Placid
I’ve got a very good mate who’s a Palace fan, white, born locally. When I was in the UK nearly 3 years ago it coincided with Leeds being at Palace and he sorted a ticket for the home end, next to him. First time I’d been there since 1990 when Gary Speed scored with that bullet header. I was expecting a crowd that to some extent reflected the SE London demographic and the fact that Palace have so many black players, and was really surprised how white the crowd was. My mate says that the Croydon, Brixton etc black kids have been drawn to Arsenal in particular going back to the time of Ian Wright, Rocastle, Thomas, Davis, Campbell. He reckons that the club wasn’t seen as racist as such but just as an extension of the white working class SE London community. You really think they might have done more to address it, if only for commercial reasons.
