Tommy Mooney: Crowds really can influence a game

Champions League / Tommy Mooney / 04 December 2008 / Leave a Comment

After a trip to the division's top club leaves his team-mates a little wide-eyed, our man in Marbella discusses the impact that fans can have on a game. And yes, it seems that all that stuff about the 12th man is actually true...

Out here, we mostly play to crowds between a thousand or so and five or six thousand but at Cadiz this weekend, it was more like 14-15,000.

It was a real eye-opener for some of our lads, because only three of them have ever played top-flight Primera Division football in Spain. As a player back in England, you'd have been ridiculed by the other boys for taking photos of an opponent's ground when you arrived for a league game. You might have got away with it for an FA Cup match as part of a minnow visiting Old Trafford, something like that, but we were there for a league game.

But that's what was happening at Cadiz for a lot of our younger lads. They'd never experienced walking out on a pitch in a stadium holding upwards of 20,000. You could see the excitement on their faces and, in truth, it probably played a part in rising to the occasion. Cadiz are top, having been relegated last year, yet we led them 2-0 early on and ended up with a very creditable 3-3 draw (and yes, I'm still waiting for that elusive first goal!).

Crowds can influence a game. You often hear players talk about the fans after a match, and how they made a difference. I expect most people take that with a pinch of salt but, funnily enough, it can be a massive factor.

That's not all it's about, of course. There are plenty of other factors; things as simple as the way the pitch feels underfoot, how wide the pitch is and how near the supporters are to the playing surface. They're all factors you've got adjust to quickly when you're away from home. That's why home advantage is always seen as so crucial to success.

That was the argument for the old Wembley, the fact the atmosphere was inhibited because the crowd were so far back from the players. If it's done nothing else, the new Wembley has shown that you can generate passion and noise among the home support in a giant-sized bowl.

It's a lot about experience, handling the conditions and being used to adapting as much as anything. We've got a handful of 30-somethings (myself included of course!) but over half our squad - and you're only allowed to register 22 players before the season starts - are under the age of 21.

They do get round that issue by registering youth-team and younger lads as 'B' team players, because they can be drafted into the first-team squad if required. The finances and stipulations within them seem a lot more structured, certainly in the lower divisions, and there's no way that can hurt the infrastructure for clubs of our size who don't create a great deal of revenue.

All the clubs in our division are considered professional, in that playing football is the person's job, but they're not all full-time as such. Some don't have the luxury of training facilities available to them every day.

I think that's great for a club like Marbella that will always have to rely on its youth policy to produce the majority of its playing staff. Not only that but Dani, the club captain who's into his 30s now, has been at Marbella all his career so there's continuity too.
In fact, it wouldn't matter where he'd played his football, because in Spanish football I've noticed a culture of respecting your elders, that isn't always evident in England.
In the dressing-room, if one of the younger boys is talking and one of the older lads chips in, the youngster shuts up straight away. You get a real sense of respect and the experienced lads are held in high regard - which, rightly, brings its own onuses on the likes of myself and the others to set that example at all times.

For this week's selection - and I'm on a recovery mission after Wycombe going down at Eastwood Town last week - I'm looking at tonight's Blue Square Premier game on Setanta between Mansfield Town and one of my old clubs, Oxford United.

Oxford seem to be hopeless away from home and my former Watford team-mate Jason Lee is leading the line for Mansfield. So I'll go for a home win, back Mansfield at [2.28] and Jason Lee for First Goalscorer if you can get at least [4.5], something like that.