Columbus Supporters Respond

Here is a response from Allen Skaggs, A Crew sup­porter to my post the other day:

Your accu­sa­tions against the Crew sup­port­ers is so far from the truth that I dare you to find out for real what’s going on in the Nordecke.

I would love to speak with you about the Toronto FC sit­u­a­tion.  I am the guy who orga­nized the bus trip for 50 of the fans (first time accom­plished).  I have first-hand account of what hap­pened and if you ques­tion my objec­tiv­ity, even the Toronto Sun reported a fairly objec­tive and mostly truth­ful account­ing of the events.

And, I can put you in touch with the par­ents of the chil­dren in my group.  I can put you in touch with the older gen­tle­men on my bus.  You can speak with the young cou­ples on the bus.  But, to take the time to actu­ally research some­thing before you make accu­sa­tions would have taken time and got in the way of the truth.

As for the West Ham inci­dent — THEY came into the Nordecke and THEY started prob­lems.  Any­one has a right to pro­tect them­selves and those around them.

The racial slur was by a sin­gle per­son, not the entire sup­port­ers group.  To gen­er­al­ize a group as racist because of one idiot’s state­ments is sim­ply ignorant.

The throw­ing of stream­ers has stopped in Colum­bus per the MLS rule.  But, for some rea­son it has NOT stopped in Toronto.  Is this pos­si­bly because they are the “golden” team — mean­ing they put more fans in the sta­dium on a reg­u­lar basis than other teams?

You accuse the Crew fans of throw­ing bot­tles and coins onto the pitch…?  To what are you refer­ring?  Are you just mak­ing this crap up now?

Mark McCullers and Sigi Schmidt not only tol­er­ate the sup­port­ers but they embrace us and even sub­si­dized some of the costs to the Toronto game to make sure WE were there when the Crew won the Tril­lium Cup.  We cel­e­brated for hours with them later in the hotel.