So why do you go to the Footy

[SJN-Fox]

Boc raised some very good points in another thread about the feelings that are invoked when you go to a game and why or why not we might, or might not, be going again next year. As a result, I thought that perhaps it deserved its own thread.

So, just exactly why do you turn up each time? When the fottball is great and we win and get promoted, and when it's poor and we go down. What makes you turn up each time?

Me, well, I just love watching the game and I love Leicester City in all its guises. Win or lose, I just LOVE BEING THERE. I'll laugh or cry or both, but I just can't wait for the next game.

The chap I sit next to (bhfoxx) isn't even a LCFC supporter, but he buys his ST just the same, and laughs and cries and stuff, just because he wants to watch the footy.

 

[East Anglia Fox]

I love experience and the thrill of being in the stadium. I also love the feeling of being loyal to Leicester City Football Club. I also find it fascinating to just watch the football match being played. I feel an adrenaline rush every time I walk up the stairs and get into the bit where the stewards stand and see the pitch and all the thousands of people and everything.

 

[Jeff]

It's an addiction. I have made the first steps towards a recovery, I'm hoping I can continue my rehabilitation with help from the useless 'players' at the club.

 

[Hazzman]

There's an article in this month's 442 about football psychology. According to the article, the main reason fans go to the footy is the continuity.

The football club is the only thing which is always there in marriage, divorce, ill health, having children etc. The football club never looks any more appealing going for you're life. It's one of the things in life which is constantly stays with you.

Personally I have just been brought into Football and supporting Leicester as my hometown club. The passion and 'event' of going to a football game and having a moan makes it for me. As I have got older this has developed into a general love of the game and it's fans.

People say it becomes a chore when we're losing, it does become a chore but there's a little part of you which likes having a moan, 'a release'.

 

[stevewalshwasgod]

Same here, I love going to the Walkers, and just being there does it for me. I still get goosebumps when the team comes out..

 

[drummindefender]

because no feeling in the world compares to when your team scores a goal!

 

[Hazzman]

because no feeling in the world compares to when your team scores a goal!

What about when we're 3-0 down and score in the last minute with no way of coming back?

 

[drummindefender]

ok no feeling in the world compares to when you team scores a meaningful goal

 

[Darth Vodka]

i want the team to do well and i feel that me turning up and shouting a bit helps them, albeit in a small way

and if everyone thought like that, it'd be a full house and more money and more success

perhaps

oh i dunno.. because they sell beer?

 

[Bobby Smith]

For me it's the feeling that if I don't go I will miss out on something great. The ones that rarely pay off like Preston away, supporting a bunch of no hopers and getting the all important win. Sad really. Something that the majority of Devon daytrip fans (Liverpool, Man U, Chelsea etc) would never understand.

 

[four king power]

Bit of no brainer really. An afternoon with the Mrs shopping or pesterd to do some house work, or on the lash down the footy with the lads. Tough choice that :icon_wink

 

[Micky]

I don't know. I'm just addicted. What draws me to this website most days to read your opinions??? I don't know? Sometimes I wonder if its worth it but I still come back for more.

Martin Allens Blue and White Army!

 

[bocadillo]

There's an article in this month's 442 about football psychology. According to the article, the main reason fans go to the footy is the continuity.

The football club is the only thing which is always there in marriage, divorce, ill health, having children etc. The football club never looks any more appealing going for you're life. It's one of the things in life which is constantly stays with you.

Very interesting points raised here by 4-4-2 and Hazz - continuity!

Let's have a look at continuity in terms of LCFC. Do the players provide continuity? Well they certainly don't provide the continuity that Steve Walsh did; nor Graham Cross from the time that I started supporting City. These two players alone cover 27 years of the 40 that I have been supporting City. Not only those two lasted - there was Mark Wallington, Mike Stringfellow, John Sjoberg, Alan Woollett, Paul Ramsey - all of them spent more than 10 years at the club. What do we get now? In the Mickey Adams years we had a new team in each of three seasons. Even now it''s not much better - who is our longest serving player now and how long has he been with us?

Buildings provide continuity. Football grounds provide continuity. Even though we've been at the Walkers for (is it?) five years now, it still feels strange to me. The continuity has been broken.

What about the way the club is run? Well that is certainly going to be very different for the foreseeable future. No more board - and even when we had a board with a strong leader, it was nothing like the despotic reign that we are likely to enjoy in the future. No criticism of MM intended - just stating facts)

The management of the playing side hardly provides continuity either, does it? What was it that was said at the 'unveiling' of Martin Allen? 7th manager in 7 years? Nothing continuous there either then!

So what has stayed the same? I suppose the blue shirt has stayed the same - although even that changes much more frequently than it has in the past. Not only the one year shirt deals but the actual changes in the shirts themselves. Shirts used to evolve over the years - now they seem to have to change more dramatically every time (for marketing purposes, I suppose).

I think Hazz is wholly correct. Continuity ain't what it used to be!

 

[Willlow]

Very interesting points raised here by 4-4-2 and Hazz - continuity!

Let's have a look at continuity in terms of LCFC. Do the players provide continuity? Well they certainly don't provide the continuity that Steve Walsh did; nor Graham Cross from the time that I started supporting City. These two players alone cover 27 years of the 40 that I have been supporting City. Not only those two lasted - there was Mark Wallington, Mike Stringfellow, John Sjoberg, Alan Woollett, Paul Ramsey - all of them spent more than 10 years at the club. What do we get now? In the Mickey Adams years we had a new team in each of three seasons. Even now it''s not much better - who is our longest serving player now and how long has he been with us?

Buildings provide continuity. Football grounds provide continuity. Even though we've been at the Walkers for (is it?) five years now, it still feels strange to me. The continuity has been broken.

What about the way the club is run? Well that is certainly going to be very different for the foreseeable future. No more board - and even when we had a board with a strong leader, it was nothing like the despotic reign that we are likely to enjoy in the future. No criticism of MM intended - just stating facts)

The management of the playing side hardly provides continuity either, does it? What was it that was said at the 'unveiling' of Martin Allen? 7th manager in 7 years? Nothing continuous there either then!

So what has stayed the same? I suppose the blue shirt has stayed the same - although even that changes much more frequently than it has in the past. Not only the one year shirt deals but the actual changes in the shirts themselves. Shirts used to evolve over the years - now they seem to have to change more dramatically every time (for marketing purposes, I suppose).

I think Hazz is wholly correct. Continuity ain't what it used to be!

Typical Boc :icon_roll

 

[Willlow]

I don't know. I'm just addicted. What draws me to this website most days to read your opinions??? I don't know? Sometimes I wonder if its worth it but I still come back for more.

Martin Allens Blue and White Army!

Its not worth it :icon_wink

 

[Darth Vodka]

continuity boc....you have a few beers, you see the same mates, you despair at the performance

:icon_roll

 

[homer]

continuity boc....you have a few beers, you see the same mates, you despair at the performance

:icon_roll

Bob makes a good point, actually

In the past there was a genuine affinity between fans and players/management. There was little in the way of staff turnover, and you got to suffer and celebrate with (roughly) the same group of people year in year out. And it all took place in a stadium that your dad first took you to when you were probably about three years old. You cared about the club, the ground, the players - everything really - and they seemed to care about you. There was a genuine stability about LCFC, and football in general. And there was a real sense of being part of the LCFC 'family', and that was obviously one of the things that motivated you to go week in week out. You loved the feckin' club, simple as that

Nowadays it's very different. The players appear to not give a flying **** about the club, the fans or the City. The managers change every five minutes, and we are now housed in a soulless prefabricated shell of a stadium that is the same as a dozen others across the country. And we are now apparently part of the entertainment business courtesy of the bandwagon football fans who appeared during Euro '96 and who have been subsequently bloated by the football 'product' regurgitated e3very waking hour by Sky TV.

Now I go because its something that has been a huge part of my life for over 35 years - and it would be a huge change to go and do something else instead. Every now and again you feel what you may have felt years ago - but it's just a ghost of what it used to be.

Year by year you get slowly more sick of the whole thing - you will probably never lose the hope that it will return to its former glory and beauty and make you feel like it used to. But deep down you know that it's starting to make you angry and resentful and completely sick inside, because you know it's become a parasitic parody of what it used to be. It's too late to give it up, though, and that makes you ev en more fed up.

Probably exactly what Mrs homer is starting to feel about me......

 

[alex]

I go because I love my football club. End of.

 

[Matt_B]

I agree completely with Boc and Homer, though I have only got about 17 years experience.

I think the days when we were at Wembley sum up the whole feeling, and we all know that going to the new Wembley won't be the same at all.

I think a huge part of what keeps dragging me is that I will feel like I have failed if I stop going, like I will be giving up on an ailing animal. No matter how ill a pet gets, you always hope that it will get better, and it's the hardest decision to finally end it, and I think with football you sometimes get glimses of rejuvenation (sp) that pull you back from the brink, only to drop you back down.

I also think that this constant up and down rollercoaster is something experienced nowhere else in life (though I have no experience of marriage or kids to compare to) and I think it is part of the attraction.

Football, the fans, atmosphere and players are not what they were, even 5-10 years ago. But nothing is anymore. Everything in life seems to be a watered down version designed to appeal to the masses both in England and now of course abroad.

Without opening up the whole "sky ruined football" debate, the fact that the Premiership is now the richest division in the world means that players are only going to be driven between clubs with no affinity. I know if a company came in and offered me 5 times my salary I would find it hard to say no, irrespective of my ties to my current club.

I don't really know where I'm going with this. I think the main point is that I keep going to the football for the same reasons as most, it is a huge emotional tie, embedded from when we were children, and even though the reasons we originally fell in love with it are gone, we alway harbour hope that they will return, even though we are living in a world that promotes continuously the very things we hate about football now.

 

[cleefox]

In the past there was a genuine affinity between fans and players/management.

Good point. It has definitely has been lost. At Preston the players said it made a difference with the level of support they got. Sorry lads, I was there to support my team, not you lot. At the last home match against Wolves I've never seen people so desperate to get away so as not to have clap the players as they did their "lap of appreciation". As the Mrs said, people had had enough of the players this season, and articles by Hammond about how much time he spends in bed do not help the perception of the players putting all their effort into their job.

Why do I go? I guess I love football still (just), but it does get harder at the moment to keep going, but as I always say at the start of every season, this could be our year.

Football has always been about the people you go to the games with, who you meet through football and the social aspect of it. I think this is one thing that does keep me going.