I believe that supporting your local football team is hugely important, and have nothing but respect for those people who week in week out traipse to the shack they call a grandstand and watch a non-glamorous club. These, in truth, are the country’s true football fans, the ones who don’t expect trophies, just to enjoy the game in its purest form. Because I hold this belief people often think that I am from Leicester because I support the mighty Foxes. I am not.
In the early 70’s I grew up in the shipbuilding town of Barrow In Furness. Recently exited from the league, I did loyally traipse to the aforementioned shack, in this case Holker Street, and watch the great Colin Cowperthwaite and co lose week in week out, but even then a child needed to support a league club as well. So I turned to my football card collection.
All the kids at my school followed a red team, Man U or Liverpool (nothing changes), as they were the closest cities with First Division sides (the blue options had little appeal to the glory hunter even then). Everton got a boost a few years on when a kid from the next street and a couple of years above me became their (and England) right back, but it was always really the reds.
So in the spirit of being different, I had a blue Subbuteo team. The decision on who to support therefore fell to the blue options – as I recall Everton, Ipswich, Birmingham City and the Foxes. I agonised over what would be a life changing decision for hours, but kept returning to one football card. The flowing hair, the cad like moustache, the cheeky grin – lets face it, I support Leicester City because of Frank Worthington, arguably the greatest player to pull on the blue shirt and definitely the greatest character the game has ever seen. I wanted to be Wortho and have the ladies falling at my feet.
Once the decision was made, I moved heaven and earth to watch the man as much as possible, and pestered my parents to take me whenever the Foxes made a trip north. And that decision dictated my life from then on. I went to Loughborough University because I failed to get in to Leicester, and the first season ticket was purchased soon after.
Now living in Kent and having young kids it is hard to get to many Leicester games, but in a strange twist of fate I will be taking my daughter to her first football match in November. My local team is Ebbsfleet now, and who should they find themselves in the same division as this season? That’s right, Barrow. She will see the blue of the Furness peninsula side first, just as I did, though hopefully she will want to continue the trips to Northfleet rather than to the north.
The future of the game lies in people who follow their local sides. When the cash bubble bursts and the giants operating on their borrowed billions collapse, its these clubs and people who will keep the game alive. I don’t care who the kids end up supporting, but will do all I can to ensure it’s a local side – Charlton perhaps, or Ebbsfleet if their rise continues. Just as long as I never see them joining the glory hunting masses in the shirt of one of the Big 4, that really would break my heart….
