Although it might seem that my interest in English football now starts and ends at the Seagrave Haulage Combined Counties League nothing could be further from the truth.
Even before I started supporting Wimbledon (RIP) I was more interested in following the divisions below than the Premiership (or 1st Division as it was known then). At one point, before I succumbed to the bandwagon mentality of following a top division team, I considered myself a Cambridge United fan. Why? Absolutely no idea. I still look out for their results now.
In the dark days between the the murder of Wimbledon Football Club and the formation of AFC Wimbledon I submitted to the most scientific method of choosing a new team known to man. The random draw from a hat. The principle has always been the same (although I think we've only ever done it twice) - you put the names of all the teams across the divisions that you'd accept supporting then you draw out four (just to draw out the tension a bit) and then the fifth is the team you're betrothed to for the rest of time. My selection, done in the bar of the Box Hill Indoor Sports Center during the half-time break of one of the World Cup games last year threw together luminaries across all four divisions (and a couple of conference teams too). It could have been anyone from Everton to Stoke City or Rushden and Diamonds. In the end it turned out to be Crystal Palace, who were coincidentally the closest thing Wimbledon ever had to a blood rival. I checked out a few of their websites in the next few days, fulling intending to live the prophecy of the hat but my heart just wasn't in it. Of course my support for Palace was conditional on the Milton Keynes move being rejected or a new Wimbledon club formed, so when AFC Wimbledon came to being it saved me from a lifetime as a Palace fan.
The hat currently has a 50% strike rate. I might have been unable to get into the team I selected, even if AFC had never been born, but my friend Amul has parlayed his seemingly random selection of Southampton into an support so hardcore that I feel almost duty-bound to name him as the Saints biggest fan in this country.*
I'm interested in the fates of teams that 99% of the people who profess to be 'soccer' fans in this country have never heard of. Usually I read the Division 3 and Conference results before even considering a glance at the fates of your Arsenal or Liverpool. Here's a new spectator sport for you. Go out into the streets and bail the first person wearing a Manchester United (spit) shirt up with a map of Europe and ask them to positively identify where Manchester is. You'll laugh as they point to London! You'll cry as they quizzically look towards Scotland! You'll hang yourself when they finally choose Belgium!
What little interest I do have in the Premier League usually rotates around wishing for 'big' clubs to somehow conspire to get themselves relegated. You have no idea how much I wanted to see Leeds go down this year. They did their best by hiring the totally useless shonky businessman Terry Venables but sadly decided to give him the arse when they got a little too close to the drop zone for comfort. Think about how many Leeds replica shirts ($12 from the Victoria Market) would have gone into long-term storage if they'd been relegated? Imagine tens of thousands of people suddenly wondering who they should support instead? I'm sure there would be some people who'd stay loyal no matter how far the team sank, but they'd be an overwhelming minority.
Take Manchester City for example. I wouldn't go so far as saying they were "all the rage" in the early 90's but they did have a fair share of support. Where, then, did all the shirts and support go as they plummeted out of the Premiership on the last day of the 1995/96 season? Of course, the comically story about that day is that City took their foot off the pedal with ten minutes left in their game against Liverpool thinking results were favourable to send either Coventry or Southampton down instead. It was only when Niall Quinn, who had been subbed off, ran back out of the sheds waving a walkman and bringing the news that they were in the bottom three did they realise that they needed a goal to stay up. Shambolic.
But I digress. City's support base in this country slowly ebbed away as they struggled to a mid-table finish in the First Division the next year. When a roundly unsuccesful 98/99 season saw them relegated to the Second Division (3rd Division in the old language) you would have been lucky to get Les Murray to mention them, let alone a fickle Melbournian. That year they pulled off one of the great miracles of all-time to pull back a 2 goal deficit in injury time and beat Gillingham on penalties. The next year they were promoted back to the top flight - suddenly they were a club of choice for the masses again. They were relegated again in their first year back, City-mania had to take a break for another year. Happily enough they did the job and won their way back into the Premiership for this season - 2000/2001 edition replica shirts back on.
I've got nothing against Manchester City. In fact as blood rivals of United I've almost got an affinity for them. It's just a good example of what happens when a supposedly 'big' club is relegated. Where were the City shirts when they were losing mid-week Division Two games to Macclesfield a few years back? I didn't see any, and I suspect that's exactly what have happened with Leeds. Shame we're not going to see it happen now.
I often wonder what these fair-weather fans think when teams they've never heard of like West Bromwich Albion, Barnsley, Bradford (and come next season Portsmouth and/or Reading) suddenly appear on the Premier League fixtures at the start of the season. They must know that there's at least one division below the 'big' boys, but the Premier League highlights show never mentions it and it never gets a mention in the paper so what do they care?
* If you need to find a side to follow TSP is proud to announce that we can now provide remote random draws for you. Write in here if you're a poor lost soul who needs help to find the right team for you.
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