By Andy Foltz
NKyTribune Reporter
Everyone doesn’t know your name, but they sure know your club.
From August through May, weekend mornings and early afternoons at Molly Malone’s in Covington are filled with coffee, pints, jokes, shouts of triumph and despair, but most of all soccer and camaraderie.
For sports fans to get together to watch games is nothing new, that is as old as sport itself. For sports fans supporting many different teams, including bitter rivals, to gather in the same place and watch games together, well, that’s quite a bit more unusual – especially when that sport is known for ironclad partisanship and has made headlines for its more unsavory adherents from time to time.
Steve Gibbs, a native of Southampton, England, is one of the few who come to Molly’s week-in, week-out who can say, “My team chose me.” He was born into it, much the way people from this area are born into being Kentucky Wildcat fans or Cincinnati Reds fans.
His love of football (soccer) started in 1966, watching his nation host and win the World Cup. As deep as his roots with the sport are, the experience he gets in the states is not one that could be easily replicated in England.
“In England you’d be hard pressed to find rival fans sitting ‘peacefully’ with one another – it would VERY rarely happen to be honest,” he said. “But at Molly’s it’s great to sit amongst other teams supporters and swap stories and jokes and bitter gags about recent – or historic – results.”
Indeed, Steve and his wife Luann have been coming to Molly’s long enough and loyally enough they have seats reserved for them at the bar. A TV is dedicated to Southampton every week, giving the Gibbs’ (and fellow Southampton supporter Jeff Mannix) a chance to do something they couldn’t necessarily even do in England: Watch their team every single week.
“For an aging cynical football fan like me – who grew up with the sport – it occasionally feels weird. ‘What am I doing sitting with these bloody Chelsea supporters?’ But more often than not it’s pure joy to both laugh at and commiserate with fellow fans of the beautiful game,” Gibbs said.
The mixed company is seen as a strength by many who frequent Molly’s and support not just one team, but the soccer community in general.
“It’s a fellowship,” said Bert Hehman, of Cold Spring. “The atmosphere is just phenomenal. Everyone gets along and for the most part, it’s good natured ribbing.” Hehman, an avid Chelsea and Bayern Munich supporter, grew to love the game while an exchange student in Germany in 1996.
Perhaps the biggest fixture at the matches is Jack Tapp, of Covington. Tapp, a Louisville native, is a diehard Manchester United supporter, and one of the first and last faces newcomers will see on game days – no matter what colors they wear.
“In Manchester, there’s a bar called the Red Devil,” said Tapp, whose club is nicknamed the Red Devils. “On the front door it says, ‘Man U supporters only.’ It’s a neighborhood thing there.”
“I love it here. I love everyone that works here, and it’s a real football bar. I want real people to watch real football on game days,” he said. “I try to touch everyone after each match and say, ‘Good match.’ I want people to come back with no hassle or static. I love football and want everyone to be happy and watch football.”
Indeed, after Chelsea clinched this season’s English Premier League title with three games to go in the season, Tapp went the gathered Chelsea supporters offering congratulations, and punctuated each interaction with, “You deserve it.” No deflategate nonsense, no bitterness or sour grapes, an honest appreciation of good football – and good sportsmanship.
Even the jokes are in good fun. A West Ham United supporter, a member of the Cincinnati Hammers, placed one of his group’s stickers on the Chelsea flag earlier this season. As Chelsea kept winning on their way to their 5th top flight title, their supporters rallied around the sticker as a sort of good luck charm. When the sticker went away, Chelsea fans encouraged its reappearance, and in short order, a new sticker appeared.
Liverpool supporters were asked repeatedly about the “sick swan” on their crest yesterday, actually a rooster, following their season-ending 6-1 loss. (Sick-swan, six-one. Football humor.)
“The old fashioned football banter amuses me like nothing else can,” said Gibbs. “I maintain that football humor is the best humor going. The jokes, the little sing songs, the barbed remarks and the laughter keeps me coming back week after week after week.”
Molly’s hosted capacity crowds this summer for the World Cup, particularly during matches in which the USA played. Being a gathering place for soccer fans is nothing new. Owner Paul Schanley (an Arsenal supporter) expects this summer to draw good crowds for the Women’s World Cup, which begins June 6. The USA squad, one of the tournament favorites, begins play on June 8.
“During the World Cup four years ago, we were busy, and we were about the only bar around showing it,” Schanley said. “This year, a bunch of other bars showed it, but the crowds were still unbelievable.”
“We’ve always showed games here,” since he took over the bar eight years ago. “I’d come in back then and watch games with a cup of coffee and two or three other people.”
Now, at least two or three people come to watch as many as nine different Premier League teams on the weekends. With the bigger clubs, like Man U, Arsenal, Liverpool, and Chelsea, those numbers can be closer to two or three dozen – per team.
Dennis Wainscott, who coached soccer at Holy Cross from 1992-2012, and now assists at Cooper, has been coming to Molly’s for games since the 2003-04 season, when Arsenal’s Invincibles went undefeated in claiming that year’s Premier League championship.
“At first, it wasn’t every week, but the last five years it has been,” he said. “It’s because, A) I love the Arsenal, and B) I love the camaraderie. I love when I bring people down here that aren’t soccer fans and they go, ‘Oh my God! This place is packed at 10 a.m.’ I tell them, that’s how we roll.”
“You can talk soccer with everyone, you can’t do that at a lot of bars,” he added.
Aside from Gibbs, who was raised around a team, the Americans who frequent soccer have picked favorite teams for a variety of reasons. For Hehman, Bayern was the first team he saw live, while in Germany, and he loved the style of keeper Oliver Kahn. He was introduced to Chelsea by a friend in London, and has claimed loyalty to both squads ever since.
Tapp saw his first match at the age of 12, on a KET program about England. The team was Manchester United, and he’s stuck with it since. For Wainscott, he liked Dennis Bergkamp, who played for Netherlands and Arsenal, and has been hooked ever since.
For Schanley, a native of County Leitrim, Ireland, his team was handed down to him by family, but not in the usual way.
“My dad was a Manchester United fan, and my uncle bought me an Arsenal shirt when I was 3, and I’m still suffering,” he said.
(Note: This reporter is a Chelsea fan, because he always wanted to be Didier Drogba when he grew up, admiring the combination of power and grace with which a young Drogba played, and admiring even more the charitable and diplomatic work the older Drogba has done for his native Cote D’Ivoire.)
The undercurrent of camaraderie, especially in sport, is respect. While those huddled around the TVs from fall through spring at Molly’s may not always like their fellow supporter’s team or favorite player, the bottom line is the respect remains, and ties them together.
Oh, and that funny West Ham joke with the sticker? Following the season’s end this past Sunday, victory drinks for the “Chelsea boys” were provided by … a Cincinnati Hammer, named Scott Witte.
Because, it’s all in good fun.
