Field Notes: FC Den Bosch 1-0 TOP Oss
Fireworks, fine art and forever memories at the Noordoost-Brabantse derby
As an academic focussed on football culture, I am fortunate enough to frequently travel to games for my research. Whilst at matches, I use a classical academic method to gather data: ethnography. Ethnography is the observation of people in their own environment to understand their experiences, perspectives and everyday practices, and can give huge insights into specific communities and cultures. The crucial element that makes ethnography work is the taking of ‘field notes’ – a written record of observations taken during my time at the game.
For 3 years, I have been attending matches and recording observations in a fieldwork diary. Whilst some of the data makes it into my academic publications, most of it is sat dormant between the covers of my diary. That is about to change.
“Field Notes” is a new series in which I will use my ethnographic observations at stadiums around the UK and beyond as the basis for some long-read articles. This isn’t about giving a journalistic account of the matches I’m watching but using my notes as the basis to give some cultural observations about the unique supporter communities and football heritage I come across on my travels.
For my latest trip, me and a group of my closest friends take a trip to 's-Hertogenbosch to sample one of the Netherlands’ lesser known but fiercest football rivalries.
I hop off the number 158 bus, as the distant sound of drums and chanting ultras beckons me towards De Vliert – home stadium of FC Den Bosch. I’ve got a can of cheap local lager in my hand. I’m surrounded by my 7 best friends and we’re heading to watch the most boring football match I’ve ever seen to celebrate my upcoming nuptials. But this was never the plan.
My entire 4 day stag trip to Rotterdam had been planned around my long-held bucket list desire to go to De Kuip to watch Feyenoord. However, the announcement of a last minute kick off change left us scrambling to find an alternative. With little top flight football on offer within a 2 hour train ride, we descend on ‘s-Hertogenbosch (Den Bosch) – a medieval city more famed for its gothic cathedral and art history than football.
The plan? To watch some derby day magic in the Netherlands’ second tier: the Eerste Divisie. The protagonists? FC Den Bosch and TOP Oss. The occasion? The Noordoost-Brabantse Derby. The results? Mixed…
Hieronymus and Heritage
Though FC Den Bosch were the home team, the first thing that truly caught my eye on the evening was their remarkable away kit glistening in the merch stand. My background as a heritage researcher means my pulse quickens around any intersection between art history and football, and this kit hit the mark more than any other I’ve seen.
The shirt is a tribute to Hieronymus Bosch – one of the most celebrated Dutch artists of all time and Den Bosch’s favourite son. The design of the kit exquisitely recreates Bosch’s unique proto-surrealist styles with a series of faded sketches evoking characters from Bosch’s painting. The base of the shirt itself is even coloured to look like papyrus.
One could easily dismiss the kit as a cheap marketing ploy, but it’s one of the finest examples of a kit manufacturer understanding the deep links between place, football club and story I’ve ever seen. By invoking the work of Bosch, the kit not only looked beautiful, but implicitly placed the football club, its fans and its mythology as part of the broader story of the city. This was an expression of place identity through sportswear.
There have been few equivalent examples in England, but as football clubs increasingly look to appoint creative directors and heritage professionals as part of their supporter facing services, I suspect that mining the rich seam of place-based heritage could birth some of the most beautiful, meaningful, symbolic football kits we’ve seen in years.
A One-sided atmosphere
With the kit firmly secured, it was time to enter De Vliert – Den Bosch’s small but functional home stadium.
Given that the the Noordoost-Barbantse derby is played between two rivals in towns only 12 miles apart, the expectation was for an intense affair. This was heightened by the fact that both FC Den Bosch and TOP Oss’s historic lack of success on the national stage has enhanced the geographic concentration of their support.
The game was incredibly well attended, with most areas of the 7,000 capacity ground fairly full. Even more excitingly, the Den Bosch ultras were superb and provided a consistent atmosphere during the game. In particular, their spectacular pre-match tifo and pyro display was one of the most intense spectacles I’ve seen at any game in any country (see my video below):
The flip side? The braying, snorting atmosphere that one would expect from an intense local rivalry like this was undercut by the absence of away fans.
In my pre-game research, I became aware that Top Oss supporters would not be attending the game – partly due to previous clashes between the two sides’ ultras, and partly as a policing measure against the post-Covid re-emergence of hooligan culture across the Netherlands.
Away support – or more specifically the presence of both tribes in the tribal encounter – is what drives derby occasions forwards. Here, lack of exuberant away support combined with the truly dreadful quality of the game generating a bizarrely one-sided, flat atmosphere for long stretches.
To my memory, the dizzying highs of Den Bosch’s stoppage time winner are balanced by the sight of Den Bosch’s portly striker Danzell Gravenberch1 desperately limping after aimless long balls to relative silence.
Perhaps my disappointment in the lack of atmosphere is rooted in my over-expectations of a febrile encounter due to my tendency to romanticise derby occasions. Perhaps our (relative) neutrality to the outcome of the game limited our emotional involvement. What I do know is, without the interplay between home and away supporter to drive a metronomic, seething atmosphere, the only time this game truly felt like a derby was in the 10 minutes directly before and after kick off.
An observation from a non-football enjoyer
I don’t want to linger on the game itself. Despite the excitement of the late winner, it was truly awful. To any glutton for punishment reading, feel free to sample the highlights below:
In the afterglow of the post-match celebration scenes there was time to decompress with other members of the group. I was particularly interested to talk to the only friend on my stag do who was not a football supporter – keen to understand what he had taken from the game that a more experienced football supporter may take for granted.
Amidst the colour of the ultras, the drinking, the festivity, even the (lack of) action on the pitch, my friend picked up on something that I had long considered such a natural part of football spectatorship that it was barely worthy of comment: the huge amount of children being socialised in an environment in which they were encouraged to hurl abuse at other people.
Though my impulse as a terrace veteran was to scoff at these remarks, these observations have really stuck with me. The intergenerational aspect at play here has particularly played on my mind, particularly my friend describing watching parents or grandparents accept or even actively encourage expressive, explosive anger at referees or opposition in a way that was totally alien to him. In short, all this has made me sit back and think about what I’ve missed in my attempts to make a living arguing for the place of football as a positive social force in society.
In a roundabout way, my friend’s observations encapsulate the core theme running through our collective experience at the derby perfectly: tribality.
Derbies are inherently tribal experiences. They are heightened occasions which take the civic pride and mythmaking practices that inspired the brilliant Bosch away kits we purchased to its logical conclusion. They act as a conduit for creating and performing a sense of “us” against a specifically defined “them”. That means in order to function, derbies need two halves to make a whole. If either “us” or “them” are missing, the entire derby occasion can ring hollow. Our experience certainly suggests that the absence of away fans driven by the rise of hooliganism in the Netherlands poses a potent threat to the tribal expressionism of derby occasions.
But perhaps our experience in Den Bosch also pointed to a third way. The lull in atmosphere that occurred throughout the game only disappointed me because of my expectation - even lusty desire – to witness the unique tribality of the derby occasion. Though I’m a firm believer that one of football’s core purpose is to create a sense of citizenship, community, belonging and identity for supporters, perhaps my friends observation of the unique intergenerational practices of hostility a derby setting can produce has given me a pause for thought.
Seen in the cold light of day, what I saw in Den Bosch was a textbook derby occasion. There were tifos, (literal) fireworks and celebrations in the stand as a desperately low-quality, feisty football match took place. Perhaps all that was missing was my ability to perceive any sense of tribality going on around me.
All this to say – like many young men of my age my stag party has left me with the task of some soul searching – but unlike many, mine is centred on one question: if I have to sense a genuine hostility, anger and hatred in the air to enjoy a derby occasion - is there a problem with my mentality as a traditional football fan?
Danzell Gravenberch is the brother of Netherlands international and Liverpool superstar Ryan Gravenberch. His performance is the worst I’ve ever seen live.