"The Fan Commandments"

Footaholic 13 years ago

Arsenal, Egypt 178 2277

There's a lot of room for debate here, but I do believe there are some concrete rules to being a supporter of a club.

1. Once you've selected your team and pulled on a shirt for the first time you can not under any circumstance or for any reason alter, reselect, un-support or otherwise change or abandon your team in any way shape or form. Stopping support of your selected team is an act of cowardice, choosing a different team makes you a traitor, the club you think you support does not need people like you, off with your head!

2. Your first port of call when choosing a side to support should always be your local team, in the absence of a local team you are permitted to select an alternative team that you have an otherwise strong affiliation with through family, broader geographical, reach or other personal connection. In the absence of both of these you may select any team, however you can not select your team simply because they're the best. There is no room for glory hunters in circles of real supporters, and you must find some other form of connection with a team. Being a real supporter is about suffering with your men, and choosing those who are least likely to suffer invalidates your selection and application as a real supporter. Choosing the best team and then pretending or otherwise fabricating an association with them to satisfy your peers is the lowest act of all and will eat away at you inside.

3. You cannot support more than one club and one national team. Many true football supporters have soft spots for more than one team, especially if the team they supported is a local side with no hope of ever reaching a serious level of competition with in the supporters life time, in this case the man supports his local team but has a passionate stake in a top flight team, this is allowed, but by no means can you "support" more than one club. If you think this is possible you do not understand the nature of rivalry with in football.

4. You can be a real supporter even if you have never been to the stadium of your team, but only if circumstance makes this close to impossible. If for example there are 9 teams in the City you live in but you chose one 200 miles away because you like the colour of their kit, or because they were winning everything yesterday you're not a real supporter and real supporters will never consider you as one of them. You'll always be on the outside looking in and you'll never have that complete and emotional connection with your boys, that simply can not be achieved with TV.

5. Unless you have found yourself saying words close the to following inside your head or out loud in a room or other building surrounded by other men whilst the final moments of a big game are ticking away on at least one occasion you have not matured to the higher echelons of true supporter-ism, you are not discredited but you may not be a real supporter yet

"Dear lord, I know we don't speak often, and I rarely pay you a visit, I'm sorry for that, I really really am, and as selfish it is for me to ask this of you out of the blue, I have no choice and I put my faith in you. You may take an arm, a leg, any limb or even a distant relative if you would just be so kind as give a goal before the whistle goes. I promise I'll be a better man, I'll donate to charity and I'll worship you and spread your good word across the world, if only you could just send us a goal".

6. You automatically, say a prayer, make a bow, chant a cheer or whatever behaviour you would normally reserve only for when you are in the presence of the divine every time your car drives past the stadium of your team, or your train stops at the stop closest to the stadium. You must also have lost your voice through excessive shouting at things you have no control over.

7. If you have never been hugged and mauled almost to death in a dance of savage ecstasy by a complete stranger with whom you'd previously shared no contact other than echoed groans or swear words then you are unlikely to have become a fully qualified supporter just yet.

8. You must have at least on one occasion spent excessively, behaved erratically, been arrested, broken the law, risked missing an important event like the birth of a child or travelled through life threatening conditions in order to make watching the game possible.

9. You must have on at least one occasion completely lost control resulting in profuse swearing, or acts of illogical violence against inanimate objects, in front of children or otherwise inappropriate relatives or people in front of whom you would otherwise maintain complete decorum.

10. Partaken in completely irrational and ridiculous, supersitious behaviour which you would otherwise have considered outdated at least 3 or 400 years ago. This includes but is not limited to, wearing of any lucky item of clothing including shirts and undergarments, doing things in a specific order, saying certain things, sitting in special chairs, touching specific items or any other such stupidity.

11. Erupted in such an uncontrolled and undignified act of joy that the movements of your limbs, and body through time and space become distorted in such a way that when control is regained you have either suffered complete memory loss or can not account for the current position of your body, geographic location or time.

by-Araz (Queens Park Rangers)