What Sort Of Supporter Are You!!!

There are lots of things that upset people on forums, but there is one thing on football forums that cause bad feelings and often end in a person leaving the forum, I'll come to that in a while.

Merse and Dave R are both old forum pro's and I will tell you that man merse has made me mad more than once and we have been known to battle away and come as close as is acceptable to insults. Yet when I got the chance to met him at the Coventry game I was over the moon and as pleased as punch to see him.

The reason why? well we both don't take ourselves to seriously for a start and also don't take things on here to seriously or to heart and that really is the secret, but while that will work for arguments for most people, you know the ones, who is the best player, should we sack the manager, for so many having their support called into question, will get them flaming mad.

I was hoping that I would find a really good definition for the word supporter on line, but all I could find were a few one lines one, that did not say very much about the real meaning of the word and nothing to define what a football supporter really is.

While I have been driving around today, I have given the word a great deal of thought and in the end decided, that the word can mean so many different things and support can be broken down into many different levels.If you asked what teams I support, I would answer TUFC and Man U, but in the case of Man U would that really be true, it may be more accurate to say I follow Man U, well their fortunes on the pitch anyway.

I can see someone on the TV news, wanting to fight to make changes and I then may say to Carol I support what that man is doing, but guess what he will never know, I may have a friend who may ask if I support some action they are about to take and I could say yes, but never have to do anything, but that friend will take strength in the knowledge that there are people supporting them.

TUFC has many fans who live away from the Bay, these fans often make up a big part of the fans that will be found at away games, they are there to support the players and the club and play a very big part in helping the team to victories. Yet that support is just being there and singing and cheering the team on, very important and these people are true supporters of the club.

Now fans who live more locally to the club will also support the team in the same way the away fans have done, but as they will pay to watch at the home games, the club gets the money and this then becomes a slightly different support because now their money is going into the club to help pay the wages and bills etc.

Then we may have people who once went to the games and was a good supporter, but move far away and can no longer go to games home and away, so will hope to listen on the radio, or get the news on a website or a forum, a different type of support again, as it can't really be demonstrated as such, but to that person he is a true supporter still and so he should be.

Some will aways buy the programme, others do the 50/50 draw, while others will buy goods from the club shop, but by doing any of those or not doing any at all can not really be used as some sort of yard stick to your level of support can it? or even should it?

There are people who give some free time to help the club, think back to those who helped clean and paint the ground at the start of last season, then we those who run and help the TUST, all showing their support of the club, but I bet you won't hear them say they feel they are a better supporter than any other fan.

I think we set our own levels of support anyway and what we feel is support may often be different from someone else's view of what a supporter is, but surely the support comes from our heart and that is what makes us all equal as supporters. its the love we feel for our club, our tears are no different when we suffer the pain of getting relegated and our tears of joy are also the same when we do win anything important.

So I do not think we can ever truly define the word supporter, the dictionary just said, one who supports and really that should be enough in my view.