We a re you r frie nd s

There aren’t many football stadium tours that have a men’s toilet as their centerpiece. This toilet is famous in Germany, we’re told, because of the sheer volume and variety of the football stickers that cover it. It might be the only museum of fan culture in the world that you can take in while having a piss.

Our guide is Jan Stöver, a fan and fanzine writer for Altona 93 in Hamburg. We’re here on an unofficial trip as Dulwich Hamlet fans, on an end-of-season piss-up and pilgrimage.

Supporters of the two clubs formed a friendship (“freundschaft”) after Dulwich fan Mishi Morath visited Altona in 2010. When he got talking to Jan, they remarked on how the two clubs were formed in the same year: 1893. They also later discovered that Dulwich had played Altona on a tour to Germany in 1925, in a match that featured the clubs’ most mythologised players: Dulwich’s Edgar Kail and Altona’s Adolf Jäger.

Since then, fans from each club have regularly visited the other. The clubs’ men’s first teams have also met in recent friendlies, in south London in 2015 and Hamburg in 2018. They’ll play again in a few months, when an Altona team visits Dulwich on 8th July. Sadly, Mishi died in 2019, but the ongoing and genuine affection between both sets of fans is a remarkable legacy.

We’re watching Altona play at the Adolf-Jäger-Kampfbahn, an impressive if crumbling lower-league stadium named after the club’s famous former playmaker. The teams emerge from a tunnel in an unloved all-seater stand, while the majority of Altona’s fans watch from a grassy uncovered terrace on the other side of the pitch.

A small cluster of fans watch on a grass bank behind one goal, while children play football at the other end. It’s a charmingly idiosyncratic ground that would give an EFL safety inspector kittens.

Altona are up against SV Curslack-Neuengamme and have something to play for: they can sneak into the play-offs if they manage to win as long as their rivals, Eimsbütteler TV (or ETV), lose against local giants Hamburger SV’s third team.

Altona race into the lead in the 16th minute, when striker Jerry Wachter scores a volley from a corner. Altona are solid while already relegated Curslack are wretched, accepting an onslaught of goals with a meekness familiar to anyone who’s watched the alsorelegated Dulwich in 2023.

Dulwich’s last official visit to Altona was in 2018, to celebrate the clubs’ 125th anniversary. None of our party were at that game, but we all know about a famous photo taken just off the Große Elbstraße where a historic set of steps were lit up by pyrotechnics held by both groups of fans.

The story goes that the police showed up ready for trouble, thinking it was a provocative display from the left-wing ultras of second-tier club St Pauli. When the police realised it was Altona, they were content to merely move the fans along.

Wanting to mark our own visit in a similar fashion, we ask some Altona fans if we can recreate the moment. However, we’re told that all of Altona’s pyro was burnt a few weeks ago when their reserve team won promotion. Setting off pyrotechnics in this league results in a flat €500 fine, and it’s not worth paying for the little they have left.

Instead, we look for a solution that won’t get the club in trouble. Dulwich play in pink and blue and, thanks to the bizarre American fashion for gender reveal parties, confetti cannons in those colours are cheaply available online. We’ve ordered 28, and have had them delivered to the stadium. Our plan is to set them off at kick off, but no one seems to know where they’ve been stored, so we only get hold of them a few minutes into the first half. We quickly brainstorm a meaningful time in the match to release them.

“We should set them off at 18 minutes and 93 seconds to mark the year both clubs were founded,” we say, before realising that there are only 60 seconds in a minute. We then do some quick maths and decide 19 minutes and 33 seconds is essentially the same thing.

We run to tell Jan our idea so he can get the Altona fans on board. “That’s a wonderful idea”, he deadpans, “but there’s only one problem. Do you remember what happened in Germany in 1933?” We pause. “We’ll set them off at the start of the second half,” we say. After half-time, the players come out, and Jan gives a countdown in German, before switching to English when he sees the panicked faces in front of him. The confetti is launched into the air and the result is both silly and more impressive than it has any right to be.

The game continues. Jan points to one of the opposition’s centre-backs and tells me he used to play for Altona. “You know that English song, ‘There were 10 German bombers in the air?’” he asks. “We used to sing that about him: ‘There’s only one Hendrik Bombek in the air’”.

The crowd knows that ETV are winning comfortably and any tension evaporates from the game. At full-time Altona have won 6-0, but they have not made the play-offs. An Altona player climbs the perimeter fence and leads the crowd in a call-and-response chant. A fan lets off a red smoke bomb that looks pink against the still-blue sky. A Dulwich scarf is put around his neck, and he’s told to keep it as a gift. We move over to the clubhouse and skank clumsily to German rock songs we’ve never heard before.

I talk to Altona fans and ask them what brings them to the club. Each seems to also be a fan of St Pauli or HSV, Hamburg’s much bigger professional teams, but comes to Altona because they enjoy being part of a club that feels like an integral part of its local community. They say the same things Dulwich fans say, but I start to realise there’s a difference between them and us. They look relaxed and happy. There’s none of the manic desperation you can see behind the eyes of a drunk Dulwich fan. The upper divisions of German football aren’t perfect, but the moonlighting St Pauli and HSV fans mostly enjoy the experience of supporting their clubs.

Dulwich get over 3,000 people at Champion Hill every other Saturday, an enormous crowd for the club’s level. The cliché is that most of those people come for a drink and a chat, and have no interest in watching the game. Like the old joke about all Manchester United fans being from London, it’s based on a nugget of truth that distracts from something more interesting.

Most people who watch Dulwich every week started out watching league clubs. We’re Newcastle fans, Hull fans, Norwich fans, Southampton fans, Rotherham fans and Plymouth fans, and we’re fucking sick of it. Sick of the oil money, sick of being told to sit down, sick of being milked for cash, and sick of having our bottle caps taken away. I realise Altona fans come because they like it. We come because it’s the only way we feel sane.

The night gets later and we feel drunker. We start to drift away, unable to keep up after a day that started at 5am in London. But in the clubhouse the Altona fans continue, drinking and dancing throughout the night, enjoying each other’s company and the football club they share.