Who are the real fans?

I support Sunderlandnil, and I always have done since my granddad and mother told me what it meant when I was still at infants’ school. At the moment they play in the Premier League, but in my lifetime the team that once held the record of consecutive top-flight seasons dropped as low as the third level. Hardly the same as trying to support the ‘Dale, for example, but nevertheless it is considered “supporting a real club” when your weekly dose of football is at best disappointing and occasionally rather distressing.

Does that make me a real supporter? I could claim to be, because I still support my home- town club and have easily resisted the lure of the silverware the big clubs win year after year. I understand the suffering and disappointment and the humiliation of breaking negative records.

Of course, season ticket holders have a claim as being the true ‘real supporters’, because whether they stayed in their home town or not they make the effort to go to every game, although inevitably, those who go to every game, home and away, will also claim to be the genuine article. Then those fans who do that and volunteer in the club shop will step up, and so on.

I work in Dublin, and in my workplace (which is predominantly female and non-football supporting) there are two Liverpool supporters, one Manchester United supporter, a Chelsea fan (admittedly from years back) and even a Spurs fan. However, I am the only English man in the company, and there is also one Scot. The Scot, from Glasgow, is an ardent Celtic fan (“I’m not prejudiced at all, I don’t care who beats Rangers”) and I support my home-town club too. What excuse do the Irish have? They debate the minutiae of the weekend’s matches as if it really had anything to do with them, as if they had any right at all to call themselves supporters of a club in a city that they may never even have visited. Sure, they go on about the number of Irish players who have gone to England – but many more Scottish players have done the same and you won’t find a Scot blindly following an English club solely on that basis.

We have all met supporters of the big four who come from small towns and claim their small town teams as their second club – but they are not real supporters. Real supporters will always support the team from their home town first (or their dad’s home town if they are exiles) through thick and thin and never run off to jump on any big team’s bandwagon. Real supporters are not moneyed people from the capital who run off to Old Trafford or Anfield every other Saturday while their local teams, clubs like Leyton Orient or Brentford suffer as a consequence of the exodus towards success and the desire for reflected glory

One of my colleagues is from Waterford. He is an avid GAA fan, but he also supports Waterford United. That is a real fan. Anyone who decides to support the team from further up the road – or a totally different country – simply because they have recently been more successful, anyone who chases the silverware bandwagon and gives away their money to foreign clubs while their own towns starve is just a plastic fan.