The Pros and Cons of Ups and Downs, part four

As an American I realised very quickly that following an English football club, especially at the lower levels, was a very different experience to being a fan of a similar team in America. There are lots of obvious differences, but there is one that runs very deep and is difficult to express in words.

From early childhood I followed the Atlanta Braves with sincere devotion. I went to, watched, or listened to most games most seasons (and this is in a 162 game regular season). I knew the players. I knew the team history. I hunted autographs. I befriended the usher who manned Ted Turner's box and he invited me to come and sit in it for the last few innings of games I was attending. I wore a Braves cap every day for my first year of University. I was, I thought, pretty serious.

Looking back on this, though, my relationship with the Braves has always been that of a loyal customer. I came and I paid my money. It never occurred to me that the Braves needed me or that I was anything other than an observer to their successes and failures. It would be like me claiming credit for Julia Roberts' rise to stardom because I went to see Pretty Woman in the theatres. Now that I am no longer an Atlanta resident I don't get to follow the Braves live and in person, and because I have no one to talk to about it my relationship with the club can get a bit detached. Someday I will get back to Atlanta again, though, and the Braves will still be there, still playing at Turner Field and still playing in the National League.

My relationship with Bath City has been very different from the outset. Last season City came very close to a playoffs spot. The club's player budget is modest and the squad is small. Injuries racked up as the campaign went on and it became clear that another striker was needed. The budget was small because, like most clubs at this level, attendances have been falling. In other words, City failed to make the playoffs, in part, because not enough fans wanted to watch them play. They failed for lack of support.

When the Braves came in second in the National League West in 1983, manager Joe Torre sighted a lot of reasons for this. Lack of attendance was not one of them. Football is different. Football clubs rise and fall based on short term results. To get good short term results you need short term money. The most reliable source of short term money is from the fans (or debt, but that is a great way to kill a club in the long term). An extra hundred people a match this season would mean roughly £20,000 for the club. That would boost the playing budget by 25% I will go to every game I can, and bring everyone I can along with me. I make a difference, and this is not just because it is a small club. English fans are called supporters because they support the club, whatever the level it plays at. Even though I might not say it out loud, if they did make it to the playoffs this year I will give myself a small sliver of the credit.

There is one more thing that relegation and promotion brings to life as a fan. The football season is, in essence, an enormous gamble of each club's future on its performance on the pitch. The key word of the last sentence is 'gamble.' It is both terrifying and exhilarating to think about what might lay ahead in the next ten months. We might get lucky and find ourselves on the brink of national competition, or we might get in real trouble and find ourselves on the brink of insolvency. Like all forms of gambling, the terror and exhilaration are addictive, and we the fans are the junkies. We tell ourselves that we can stop anytime we like, but.....

Major League Soccer's fans try to copy the passion of their European counterparts. They have 'ultras.' They sing. They even, somehow, mange away match travel. Without the fear of relegation, though, American soccer fans will really never know what it is like to invest all of your emotions on the progress of their club. The best they can achieve, a poor copy, is to be passionate customers.