Having to sit there and soak up the home supporters’ abuse can make you feel more partisan than if you were among your own

A consummate lack of organisation and the triumph of amnesia over experience have often left me on the morning of a Leeds away game with a ticket among the home supporters as my only method of going to the match. I know it’s not really the done thing and indeed one of my friends would rather bail out than have to sit on his hands all afternoon but when it came to last week’s FA Cup tie at White Hart Lane, squirreling myself among the Spurs fans still seemed a far more attractive prospect than not going at all and watching it on television.

It can be an unsettling experience for the uninitiated, particularly when the atmosphere was as robustly “old school” as last Saturday’s. The first hurdle is the walk to the ground, where the paranoia that you may get found out mingles with the even more unpalatable notion that the fans of your own side will mistake you for one of the opposition. Perhaps this is why some insist on having a secret sign about their person, the pin badge on the underside of the lapel that can be quickly flashed to save your skin if your assailant is particularly hawk-eyed, or a specific signal such as the Leeds salute.

It is inside the stadium, though, that the real mental torture begins. There is an etiquette involved and its first principle is to look as nondescript as possible. It still amazes me that certain naïve and wildly Utopian supporters will deck themselves in their club colours despite standing out like a zebra among a pride of lions. If they are shrewd or cunning enough to take a child with them as a shield to deter the milder elements from having a go at them they may well get away with it. But by and large, especially if your side does not lie down and lose and thus allow the opposition fans the opportunity to patronise the youngster and perhaps even ruffle their hair, it is not the wisest approach. Besides, kids can slow you down when you’ve got to make a run for it.

I would suggest that singing is a taboo, too. When a Forest fan of my acquaintance got Stretford End tickets for himself and his rather less worldly father at Old Trafford, his dad responded to a song alluding to Stuart Pearce’s penalty miss at Italia 90 during the warm-up by breaking into the “Psycho” chorus and wondered why he spent the next two hours getting pelted in the back of the head by scrunched-up fag packets and pie foils, while his son speculated loudly on whether he had in fact been adopted.

The best policy is to sit there in silence, staring resolutely ahead and trying to stifle the instinctive twitching and tensing of your body as the game progresses. Most poker players have “tells”, slight, involuntary changes to their demeanour that betray the state of their hands. Even when marooned in potentially hostile territory and perennially on guard to the dangers of the sort of subtle trap that did for Gordon Jackson in the Great Escape, football fans are the same and can give themselves away by the inopportune dropping of their shoulders or the clenching of their fists and the constant muttering under their breath.

So long as you act subdued and throttle the inclination to say something, you should generally be OK but the way you behave when there’s a goal for your side will always carry the threat of unmasking you as a fifth columnist. I find loudly berating the defence for some perceived lapse is a good outlet for the adrenaline but there is always someone hard or drunk enough or too daft to come in out of the rain, who cannot help himself and celebrates. If you are lucky enough to be at a ground in London this usually provokes some choice Guy Ritchie-style phrases involving “our manor”, “facking liberties”, “norvern scum”, followed by finger-pointing and entreaties to stewards and police to do something about it.

At White Hart Lane after Tottenham had retaken the lead, 30,000 fans sang “Wanker, what’s the score?” at the twerp on the Shelf who had leapt to his feet when Leeds first equalised. Part of me hopes there was a lone voice crying “2-2″ in the wilderness in the 95th minute when Jermaine Beckford converted the penalty but I suspect he was either unconscious, long gone or had belatedly made the equation between discretion and self-preservation.

Because you have to sit there and soak up the home supporters’ abuse towards your team it can make you feel even more partisan than if you were among your own. The right result makes it an invigorating experience and probably heightens the celebration by the time you reach sanctuary. It cannot replace being part of an identifiable group and being allowed safely to act the goat to your heart’s content but even with its constraints it is better to be there undercover than not at all.

Leeds UnitedTottenham HotspurFA CupRob Bagchiguardian.co.uk