Source: Daily_Mail
Carlton Cole: 'I might be as strong as a gorilla but I'm not a monkey'
'I know I'm not a monkey. I might be as strong as a gorilla but I'm not a monkey. That's life, isn't it?'
Those were the words of West Ham and England striker Carlton Cole after he admitted he suffered racist abuse in his home ground, Upton Park, on Tuesday night.
'Yeah, I heard it,' he said, 'but it's football, you know. I don't care. You've just got to carry on and get on with it and we got the result - that was the main point.'
Carlton Cole
Turning the other cheek: West Ham's Carlton Cole shows his resolve as the going gets tough at Upton Park
Millwall may have been dumped out of the Carling Cup, losing 3-1 after extra time, but football was the loser on a night of shame.
Cole described being targeted by fans - with West Ham supporters also allegedly taunting Millwall substitute Jason Price with monkey chants - as 'part and parcel of football'.
'It's about mental toughness. You just have to carry on with your game and usually you come out good,' he said.
Against this shocking backdrop, it is no wonder people near Upton Park yesterday were struggling to come to terms with what happened inside and out their famous football stadium on Tuesday.
But they weren't talking about Cole's ordeal, or how on earth 20-year-old Jack Collison took to the pitch two days after losing his father in a motorcycle accident, or if Calum Davenport will ever play again after being stabbed on Saturday morning.
Carlton Cole
Mobbed: Cole with invading West Ham fans
They didn't even mention the three pitch invasions by Hammers fans that caused Millwall players to temporarily leave the pitch, fearing for their safety.
They were talking about the violence that spilled out on to their streets.
Words like 'animals' and 'scum' were two-a-penny yesterday. It was a throwback to the days of skinheads and hooligans, when football was a dirty word.
People were angry and shocked; keen to talk about it, but quick to tidy it away, coming out with bin bags early yesterday morning to pick up the bricks, beer bottles and cans.
Minister for Sport Gerry Sutcliffe described the scenes as 'a disgrace to football'.
He said: 'We have made great progress in tackling hooliganism and we will not tolerate any return to the dark days of the Seventies and Eighties when it plagued the game.We will never be complacent in the fight against violence.'
West Ham were inundated yesterday with fans coming forward with information to help catch the culprits. Thomas Patrick, 51, was in Queen's Market, just next to the Tube station, when thugs started running through at 5.30pm.
'I've worked here since 1985,' he said. 'We used to have a lot of trouble, but I've never seen anything as bad as last night.'
Ron Bolwell, 71, runs The Queens pub next door. The police asked him to stop serving at 6.30pm, so Mr Bolwell locked the doors at 7pm and viewed the carnage from the rooftop.
'It was mayhem,' he said. 'You could see it was all West Ham fans because a lot just came here looking for a ruck. They were like animals. You couldn't see the road - just people, baying for the police and throwing bottles and bricks at them. It would have been murder if West Ham had lost.'
West Ham fans
Nightmare: West Ham fans poured on to the Upton Park pitch
Germaine Newton, a district nurse, described it as the 'most frightening evening' of her life after she was called to give a patient insulin on Green Street at 8pm.
'Police were running from one place to the other, people (were) fighting and crowds not giving way to cars. (It) was hell for me on the streets of Newham,' she said.
The Boleyn pub, on the corner of Green Street and Barking Road, boarded up their windows in expectation of what was to come.
This hasn't been done for four years - since the last West Ham versus Millwall game in April 2005.
VIDEO: The shocking scenes at Upton Park on Tuesday...
Two hundred riot police and 20 officers on horseback formed a cordon at the top of Green Street, but signs directing away fans towards the bottom tier of the Sir Trevor Brooking Stand took the thugs through a narrow alleyway into Priory Road.
It is barren, like a scene from a street-fighting video game and it was here that a 43-year-old man was stabbed just before 8pm.
Clashes continued there during the match as people without the faintest interest in football battered each other. There were scuffles in the alleyway behind the Bobby Moore Stand, bins were set alight and a man was taken to hospital with head injuries.
Initially there were 500 police men and women in and around the ground, but another 250 officers were drafted in when the violence became a 'large-scale disorder'.
The fighting continued until after 11pm and the police arrested 13 people. Hopefully, many more will be caught and given life bans after CCTV footage has been reviewed.
The culprits are those who travelled to Upton Park intent on causing trouble. The ones intent on guerrilla warfare, if you will.
