TRUE BLUE STORIES

Simon Taylor

Actually my affliction for the Blues begins and end with bloody Arsenal of all things.

No, stay with me! The product of a Forces upbringing (and that's where the similarity with Bradbury ends!) it was my lot to be shunted from one dead end base or town to another. So, of course, when I began to get interested in footie I had no local team which I had any affinity for.

Well, what do you do in situations like these - you turn to your old man of course. Now this is where the first Arsenal connection came in - he had grown up in Highbury and supported the Gooners in his youth. A certain Joe Mercer was playing for them at that time and so impressed was the old man that he developed a sort of split personality thereafter - continuing to support Arsenal but then following City when Mercer arrived.

The rest is history and fairly typical of the lot of a City fan I suppose - there was me and my brother, there was City and Arsenal. Guess which one I chose. So now while my brother has a season ticket at Highbury watching the likes of Bergkamp and Wright and with European jaunts every year, I've had the likes of Parlane, Tolmie, Creaney and Lillis over the years, not to mention sightseeing trips to Portsmouth, Ipswich, Millwall and Huddersfield.

But something somewhere makes it impossible to be anything else doesn't it? For God's sake my tour of duty as a kid included living near to Leeds and Ipswich - both of whom were hugely successful at the time. But would I be swayed? not on your life - even when in the 70s we lived near the world-beating Ipswich and that was the only place I could go and watch my beloved team, if only once a year.

Now we all know about our record at Ipswich don't we?! But was I downhearted after that first live experience at Portman Road and a 2-1 defeat even with Lee, Summerbee et al? Or the straight 10 defeats that followed in that same stadium? Or the Halifax and Shrewsbury debacles that happened at about the same time? Course I bloody well was, but still I wore my scarf to school and trotted out in my sky blue shirt for PE to general mirth all around!.

Never mind I thought, it'll be better when I can watch them somewhere else apart from Ipswich. So when it came to choosing a University there was only really one place to go - Manchester here I come I thought. Only problem of course was that my course was smack bang in the heart of Rag territory - Salford! Being a student and a Blue in Salford did not give me huge feelings of safety as I wandered the lonely miles down to the Academy that first day and the 0-3 pasting off Liverpool didn't do much to lift the spirits either.

But it was all worth it a short while after and the milestone first victory 3-1 - against Spurs. This is it I thought! - and for a while under Johnny Bond it almost seemed like it. Easy victories, Cup Final, League Cup semi & would it never end? Being City we all know the answer to that one and Luton, Brentford, Lincoln and numerous others have stuck the boot in ever since.

But despite the woes we all share and put up with week in week out, something keeps us going. Blind, stupid, dumb optimism? Regressional hypnosis? Mass brain disease? Maybe a bit of everything but for me there is something completely intangible - if I could sum it up in images and put them in a photo album entitled 'Why Blue' it'd come close to it:

What'd be in there - Tueart's overhead kick; bananas at Watford & swimming pools at Palace; the Charlton & Rags 5-1s; yellow shirts at Arsenal (!); Lillis talking about a possible England call up (!!); massive Div 2 crowds v Chelsea, Newcastle and Wednesday; Tolmie's haircut; the Full Members almost come-back; Redmond slipping on his arse at W Ham while putting away a penalty; Quinn's goal away at Spurs; bedlam after Nicky Reid nicked it in the last minute at home to Pompey; Kinkladze at Oxford; the perishing cold at Pompey last year; chucking up in delirious excitement after celebrating v Brentford in the Cup.

So spare a thought for us non-Manc Blues. We've all got our various reasons for being afflicted but it's certainly nowt to do with winning trophies!! It takes devotion/lunacy of a peculiar kind to not come from the City and yet still to stick to the Blue cause, year in year out, cock-up after cock-up and to the understanding of absolutely nobody!

Oh yes, I said this story ended with bloody Arsenal too - to put the tin hat on it where do I now live? bloody Highbury!