Soccer: Football culture comes to the Kingz

By TIM WATKIN

On a chill spring evening a small boy, maybe 7 years old and wearing a Chicago Bulls cap, turns from the soccer and peers into the maelstrom in the stand behind him. He asks his mate, "What are they shouting for?"

Children in most corners of the world would know the answer, but this is Auckland and the football culture ringing around Ericsson Stadium this night is as alien here as, well, the blow-up alien being tossed around the crowd.

The boy, along with most of the spectators at the Football Kingz' first home game of the season, is staring at Bay 12 and the passion of 60-odd fans. There, fairies mingle with the aliens and men in feather boas. There, the song is near-ceaseless.

"Stand up if you love the Kingz, stand up if you love the Kingz ... " The song is hurled into a night sky that is black with a few scattered stars, matching the players' strip.

And, to the tune of Auld Lang Syne: "Come on you Kingz, come on you Kingz ... "

These fanatics - known as Bloc 5 after their regular seats at North Harbour Stadium where the Kingz were based last season - are magnetic. They have earned the crown as New Zealand's best fans.

Consider the pre-match preparations of Richard McIlroy, choirmaster and the man at the hub of this stadium community: "Get T-shirts printed, there's banners and the big shirt, there's songsheet folding, letters to drop off. Get hold of musicians so we've got a snare drum, a trumpet, that sort of thing. I always joke about the fact that when I was at varsity here for six years, I used to have these weekends when I didn't get out of my pyjamas - I swear, I had so much time on my hands ... But since the Kingz have arrived there's always something to do."

You see, it matters, this football. It really matters. McIlroy and I had barely said hello when he was off, tongue tripping over all things football.

"Only two more sleeps to the Kingz' first home game. It's like Christmas to me. I've just seen the new Kingz merchandise that's for sale. Cor, I know what I'll be getting for Christmas. I could spend all my money on it."

This 24-year-old lawyer gets ever more excited.

"Once you've been to a Kingz game you realise what the point of life is. I swear, I swear, we've given people a reason to live. Seriously though, there's nothing better going in Auckland."

The "other" crowd, seated and stoic, hears their emotion and is bewildered but entranced. They feed off Bloc 5's excitement while keeping their own inhibitions. There's one man, though, five rows down and smartly dressed, who dares the odd song.

"He'll be up here in a week or two," McIlroy predicts. That's how most Bloc 5 members arrive. They wander up, shake hands, and start singing, led by the choirmaster. "I can't sing for toffee," McIlroy admits, "but if you put a bit of an accent on it ... "

The songs aren't polite, but they're never less than good-natured. "Eyeore, eyeore ... " comes belting out when an opposing player errs.

While McIlroy leads another song I look in his bag: black and white flags, Bloc 5 T-shirts, balloons, streamers, a Kingz club membership badge and Strepsils.

Bloc 5 - without the "k," to give it an institutionalised, eastern European feel - was born early in the Kingz' first season when McIlroy, his brother Mike and friend Mickey Timmins first raised their voices.

"Those games over Christmas [1999] there were just three of us trying to get people to sing along. Then people started joining, started finding out about us."

Fans like Grant Stantiall and a troupe from Hamilton.

"We got season passes and were upstairs in the players' lounge and after about three games we started hearing this little noise from block five. So we thought we'd better go and investigate. We went down and I never went upstairs again," says Stantiall.

"What the Kingz did," McIlroy explains, "is they brought together a whole heap of people who still support Napier City, Central or North Shore and gave them all a focal point."

David Cross, from Hamilton, says Kingz fans have a unique spirit because they put in more effort than others. Why?

"Not sure. My wife would love to know, though, because she'd like me to cut it down."

But Cross and Bloc 5 keep coming, ever loyal, win or lose. Their team spirit is so strong that Cross, an Ipswich fan, can even bear to sing alongside Stantiall, a Norwich supporter.

"The Kingz are a unifying force," says Cross. "New Zealand football's more important than English football."

Quite a confession, considering most of these fans consummated their relationship with football at English grounds.

"When you arrive at the ground and squeeze through these narrow inlets to get in the gate, go over the top and into the stadium, it's just like being in a different world," says McIlroy. "That's something we've tried to recreate in Auckland."

It's a world that draws heavily on the British tradition, but there are already signs - in the props, interaction and humour - of a uniquely Kiwi style. To the Kubota ad jingle, they sing: "Harry's here, Harry's there, Harry's every bloody where. He's Harry Ngata the king of the Kingz."

The proud players say they're the loudest supporters in the league. "You certainly know they're behind you 100 per cent, even when we don't play that well," says Ngata, the Kingz captain.

"They're unbelievable," says midfielder Chris Jackson. "They make us feel like we're really on to something big. It's a good feeling in here," he says, patting his chest.

Because of football's history or its worldwide popularity, because our rugby crowds are too reserved or too aggressive, whatever, these lads have brought a new dimension to New Zealand sport. They adhere to the football folklore that you win when you're singing.

"It's important that the Kingz win, really important," says McIlroy. "But what's more important is that we've got a professional team and we've got Kiwi boys playing in that team and it's just a celebration of the game itself. Everyone's up for a good time."