f****** northern faggot!"

The young man's mates join in. Some bellow abuse, others make hand gestures. Earlier, the same bravehearts sung insults in chorus. The abusers?

Reading fans. The abused? A young man in a highvisibility coat. His crime? Being a football steward.

The main abuser - a fat bully, no more than 20, with a face a dog wouldn't lick - walks down the stairs out of the ground, grinning. The match is over. He knows the steward won't react. He's like a drunk, taunting a copper from the safety of his cell.

He's a coward.

Would he dare spit that abuse in the street? No.

He would get whacked. And rightly so.

The same rules, though, don't apply at football grounds. Stewards are seen as fair game. The fluorescent army are there to help, to make sure safety rules are stuck to. Their reward is spit-filled screaming from bloated, Berkshire bullies.

Who would be a steward? Before the game - a 1- 0 Reading win, thanks to a last-minute goal - I speak to Stewart Martin, a Boro steward for 16 years, and in charge of the Riverside Stadium's away end. He is far more interesting than the game.

"You get called all the names under the sun," he says, with a smile. "I always hear: Get a proper job.' They don't realise I have got a proper job. I'm a postman.

I get up at 5am every morning."

The previous home game was Sheffield United in an FA Cup replay that went to extra time. Their fans' reputation is more fierce than Reading's.

"The first half of Sheffield United, we had to deal with persistent standing," says Stewart. "After 20 minutes, we were getting so much physical and verbal abuse. We'd ask them to sit down, and we were sworn at, pushed, shoved. We decided it wasn't worth the risk, so we went back and monitored the situation."

Reading fans - there are fewer than 500 here - have a good reputation, so the ground is police-free.

Only Fulham and Wigan have been considered similarly safe. Mind, after seeing some Reading fans, I'd hate to see the bad clubs.

"I've found the most aggressive to be Man United or Leeds," says Stewart. "The derby games, Newcastle and Sunderland, are not as bad. That's just local rivalry. We have been told Cardiff could be volatile, but we will do our job as normal."

Midway through the first half, a Reading fan repeatedly stands, despite repeatedly being asked not to. Stewart, watching from below, walks up, smile on his face, and speaks to the fan. The crowd drowns out the conversation. When Stewart leaves, the fan sits down, smile on his face and shakes Stewart's hand.

Sue Watson, Middlesbrough's chief safety officer, watches from her control room, high in the away fans' south stand. "He is absolutely brilliant," she says. "He's been slapped, punched, but he keeps coming back. The experience he's got, you can't put a price on. He never upsets anyone."

Stewart, 55, estimates no more than 50 away fans are ejected from the South Stand each season. Most get three warnings; if they continue to play up, they're out. But despite the abuse - and pushes, shoves, and slaps - he loves the job.

"It's the atmosphere," says Stewart, a Boro fan who ranks the 2006 UEFA Cup home games as his favourites. "You meet people from all over the country.

Nine times out of ten, people say: Thanks, see you next season'.

"People write in with: We've been all over the country and we've never been treated so well'. That's satisfying. We had Manchester City here once. They had a disabled fan in a wheelchair, but our lift had broken.

He was complaining. In the summer I was in a restaurant and I heard a voice saying: I hope you've fixed your lift!' We shook hands, and that's how you make friends."

For this game, there are 235 stewards.

Some are students, some have full-time jobs. They've had teachers, pastors, engineers and ex-policemen before. All have bags of training. Most start, Sue says, because they're Boro fans. Their position determines how much action they see. Stewart, in the away end, doesn't see much.

"When Juninho and Ravanelli were here (in the 1990s) I used to have to watch the game on Match of the Day," he says. "My missus would say: You've been there eight hours, have you not already seen it?' All the time they were here, I probably saw three goals."

For a 3pm kick-off, most stewards start between 11am and noon. Sue - who starts at 8.30am - briefs the chief stewards at 12.30pm. It's more detailed than a Gareth Southgate team-talk and takes in the referee ("Howard Webb - we like him because he likes us"); drunks ("If we think people are in drink, let's get them out"); and what happens if an advertising board blows down ("Lift them up and put them somewhere safe").

Turnstiles open at 1.30pm and 15 minutes later, Sue walks to the referee's room to brief Mr Webb and his assistants on safety procedures. "It's a police- free game," she says. "That will save you some money," Mr Webb replies. He should know. He is also a sergeant with the South Yorkshire Police.

Back in the control room - where a sign declares "The open celebration of goals is not allowed"

- Sue deals with the day's problems. There's a lost lottery ticket and match tickets that won't scan, freezing disabled fans and litter blowing across the pitch. "Look at that rubbish on the pitch," says someone in the second half. "Yes, and there's plenty of litter too," comes the reply.

Most Reading fans are good as gold and the day goes well, says Sue. She should know, she runs her own steward training company, and has worked at Leeds' Elland Road, Huddersfield's Galpharm Stadium, Headingley and other huge set-piece events. The Berkshire big-mouths, though, remind us what Boro's stewards - and the thousands of others, from Arsenal to Aldershot - put up with.

"That's the side that doesn't get publicised," says Sue. "The abuse they get - for the money they get - is unbelievable."