PICKING YOUR TEAM
Who do you support?
AS FOOTBALL fans, we all follow a club for all sorts of reasons. I support Coventry City as I was born in the city and my father took me to watch the Sky Blues as a youngster, and I’ve only ever supported the one club.
Yet I know lads I went to school with who were born in Coventry but were fans of other teams. One was a Chelsea fan, another Arsenal, and, of course, a few chose Manchester United.
I remember one boy who loved Crystal Palace, and he explained to me that his dad was a big Eagles supporter and so he had no real choice.
The team you support can often be a parental decision. I guess if the club your dad is a fan of has won trophies and plays in the top division, it’s a bonus.
But what if the club play NonLeague football, or have always propped up the bottom division of the Football League?
If that’s the case, you have to give mega-respect to a youngster who sticks with that club into adulthood instead of switching to a Premier team like so many do it seems.
I have always been of the opinion that you should have just one team, and you stick with that club through thick and thin.
You can ‘like’ other sides but you must never support them, to me that is a football sin!
When I was a boy I collected football books, and it must have been the colour of their shirts that drew me to them - I really liked Wolves and Blackpool.
Wolves in their gold top, and Blackpool in orange. And I used to look out for both of their results, which, looking back now, seems a bit odd. If I hadn’t been such a big fan of Cov City then, maybe, I could have ended up going to Molineux or Bloomfield Road?
But sometimes it can be a player who makes someone follow a team. I recall when I was a teenager having a
girlfriend who showed not the slightest interest in coming to matches with me, until I mentioned that we were playing Manchester United in a week’s time. She said, ‘okay, I’ll come with you then.’ I was taken aback at her sudden interest in football, but was pleased she could see my team in action against the mighty United.
Did she become a football fan after watching this big game? Not at all, as she only came along as a certain George Best was playing, and every time he was on the ball, she and other girls in the crowd started cheering wildly. She admitted that she had a massive crush on him and only came to see him close up! She never came to any more matches and, as teenagers often do, we went our separate ways.
Another strange quirk I had growing up was a fascination for foreign football clubs and some of their strange-sounding names.
Eintracht Frankfurt was a favourite. I didn’t even kwnow what country they were from, but there they were in my football annual. Any pictures of them were cut out and put in my ‘foreign teams’ section in a scrapbook.
Alongside pictures of Borussia Monchengladbach, PSV Eindhoven and many more colourful-sounding teams, I often thought in my young mind ‘what would it be like being a fan of one of these clubs?’.
But, to me, they played thousands of miles away at the other end of the earth, so I’d stick with my home-town club.
I was doing some research a few years ago for an article I was going to write. It was on the nicknames of Scottish football clubs.
One stood out above all the rest, and that was Cowdenbeath’s nickname - The Blue Brazil. Apparently, it’s a combination of the colour of their home jerseys and a heavy dose of irony.
Now I also look out to see how they’re doing and all because I like the sound of their nickname.
So if I had been born in Scotland, it wouldn’t have been Celtic or Rangers who got my support. I may have stood on the terraces shouting at the top of my voice, ‘Come on Blue Brazil, stick it in the net.’
To sum up, there are many reasons why we support a certain team, but, remember, a club is for life no matter what division they play in.
Play Up The Sky Blues!