Supporting a club isn’t a contract.. fans of the elite should take note

A TOTAL of 153 Crewe Alexandra supporters made the arduous journey to Colchester on Tuesday and watched their team get cuffed six-nothing.

And, as the old line goes, they were apparently lucky to get nil.

In a now-familiar gesture of goodwill, the Crewe manager Dave Artell immediately insisted his squad should reimburse the travelling fans’ expenses.

Honest, gesture.

But missing the point as emphatically as his team missed the target.

Bunking off work, schlepping through roadworks, eating awful football-ground food, arriving home with the milkman after seeing your team battered?

It is what having a football club is all about.

It is what having a football club that you love through thin and thin is all about. Imagine if Crewe, who well-meaning, a great had to apply for re-election to the Football League seven times in the distant past, reimbursed punters every time they were rubbish?

They would have a debt the size of the Etihad’s fortune.

Hauling your way to far-flung places only to see your team perform like muppets is what being a supporter is all about.

Fans of Crewe generally have little to tell their grandchildren, but 153 can regale them with the story of when they trekked to Essex on a dank night and watched their team get walloped (above).

When they knew the name of every fellow fan.

For every Manchester City follower who revels in the pomp of their current majesty, there is one who fondly reminisces about the time, only 20 years ago, when they stood on the terraces of Bootham Crescent and watched their team defeated by York City in the third tier. Supporting a football club is not a contract with terms and conditions.

You should not expect to get weighed in when your team stinks or pay more when they excel.

Crewe won their opening fixture 6-0. Should fans have stumped up extra? Not a single one of the Crewe fans who travelled south would even dream of suggesting they should be financially compensated.

Yet, among the casual, big club-following, commercially enslaved masses, there is a nauseating sense of entitlement. Not in a financial sense.

And certainly not among those who make sacrifices to travel the country’s length and breadth to follow their team.

There is no away following more committed, more wonderfully and unconditionally supportive than Manchester United’s.

True fans. Great fans. Yet the radio phone-ins are flooded with United

Like the other half, your team is for better or for worse

“followers” disowning their team. If I’ve heard one claim they would rather watch City or Liverpool, I’ve heard a hundred.

Sure, more attractive football is played elsewhere right now – as every media outlet frequently and rightly points out – but it is your team.

Sure, Jose Mourinho is making United life seem like a misery at the moment – but it is your team.

Or is supposed to be your team. Like the other half, your team is for better or for worse – and, if United’s worse is a hiccup at Brighton, consider yourselves fortunate.

You could be a Crewe fan, one of whom tweeted: “If Crewe Alex FC think I’m making the trip to Carlisle on Saturday after the 400-mile round trip to Colchester on a Tuesday night to watch us lose 6-0 and embarrass ourselves … then they’d be dead right! Come on the boys!”

That’s the spirit.

And some entitled-feeling fans of the elite should take note.