Supporting a team is a commitment something like
marriage, only a bit more serious.
Recently I saw a list of supposed differences
between men and women and one of them was:
Women marry men hoping that they'll changed and
are disappointed because they don't.
Men marry women hoping that they won't change
and are disappointed because they do.
Following these supposed words of wisdom us
youngsters (too young to remember the 60s is my criteria for that one) are like women
married to Burnley and we are all hoping they'll change. We knew what they were when we
met them but that doesn't stop us being disappointed that they're still crap. We can't
just accept them and love them for what they are, we need them to evolve.
Of course they've hinted that one day things
will be better and everyone wants to see them change from the sofa hogging slob that we
know them to be, into the sleek well groomed athlete they've always promised they'd
become.
For those that knew the glory days it must have
been hard to endure the last twenty years. It's admirable that so many of those loyal
'wives' of Burnley have stuck the course and never given up on them, however bad things
have been.
When I think of it though, it's not such a good
analogy. Everything is flowing one way. We worry, fret, pray, maybe even cry for them and
all they ever do for us is to allow us to share in their victories and enjoy their moments
of success. Maybe, in fact, it's more like being the parent of an ungrateful child.
There must be some reason why we don't give up
hoping that Burnley will become a great side and all start supporting Manchester United.
But then maybe that's because in truth, we don't really care so deeply about the football,
it's the people. This is the soap that we watch every Saturday.
It's the reason that so many of us have met each
other and I think for many has been how they've met good friends.
For some, it's an excuse for travelling to other
towns to visit new pubs, drink new beers and meet new people. For others it is a community
that they feel they belong to, familiar faces that they see each week, somewhere they feel
they belong. For me it's also been an excuse to invite myself to visit old friends in
places like Colchester and Plymouth, or to go home to Burnley.
Whatever it is, the emotional tie of supporting
a football is a strange thing and I'm not sure whether I should thank my brother or curse
him for taking me to Turf Moor to watch a match against Rotherham in the November rain.
I remember standing on the Longside with the
score 1-0 to Rotherham and my brother said 'Look at that Idiot on the Beehole End in just
a tee shirt'. As I looked at the rain soaked crowd on the open terrace, I missed John
Deary's equaliser and the whole crowd around me lifted from the ground as they celebrated
the goal. The thing I remember most was suddenly seeing the floor; all around me I could
see the concrete terrace steps where less than a second earlier people had stood. Then I
became aware of that moment of joy that everybody was sharing, a mass euphoria on a scale
that I'd never experienced anywhere else. I'd never been in a crowd of thousands of people
who were all, just for a moment, delirious with happiness and it felt great, I wanted to
feel it again and I knew I was hooked.
There are so few things in life that give you an
excuse to jump up and down in delight, few occasions when you'll be forgiven for hugging a
complete stranger out of sheer euphoria.
I think the intensity of the happiness is
proportionate to the amount that you care, so for many of us it's unthinkable that anyone
could care so much about more than one club, but then maybe it's easy for people whose
emotions don't run so deep.
Oops, I appear to have got carried away.
Time to go home and pack my bag for Millwall.
Andy Braid
October 1999
