Well done West Ham. Thanks to a smart bit of action by one of their executives, when they play their London derby against Tottenham on Saturday evening, the London Stadium will be free of one of the most irritating sights of modern football: half-and-half scarves.
The club cite “increased security measures” around what is always a tense encounter as the reason. The fear is that anyone sporting Tottenham colours in the home sections of the ground – albeit only on half their scarf – creates a potential for provocation. So fans attempting to gain access having bought a half-and-half scarf will have it taken from them, and not returned.
For some of us, that is about time. The half-and-half scarf is as ludicrous an item of memorabilia as has ever been thought up, one which undermines the emotional heart of the game: its tribal instinct. When you go to watch a football match you are there to support one side or the other. And if you are not, well neutrality is not something that needs to be advertised.
Match-day scarves are sold before the English Premier League football match between West Ham United and Chelsea at the London Stadium
Half-and-half scarves are often criticised by supporters, who claim those wearing them are tourists rather than loyal fans - AFP via Getty Images/Henry Nicholls
The odd thing about these ineffably naff objects is that, however much they might rile dinosaur traditionalists like me, clearly someone likes them. “Get your match-day scarves” is a familiar cry of the traders outside stadiums (official club shops, incidentally, long ago realised that stocking such items would be entirely counter-productive). And people buy them, believing them to be an essential part of the event, apparently oblivious to the traditions of rivalry being traduced by their very existence.
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They are sold as “a souvenir of the game”, an insistence that every time you show up to watch you need one to prove you were there. It is, in short, a wholly manufactured convention that suits nobody more than those who flog the things.
Liverpool and Everton half-and-half scarf
Even the biggest rivalries in the English game are not spared the half-and-half scarf treatment - PA/Peter Byrne
For sure, it would be an unwise street trader who set up a stall selling half-and-half scarves outside Old Firm encounters, or indeed when Portsmouth play Southampton this weekend. But I have seen them being offered ahead of north London and Merseyside derbies. And it is more than likely there will be some available in the streets around the Etihad when Manchester City take on their neighbours on Sunday.
Not that West Ham’s banning order will prevent them being sold. The fact that any bought will be removed by security staff a few yards down the road, will not put off the jolly swagmen. From the moment fans leave the Westfield shopping centre and head across the bridge to the London Stadium, they can expect to be regaled with the offer to buy one.
But at least West Ham are doing their best to ensure the things do not besmirch the stadium itself, encouraging those who wish to make a match-day purchase to buy an official West Ham-only scarf from one of their outlets instead.