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The team you support: so what gives you the right?
Like the look of Chelsea? Gasp in admiration at Man United’s trophy cupboard? Fine, then let’s become a supporter. We can always find out where the place is later.Colin Randall , conscious of his own origins as far due south of Wearside as is possible without falling into the sea, takes a whimsical look at the hoops we should expect to go through before being regarded as genuine supporters of our chosen clubs …
Photograph of the Roker Park queues for1973 Cup Final tickets reproduced by kind permission of the Sunderland Echo
What are the tests a supporter should pass to qualify as a real fan of the team he or she follows, as opposed to a bandwagon jumper?
I have my own set of rules.
You are entitled to support Sunderland or Melchester Rovers or whoever IF one of the following applies:
1 You were born or brought up in Sunderland, Melchester or whatever, or their surrounding areas
2 They were the team your dad took you to see for your first professional league game
3 Your family’s roots are in the relevant area even though you were born and/or raised far away, even abroad
4 You formed a close bond through playing or otherwise working for the club, or in the town or city where it plays
You do NOT qualify IF:
1 You decided to support the club because it seemed to be very successful or had just won something important2 You liked the club’s name
3 All the lads at school put club names in a hat and you had to promise to support the one you pulled out
That’s all dogmatic enough and I’m aware of another rule: the one about glasshouses and stone-throwing.
I believe I match up to my own demands on proper football support on rules 1-3 of eligibility. I was born far away from Sunderland – in Hove for heaven’s sake – but my family, which had many roots in the North East, Sunderland included, moved to Shildon, County Durham when I was a few months old.
Sunderland was always known as the County Durham team, whatever fiddling was later done with local authority boundaries to create Tyne and Wear. Quite simply, if you grew up in what I do not remember being called, in those days, The Land of the Prince Bishops, you supported SAFC and Durham County Cricket Club. Allowances were made if your bit of Durham was so close to Newcastle or Middlesbrough to make one of them the more obvious choice.
You could be much stricter than this, and some people are. They argue that the right to support a club is determined by one thing and one thing alone: place of birth.
But if you applied the letter of that law, it would exclude all sorts of people with long-established family traditions of support or strong links developed in one way or another with the club in question. In Sunderland’s case, it would disenfranchise thousands upon thousands of people who have, like me, always regarded the whole of County Durham as a legitimate catchment area. If only people born and bred in Sunderland were allowed to support the team, the attendances over the years would have been much lower.
Look at this girlhood memory of Kate Adie, from an interview for the Celebrity Supporters series that began life in the magazine of the SAFC Supporters’ Association London and SE branch.
“I remember thinking how curious it was as you got nearer the ground to see all these rather ancient buses full of supporters from Tow Law or Spenymoor or Crook. They seemed such far-off places. The small towns and pit villages were somehow seen as separate from Sunderland, and the one time that the divide was breached was at the match.”
I’ll go even further. Sir Tim Rice would expect to be disqualified under my ineligibility rule number two. He and his school pals were deciding who they should follow, and young Timothy liked the name of Sunderland. Yet no one could doubt that he has become an ardent and loyal fan.
Read the interview he gave me a few years ago and see if you agree:
http://salutsunderland.FootballUNITED.com/2007/03/rice-crisply-lyrical-about-the-lads/
Ineligibility rule one might also shunt Lance Hardy, author of the 1973 FA Cup final book, into the sidings of football support. At home in Nottinghamshire as a very young boy, he was placed in front of the television on May 5 of that year and told to shout for the Lads against Leeds. He has supported us passionately ever since.
So maybe my rules are not rules at all but guidelines. There has to be flexibility. What do others think?
You can learn more about the origins and depth of Lance’s allegiance to Sunderland AFC, and about his book, Stokoe, Sunderland and ‘73: The Story of the Greatest FA Cup Final Shock of All Time. when my interview with him is posted at Salut! Sunderland in the next few days.
Tags: Kate Adie, Lance Hardy, proper fans, SAFC, Sir Tim Rice, Sunderland
Interesting blog. I think the beginning of supporting always has something mystic. It’s not as plain as “I live at this place, therefore I never thought of supporting any other than…”
As Nick Hornby puts it: “I fell in love w/football as I would later fall in love w/women suddenly, uncritically, giving no thought to pain it would bring”. Though Hornby would have been “entitled” according to your para 2… – when falling in love nobody asks if he has the right to do so.
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Possibly a bit strict or lacking criteria! Not a bad set of rules but…
if you were born in Sunderland or whatever and you have NEVER gone to a football match, do you actually qualify? I really doubt it.. definately many ladies never had the chance to watch a match in the earlier days, which actually excludes them, so really only one’s heart can really tell.
I also think sir Rice can be considered an SAFC fan – no draw included, just name selection. There is nothing actually wrong with supporting a team because of an achievement. I sincerely believe it was totally different to todays “winners” followers to follow man utd ‘s busby babes or follow sunderland of the 1973 heroics, than waking up one morning and waring a chelsea strip because of Roman’s zillions. This is a basic reason i dislike chelski and real madrid. What is the actual comparisson of a 70′s man utd fan and one of today?
I live in Greece, and have lived here since i was 5 years old, i know 2 Ipswich fans and 2 Nottingham forrest fans, can they be condemned for supporting a teamthat actually “won something” by the time they have kept up with the team since and followed them to the third division and back. I mean people who proudly put on a forrest strip so many years later and go out for the day, when today’s youth know nothing about the 1979-80 achievements. It seems a bit unfair to me.
To put the record straight, i m’not saying all this to “protect” my own status. I was born in sunderland, my mothers side of the family is all sunderland born and raised and -greek football excluded- the first football i watched was a Sunderland under 19′s tournament in silksworth were we got battered by sporting lisbon or something in pouring rain and the second half 5-0 thrashing of oxford with a lovely Don Goodman hattrick during the 80′s.. i don’t even remember what division it was in but i was standing in the Roker end.
I wept my eyes out at old trafford losing to milwall and for god’s sake i was 25 years old. Whoever you ask in England or greece will tell you “he’s sunderland mad”.
But offcourse i ‘m not the subject, as I earlier mentioned.. only the heart can tell who you really support! Commercialising of modern day football has it’s own fashion victims, that’s a fact, but do not overexeed it by sending thousands of true fans down the drain with those victims.
PS: Congrats on your blog, i really enjoy it
PS2: Sorry if i write to big comments… can’t help it.
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By coincidence, Andy at the Blackcats list wrote this today:
My dad was from Fence Houses (or is it Fencehouses?) and we emigrated when I was 4. I had no choice about who I supported and can remember being groomed in all things SAFC from about the age of 6. We used to listen in to the results on BBC World Service at 6pm every Sunday and the result dictated his mood for the remainder of the evening and next few days if it was particularly bad. Then, like all of us, the blind optimism gradually returned and he’d start looking forward to the next match. My uncle in Seaburn used to send the Pink every week and dad would read it cover to cover even though its news was by then a fortnight old! Amazing to think that a crackly radio, the odd letter and the Pink were the only sources of information in those days.
You may recall a previous post of mine when I told of how we flew back to Heathrow in 68 and despite the jet lag, he insisted on taking me to my first match that afternoon. It was at Upton Park and we lost 8-0. He took me to Roker the following Tuesday when we beat Cov 3-0 and my faith was restored.
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NB: I am a cretinous web parasite
Thanks for posting, I very much enjoyed your newest post. I think you should post more often, you obviously have talent for blogging!
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