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This is my friend Carl Prosser. #Millwall followers will know him as one half of the duo who founded @TheLionRoars1 with Paul Casella. Today is the 16th anniversary of his death at the shockingly young age of 37. I'm going to talk about what a great man he is 1
Carl was a schoolmate of my cousin , 14 years my senior, at Catford Boys. That's how I came by him, one of those people you meet through family and football. We bonded when I was a young kid because the love of the game I was developing was fully burning inside him 2
Never once did Carl think that this 7/8 year old kid was an irritant, didn't belong in his orbit or anything that you might expect someone in their early 20s to think about a kid. He treated me as an equal, always, bonded by football 3
It's quite funny looking back. I used to spend hours reading copies of my Rothmans Football Yearbooks (still my idea of fun...) before seeing Carl, to find obscure things to talk about. He ALWAYS had an instant recall of anything I cared to raise. His knowledge was unreal 4
Which is the first way in which he affected my life so profoundly. Ever agreed with anything I say about football? Ever enjoyed anything I've written about it? This is 100% the man you need to thank for that, as the way I think about the game was shaped... 5
...by years of conversations with Carl about it. At both Dens, as we sold TLR, on trains to long away trips, down the pub when I was old enough to join in with that. I know that there are many others who will say similar. It was what he lived for 6
I've got loads of stories about what cracking company Carl was. Happy to share them with anyone who knew him. However, I'll just share a couple of more personal ones which tells you just what a fantastic friend he was to me, particularly as I became an adult 7
January 99. I was away at university, and had seen him at Wycombe away. The day after, he called me on the brick of a mobile that was de rigeur back then and asked if I was ok. He said that he knew something wasn't right with me and that he wanted to check 8
He was spot on. We then proceeded to just talk about football for 2 hours, which was EXACTLY what I needed to do, and he instinctively knew it. I dread to think how much that phone call cost him, but that wasn't the sort of thing he'd ever worry about 9
The second snippet is almost a year before he died. My birthday is around the start of every season (except the coming one!) and we were out after we beat Wigan 2-0 on the first day of 04/05. The numbers started to gradually thin out into the night 10
Carl turns to me and says "It's your birthday, isn't it?" Couple of days off but, yeah, nearest Saturday to it. He was RAGING. I've never seen him so angry as when he started to rant about how out of order it was that people were vanishing on my birthday. He was proper annoyed 11
And, as good as his word that "even if it's just me and you, we're staying out all night." Which ended up with him buying me a curry on an internally hot night and stumbling drunk and sweaty into Up The Creek. That was Carl, an absolutely steadfast friend 12
That was Carl. The bloke who I ran on the pitch at Walsall with after we got to Wembley. The bloke who I spent hours talking to on trips to places like Grimsby and Barnsley. The bloke I sat next to at the cup final, the last Millwall game of his lifetime 13
I think about Carl a lot, probably more than I did in the first years after he died. Were he still alive, he'd have had to shield during Covid because of his asthma. I know what he'd have thought of that. I know what he'd have thought about the shit show that is football today 14
And I feel the void that his passing has left in mine and others lives more and more with each passing year. Time hasn't really healed anything in this instance. Carl is perfect example of somebody who was irreplaceable. I haven't tried. There's no point. 15
So, on this horrible anniversary, I send my love and thoughts to Howard and Lindsay, wherever they are, to PW who went through such trauma on the day of Carl's death and to everybody else who was lucky enough to call this great man their friend. There are a lot of you. 16
If this has struck a nerve, or if you remember Carl and would like to honour him, a donation to Asthma UK would be a fitting way to do that END https://www.asthma.org.uk/
Another memory. We were in that crap pub opposite Euston station after getting back from seeing us win at Wigan (they keep popping up!) On the first day of 98-99. Carl takes a swig of his pint and says "Saturday night's always alright if you've won." Indeed mate.
