SKY BLUE HEAVEN
COVENTRY CITY FAN KEVIN HALLS SAYS FOOTBALL SUPPORTERS MUST STAY LOYAL...
Kevin Halls gets his reward
MY CLUB Coventry City have been promoted to the Championship and, in my somewhat biased opinion, are worthy champions of League One. Okay, I know the knockers will say we won it on Points Per Game, but the Sky Blues did it the hard way by playing home games at Birmingham’s St Andrew’s.
In addition, manager Mark Robins has developed a winning squad of players on a shoestring.
I have always been proud to say I’m a Coventry City supporter. It may sound like a cliche, but my blood is not red but sky blue.
Even though us fans have been through some dark times when we’ve been lower than a snake’s belly, at last the sun is shining down on us and I’m so glad I’ve stayed loyal to my beloved club.
On talkSPORT recently, the presenter Jim White said, to my amazement, that he doesn’t see anything wrong with someone changing their support to another club. I was so shocked that I spat my tea out from my Coventry City mug! Was I mishearing what he had just said?
But, no, he was genuine and came across sincere in his statement that there’s nothing amiss in ditching the club you follow, and putting on the colours of another club and cheering them on.
I don’t know what other football fans think of this, but, to me, it is an outrageous thing to even contemplate and, in my opinion, football sacrilege. Whoever switches allegiance to another club is worthy of being thrown into Room 101 and sent to Coventry, pardon the pun.
There are many reasons why we choose our club to support. It could be because the team is local to where we were born and raised, or as a child we were taken to watch a football side by a parent and just carried on the family tradition.
Or you just take a liking to a club because of a player or players in that team, or because they are successful and win trophies season after season.
I became a Coventry City fan from boy by my dad. Seeing the team was being transformed by Jimmy Hill and winning so many games back then, it was easy for me to become a City supporter.
And 50-plus years later, the passion I had as a young kid for the Sky Blues is still within me.
I know many football fans who live in my city don’t support my club. They follow other teams: Chelsea, Manchester United, Leeds United, West Ham, Everton, Liverpool, Celtic, Rangers and Tottenham.
As long as they stay with their chosen do it, and I wish they had picked my club instead, I’ve reached the mindset of ‘fair play to you’, as you have stuck with the club and remained loyal.
But going back to the talkSPORT presenter saying that you can change clubs almost overnight and carry on as if it’s nothing out of the ordinary, that’s one of the strangest statements relating to football I’ve ever heard.
I could imagine the reaction of my fellow Cov City mates if I turned round and said to them: “Sorry, lads, but I’ve decided to support Aston Villa from now on.”
I’d probably wake up in a hospital bed after being thrown from a motorway bridge – if I was lucky! And if any one of them visited me bringing grapes, I’d say ‘no hard feelings, I don’t know what came over me’.
Not that I’d even think for one second of supporting any club other my own one – I’m in a relationship that’s for life. No divorce or separation or having a break, I’m in it till death.
As I walk about the city centre and see blokes and the odd female wearing a football shirt other than the colours of Coventry City, I think to myself ‘have you supported that club for decades or are you wearing it because that team is a big Premier League side?’. I guess it’s not for me to judge.
But, in conclusion, whatever the reason you support a football club, please stay with them even when times are tough. Don’t ever pack it in and decide that you’ll ‘follow’ a club who seem to be more successful and win more than they lose. If you do, were you ever really a true and loyal supporter?
So, all being well and we don’t get another lockdown, I’ll be watching my club back in the Championship.
Win, lose or draw, I’ll always support Coventry City – they’re the only club for me.