Be More British: Support a Rubbish Team

This was originally written for a blog for international students, but I fear it will be too long, so am putting it here to make myself feel better:

It’s a well-known fact that we Brits are obsessed with football (which is interesting, given that, when it comes to our performances in recent international tournaments, we actually don’t seem to be very good at it.) I have travelled extensively and on more than one occasion, on saying I come from England, I have been met with smiles and enthusiastic cries of “Manchester United!” Many people across the world have adopted a UK team as their own – in my experience usually Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool or Chelsea.
If you really want to blend in with the locals, then, you may find yourself embracing a team you can then vaguely follow – perhaps one of the above, probably London-based if you’re studying here. But if you really want to assimilate then may I suggest a bolder move: support a rubbish team.

Every year at our International Orientation I extol the virtues of my beloved Bradford City to my (bemused) students. I start by explaining that we – a club still riding high on the back of our FA cup victory in 1911 – are in League 2, and they smile politely, nodding enthusiastically and thinking: League 2. Hmm. Presumably that’s the second division, so you’re not far off the top; that sounds pretty good. I then explain that we have a Premiership, then a Championship, then League One, then League Two. I watch them count, then realise that this means my team is in fact in Division Four, and so probably not that good after all. I then tell them that we are skulking in the bottom half of that table, and as such are at risk of dropping out of the league altogether, at which point their expressions can only be described as pity.

For many Brits, Saturday afternoon means only one thing: football. Across the country, men and women of all ages pack out football grounds, and most of them do not support Manchester United or Arsenal. You may think you’ve felt elation after yet another 3-0 win, but you won’t have experienced the euphoria that comes with a last-minute extra-time goal resulting in three points after an extended run of dismal losses. You may think that you will dazzle with your knowledge of John Terry’s misdemeanours and Chelsea’s seemingly constant search for a new manager, but you will win a place in more British hearts if you too have shared the pain of a long, dejected train journey home following two hours standing in the rain in, say, Rotherham, ending in a 1-0 defeat. Your friends may have been to Liverpool, noted for the Beatles and its vibrant history, or Manchester, with its museums, nightlife and impressive pop back catalogue, but support a team like mine and you could find yourself in such glamorous locations as Torquay, the home of Fawlty Towers, Burton, noted for being where Marmite is produced, or Crawley, famous for...um… being quite near Gatwick airport. You could wow your fellow classmates with tales of your trips to Swindon and Southend, Accrington and Aldershot. Instead of clubs who regale themselves with tough nicknames like the Lions (Millwall) or the Tigers (Hull City), designed presumably to intimidate their opponents, you’ll be playing teams that are perfectly happy to be known as the Shrimps (Morecambe) or the Cobblers (Northampton), only effective against those with a phobia of small marine life or shoemakers. My own team are the Bantams: a bantam is a small chicken.

Much as I would love to inspire you to join me and become ardent Bradford City supporters, this is probably a little impractical, not to say expensive, if you’re London-based (I speak from experience.) Fortuitously, though, there are several London clubs floundering in the same division as us who would be thrilled by your support. To start you off and help you decide which one might be for you, here are a few facts:

Barnet: based in North London and known somewhat unimaginatively as the Bees, their mascot is called Mr Bumble, who appears at home games as a man in a giant and slightly creepy bee costume. Their current ground (though not for much longer…) is called Underhill, and is on a slope – when my team was losing at the end of the first half a few years ago I heard someone wryly say “it’ll sort out in the second half: we’ll be playing downhill.”

Dagenham and Redbridge: The result of a relatively recent merger between two local teams, my best friend rather unencouragingly says of the “Daggers”, his team: “this is proper football: people get hurt.” Dagenham unexpectedly went up to the first division last year after winning a play-off against Rotherham, and promptly came down again at the end of the season after losing most of their games. They are now near the bottom of League Two, which means they are below us, despite beating us in their last game.

AFC Wimbledon: You may have heard of Wimbledon, but possibly not this Wimbledon. For reasons best known to those involved in the decision, but a mystery to everyone else, the club relocated to Milton Keynes in 2002, a town almost 60 miles away in a completely different county. Unsurprisingly, their fans were not thrilled about this, what with being largely based in Wimbledon and not Buckinghamshire. So they founded a new club and pinched the name (the club that had moved became the MK Dons) and, 10 years on, they are back in the football league. And, um, currently doing better than we are...

So, I hope that has inspired you to seek out a more authentic – and far cheaper (usually £15-£25 on the gate) – football experience. Be warned, though, football supporters can take it all very seriously: when one of our fans asked on a chat forum for advice as to whether he should attend a match on Valentine’s Day or take his wife out instead, another simply replied: “Mate: you can always change your wife, but you can’t change your team.”

Oo Areeee Yer?

Who ARE we?

Seriously?

You don't know?

We're Bradford City! The Mighty Bantams! Stuart McCall's Bradford Army!

Ring any bells?

No?

That's probably because we're now languishing somewhere towards the lower end of League 2. For the Americans (and the less sportily inclined - Oi Frank, you there?!) who read this blog, I should point out that "League 2" is what the FA et al kindly call what should rightly be termed "Division 4", to make the likes of us feel better. In British football, we have the Premiership, where Manchester United, Liverpool and all those other teams with fanbases far beyond those fair cities bask in glory and vastly inflated wages; then we have the Championship, where embittered sides jostle with one another for the much-covetted prize of promotion, that they may too sleep with each others' wives and sip champagne in far-flung jacuzzis; then we have League One, which, confusingly, used to be the name of the Premiership, before it was downgraded to the Championship, before it became the new name for the Third Division (are you with me so far?) League One is full of plucky underdogs, championed by news presenters and TV chefs (Delia's precious Norwich are here... but not for long, if the current table is anything to go by!) and those clubs who are down on their luck (Leeds United. Oh, how the mighty have fallen!) League One is actually where the interesting football happens - often nail-biting games, a whiff of violence mingled with fried onions hanging in their air, cold, seatless terraces open to the elements...

...

And then there's us. Are you still here? Here we are, in League 2, previously Divsion 4... well, you get the picture. I'd like to say League 2 was also full of plucky underdogs. But that would be lying. League 2 is, for the most part, a little bit sad, both in terms of the level of football played and in terms of the attitude of some of the players - a sort of listlessness tinged, on occasions, with simmering resentment. League 2 has much of the menace of League 1 (as my mate says "this is proper football - people get hurt") - without, unfortunately, any of the skill.

Take my experience at one of my beleagured team's matches as an example. Aldershot, that bastion of unity in a faceless, squaddie town, are currently languishing in League 2, though, it must be said, doing so with somewhat more finesse and rather higher up the table than the Mighty Bantams. I went to Aldershot last year and felt they were trying to replicate a sort of small-scale Millwall experience for their visitors. There were police everywhere, and a minute or so before the game their fans (and the terraces were packed) started banging on the stands and chanting "Aldershot Call The Shots". This carried on. For the entire game. That's over two hours, assuming they didn't stop at half time - and I'm not convinced they did. The hardcore amongst them carried on doggedly throughout. An element of polyphony was achieved only when our goalie was approaching the ball after a failed attempt on their part to actually score anything - which happened quite a lot. On such occasions a small, adventurous group strayed from the main chant long enough to shout "You're Shit! Uh!" at us.

So there's the menance. But what about the incompetence? Well, I'm a Welfare Adviser. I'm a Welfare Adviser whose sport of choice is cricket. I play the violin, sing, and write plays. Whenever I watch the Bantams I find myself frantically shouting "Get in a space! Where are you?" And that, my friends, says it all.

I shouldn't be so mean. The average age of our team looks to be about 16, after all, so I presume they have to fit in their training around their maths homework. But still, it doesn't bode well, and perhaps it explains why, despite our colourful, exhuberant and (some might say deludedly) loyal fan base, we are still doing so horrifically badly.

It's true, and it's sad, because, fan-wise, we're still attracting some of the biggest crowds in lower-league football to both home and away fixtures. We even managed to take a 200-odd crowd to Torquay a few weeks back, and who in their rights mind would travel from Bradford to Torquay in the middle of winter (or, indeed, at any time?) This is a team that went on an open-top bus tour through the wonderful city of Bradford, attracting massive crows, and even released a DVD called "We Are Stayin' Up!" when they narrowly missed relegation from the Premiership, beating Liverpool (I kid you not!) in 2000. I still remember the "Bye Bye Wombles" posters - which (oh ye of little faith) I thought a tad optimistic as the time, but we did of course wave bye bye to Wimbledon that day, and look what happened to them! Oh how the Not Always Totally Crap have fallen.

And this week we waved bye bye to Stuart McCall, a previously fine midfielder who's led us, admittedly with an impressive lack of success, since 2007. And now we are floundering more than ever, if that's possible. Not waving, not even drowning. We sunk long ago.

I'll tell you what sums up the current state we're in, and that's two defeats by...wait for it... Barnet. I kid you not. That's Barnet, the team that plays on a sloped pitch that would shame most schools; a team whose fans - the smattering that turn up - act as though they've accidentally taken a wrong turning on the way to the theatre, but don't want to be rude and slip out during the interval. Barnet fans are more like cricket fans are in 1920s short stories - they clap politely at every shockingly-aimed kick - balls can sail off metres above the goal, and the true Barnet fan's response will be "Oh, bad luck!" To my great amusement, while this was all going on, the Bradford fans, who'd come down en masse for the occasion (there were more of us than them, crammed onto stone terraces) were keeping themselves amused by hurling abuse at a giant bee - Barnet's mascot, Mr Bumble - to the tune of Guide Me Oh Thy Great Redeemer, cleverly amended to "What the fucking, what the fucking, what the fucking hell is that?"

A good point well made, I feel. But we still lost 2-1. Shame? That doesn't even begin to describe it.

We sighed with relief at today's tedious 0-0 draw against Grimsby, and trudged back to prepare for next week's battle... and dangerous mixing of the counties... against Accrington Stanley.

Who are they? I hear you cry.

Exactly.