I got in a bit of a piss last night on social networks when some people wondered how I could possibly lose the ’emotional connection’ with my football team, Bristol Rovers, and somehow gain an ’emotional connection’ with another team, Liverpool, when I had neither familial nor geographical links with Liverpool. Looking back, it was not worth getting in a bit of a piss about it because, I should have pointed out, it’s no one’s business which team I support, like or whatever you want to call it. But I am going to explain to my loyal reader what has really happened. Again.
I certainly had an emotional connection with Bristol Rovers for reasons which probably don’t make sense. I was brought up in Brislington, in the south east of Bristol, deep in the heart of City country. I even watched City play long before I watched Rovers. In fact, I watched Feyenoord of Rotterdam before I saw either Bristol club. Yet somehow, I immatured into a Gashead. I don’t have a clue why. It just happened.
My dad watched the Rovers back in the 1950s and 1960s but never once told me about it until I took him to the Memorial Stadium! So there was no real geographical link and certainly no familial link. Until I started to fall in footballing love with Bristol Rovers. Now I have fallen out of love with them. I’m pretty sure why. I made the hideous mistake of getting involved in trying to make the club better.
In 2006, I had achieved an ambition. I shared a column in the local newspaper, the then Bristol Evening Post, writing about the Rovers to go alongside my programme column. A boardroom earthquake shook the club, people walked away, my friends and I were removed from the programme and, more suspiciously, we were removed from the Post, too. Years later, I found how how why were removed from the Post, by whom and why. It came as no surprise to me but I had no power, money nor influence at the club or at the Post. I was never going to win any battle to save my unpaid job, certainly not a legal battle. I’ll be honest with you: I was devastated. I never really thought that in middle age I would suddenly become what I’d always wanted to become, which was a professional writer, but in an instant the dream was taken away, I knew, forever. I was certainly angry and bitter, but most of all I was sad.
I knew that I could never reveal who did the dirty deeds until all parties were dead because I am not a man of means with access to lawyers. And I would never need to because I realised at an early stage no one else would give a toss. Why would they? In the grand scheme it was of zero importance to anyone except me. However, it affected forever how I would feel about my club.
As the years went by, I continued to lose interest. At the same time, my children were growing up and there were other things to do in life. I spent far more time with my family and friends. When my father died in 2011, I had become the oldest surviving person in the family. As we know, no one gets out of here alive, there’s so much to do with less and less time to do it.
When a friend of mine was banned from attending Bristol Rovers on the grounds of petty vindictiveness and spite by a bunglingly incompetent autocratic owner, I launched a one-man boycott until the ban was lifted. I didn’t go to a single game for three years, not even the Wembley play off final. It was a personal decision, I asked no one else to join me, criticised no one for not joining me. When new owners came along, my friend’s ban was lifted and I started to go again. But it wasn’t the same.
I didn’t know many of the players, many of my friends no longer went to matches and although many true and genuine fans still did, the emotional attachment – that phrase again, coined from another old friend who fell out of love with Rovers many years before – had gone. I started to watch the game almost as a neutral in terms of refereeing decisions. If the opposition deserved a penalty I would say so. Watching a game without blinkers was a weird experience. A supporter is not really a supporter without blinkers.
My attention wandered. I would never love another club like I loved the Rovers but my second football club was always Liverpool. And here’s the rub. I have never pretended to have an emotional attachment to Liverpool. I don’t particularly want to attend their games – or anyone else’s for that matter – and I am in no way a supporter. I just like them, just the same way I like Barcelona. These are not replacement teams: they’ve always been there for me, except I don’t live and breathe ever second of what happens at Anfield or Camp Nou. That’s why I said that Liverpool are my team now in the most general sense. I’m not there on the Kop, I’m not usually there at all. I just like them.
When people I have known have fallen out of love with, say, the Rovers and, in some instances, gone on to support other clubs – and I mean genuinely support other clubs from middle age onwards, I wondered how that could. But now I do understand. And anyway, it’s none of my business.
It was not just one thing or one person that caused me to lose my faith in the Rovers. Lots of things happened, some relatively unimportant to me, some important to me, all unimportant to nearly everyone else.
Now, I put the whole thing in the box marked ‘shit happens’. I probably wish I still sacrificed every other Saturday fretting about my team because, for most of the time, it was a good place to be.
I don’t like the current ownership model at Bristol Rovers and don’t necessarily approve with the modus operandi of the owners and suits who put their plans into being. That’s no reason for not supporting the team, though. I did that for long enough in the Eastville years and for a long time at the Memorial Stadium. It’s me that’s changed, that’s all.
If you don’t understand how I have lost the emotional attachment, well, just don’t worry about it. If you think I have somehow gained some kind of emotional attachment with Liverpool, you have made it up yourself. I’ve also loved Wigan Warriors, as they are known today, since I was a young child in the 1960s, at a time when they were in rugby league’s second division. Think what you like, I don’t give a shit. I don’t have to justify anything to anyone, even though I have done just that.
