On the Run at the Davis Cup Final

This article originally appeared on VICE Sports UK.

There's nothing like being stared down by a policeman holding a gun to make you feel guilty of a crime you didn't commit. As we drive across the border from France into Belgium, we run into a monolithic wall of near-static traffic that will slowly lead us off on to a slip road from the motorway. After 45 minutes we pass a congregation of police vans, outside of which are officers bearing the kind of heavy weaponry that will merrily rip a man's skin from his bones.

Of course, the Politie aren't interested in us: four soft hungover lads from the Home Counties, packing nothing more powerful than a startling array of moisturisers. It is only one week since the Paris attacks that had us all on our knees; suspect Salah Abdeslam is still on the run and potentially in Belgium. Thus, in its own way, Belgium is possibly the most highly alerted country in the Western world right now. It's for this reason we don't mind the waiting and the trundling, even though doing so is increasing the possibility that we will miss the start of the Davis Cup doubles match we have tickets for.

By now you probably know that Great Britain (read: Andy Murray with a few people to hold his towels) won the Davis Cup at the weekend. It was Britain's first victory since 1936 and, if you're a British tennis fan, it's a pretty big deal. If it wasn't such a big deal, frankly, there'd be more chance of Katie Hopkins not being a clanging, racist fuck-nugget than of me making the trip to Flanders.

As it is we just – and when I say 'just' I mean beads of warm-up sweat are starting to crystalise on the players' heads – make it into the Flanders Expo centre just outside Ghent before Saturday's doubles match begins. We are slowed down very slightly by security checks at the stadium, but they are nothing more than you'd expect when going into any major sporting event or gig. I speak to a couple of relaxed, smiling Politie, who say they've not had any trouble and that the English fans have been friendly. They are happy to be photographed and seem pleased when I say I'm with VICE, but ask me to cover their faces.

Within two minutes of sitting down (it is about 60/40 weighted to home support, and everyone was in together, with half the Belgians rocking those awful, jingling viking hats), we spot our first true British kook. With his blue-glittered, neck length beard, suit jacket, braces and union jack emblazoned glasses, flag and bowler hat, it would be easy to dismiss him as the definition of that most reluctant and derided UK 2015 subculture: the true hipster wazzock.

This appraisal is given further credence by his behaviour. When Great Britain win a point – any point – the least he does is leap from his seat, arms and flags waving, croak out a few "Come on Jamie" shouts, and point faux-furiously at old people in the stands, who clutch their other half's hand a little tighter.

If the point is a game-winner, he scales the flights of stairs down to courtside, whooping, shaking hands, shouting in ears as he glides, before turning round, arms wide to drink in the applause of the crowd. My personal favourite is when Belgium produce a great shot, and he turns round to congratulate and grimly shake every hand of the frankly bemused Belgian fans round him, wearing a countenance somewhere between "That was brilliant, TBF" and "This match is going to destroy my organs." We just presume he's on drugs.

And then Belgium break in the third game of the second set to go 2-1 up. He slumps into his chair, face in his palms looking for all the world that he's just received an invite to his mother's funeral. And so he fucks off somewhere for the next two sets. He comes back for the fourth and final set, and is a different man. He applauds politely, occasionally waves his flag, but the joy, the frenzied élan, has gone. We miss the old him.

After Britain win, I find him outside. His name's Cormac and he's a funny, intense man of 28. He says things like "aggressively British" and "sometimes patriotism can take you over." When I suggest that he's on drugs, he says, "No. I'm a schoolteacher." (I deign not to tell him that most of the schoolteachers I know are wreckheads.) He says he "took it hard" in that second set. We make some vague plan to meet up in a bar later, before he gets on his 1.30am bus back to the UK, but by then the beers are taking hold and we could be saying anything. I like Cormac, even if he is wearing glitter in his beard.

From Cormac I run into Mary by the champagne stall. Mary is the head of the British Association of Tennis Supporters (brilliantly: BATS for short). She went to her first Davis Cup games in (I think) 1969. In that time Great Britain have been to a final once, in 1978, where they lost to America. Despite this, despite the fact that we're a Murray singles win the next day away from a maiden victory in a competition she's been following for not far shy of 50 years, she's cool as a Wimbledon cucumber. Maybe it's all the champagne: she swiftly dispatches the one I get her for helping us score tickets. She is unfailingly lovely and when she tells me she's a Spurs fan like me, I gather her a little too over-indulgently in an embrace. While she's there two ladies called Mandy and Jan come to pick up some tickets from Mary. They are waving their flags about, wearing toothy smiles and make me feel strangely good about my place in the world.

We spend the rest of the weekend bumping into fans, inside the stadium and in the bars, but it is those we met this first night that have left their mark. At some point in that weekend I will also stop a fight, get lost in the red light district, dance topless, start a fire and have the great fortune to spend some time lying next to a beautiful woman (not a prostitute, FYI). But that's another story altogether. The story of the Davis Cup is not really in the tennis: it's in the people that follow it. That give up their lives to chase a dream made possible by a man from Dunblane who, in time, will be thought of as one of our greatest sportsmen. And for these people, no amount of unrest or security could stop them getting there. Amen.

@Gobshout