h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This is partly in response to a question from Master B on a thread elsewhere, and I thought I'd post it here rather than clutter up his thread with all this clobber...

I was born in Hartshill, which is more properly Newcastle-under-Lyme rather than Stoke, and grew up about 10 miles away - I'm more from Stafford, if anything.

I was taken to Stoke and Port Vale as a nipper, and neither of them particularly impressed me. Also, I don't come from a footballing family - my grandpa was an armchair Arsenal fan (I think he went a bit when he was young) and my mum's from North London and my Dad's from Brighton.

I think I might well have been a Brighton fan if they'd stayed in the area, though. What you really need to start following your local team is either a Dad interested enough to take you to watch them and pay for you, or to be able to get to the ground without parental assistance and afford to get in yourself. We lived in a village lacking in public transport connections to anywhere except Stafford, and somehow the Rangers didn't inspire me...

Another kid at primary school got me into football, and he was an armchair Liverpool follower. So for about a year, I thought of myself as a Liverpool fan - which consisted of being pleased when I saw on the telly that they'd won. I'd realised there wasn't a lot to it, and the half the football kids at school did the same thing.

That summer, we went to Devon and Cornwall on holiday, and I really liked it down there. I'm not sure why, but I also really took to Plymouth as a city. And then, when the new season started, I got the Plymouth Argyle team sticker for the Panini sticker album. I'd never hitherto known Plymouth had a team - so I looked at the previous season's league table, saw they'd finished seventh, and thought as Plymouth's quite a big place, they must be an OK team.

As that Italian bloke off 'Allo 'Allo used to say - what a mistake-a to make-a... at that age you really don't understand the difference between the First and Third Divisions, and as we beat Chester 5-1 the following Saturday, I got the impression Argyle were actually good, and they became my team. At that age it wasn't all that different from supporting Liverpool, just Argyle were on telly less.

Then, the next season, in 1984, we got to the FA Cup Semi-Final, and were on Football Focus and Match of the Day and stuff - this more or less sealed things... I became a confirmed armchair Argyle fan.

But then I did something that most armchair Premiership fans rarely do - I started trying to get out there and watch my team. I got myself taken to watch us away at Stoke (we lost, but that didn't put me off) and then, in 1989, I became a proper Argyle fan. We were drawn at home to Everton in the 4th Round of the FA Cup, and somehow I badgered my Dad into getting four tickets and taking me, my brother and a friend of mine down to watch the game. It was life-changing - over 27,000 packed into Home Park, the atmosphere was electric, Everton were one of the best teams in the country and we were brilliant! We matched them, and possibly even had the edge, and led 1-0 for most of the second half until giving away a penalty (I admit now that it probably actually was a penalty) in the last ten minutes. The Toffeemen escaped with a 1-1 draw, did us 4-0 in the replay, and got to the Final that year.

So that experience made up my mind to try and see Argyle as much as possible. I persuaded my mum that letting a 15 year-old travel around the country on his own wasn't a particularly daft thing to do, and blew most of my savings on a trip to Devon to see us beat Barnsley 2-0.

And after that, I saw us at home once or twice a year, and started going to as many away games as I could get to... Stoke, Vale, West Brom, Wolves - we were in the old Second Division then. My Dad realised it wasn't such a bad thing as he only had to drop me off at the station every now and then when he could have had to take me to the Victoria Ground every other week...

And there wasn't really a big team in the area - if there had it might have been different. We were in the old Second Division in those days, and all the kids at school that went to games (excluding your usual Man U / Liverpool armchair brigade) supported either Stoke, Vale, Wolves, West Brom or Walsall. Forest or the Villa were the nearest First Division teams, but Nottingham was too far, and Villa were going through a bad patch anyway at the time - Birmingham was that little bit further, and nobody I knew went to the Villa anyway.

When I passed my driving test, my range of possible away games expanded just at the time that we were going through a purple patch - we finished third that season (two points behind bloody Port Vale, who'd secured a 2-1 victory at Vale Park by very dubious means) and lost in the play-offs to Burnley. But that was one of the best Argyle sides there's been, and I think I got to about twenty games that season.

I've never managed to equal that, but I try get to as many games as I can - usually away, which considering that until Sturrock took over we were always sh*t away from home, I reckon demonstrates considerable loyalty. I didn't see us win between the Wembley play-off victory in '96 and away at Southend in November 2001... But there's always been a great vibe in the travelling Argyle support, much better than at home games to be honest, and that's what made me want to be a part of the Green Army.

What a heart-warming story. You should send it in to Terry Wogan.

I found it's much easier to support a team in a town which you both live in and loathe, though.

B

I dunno - for me, following Argyle was a sort of escapism... it got me away from where I lived, let me see a bit of the country, and identified me as an outsider, which I kind of liked.

There's a certain small-town small-mindedness prevalent in North Staffordshire which I never really got on with, and because my parents were from the South East I grew up speaking with southern vowels, and spent years trying to escape the 'posh southerner' stigma...

Identifying myself with the South West was probably one of the better alternatives I could have come up with.

Yeah - I like the idea of escapism. Wish I'd thought of that. I supported Spurs as a kid (during that brief period when they were quite good Gazza, Lineker et al), but my heart was never really in it, and I kept going to Iron matches instead.

B

I shall cling to the hope that Coventry dumping Tottenham on their over-paid butts in 1987 was the final nail that saved you from life as a glory-huting pot-chaser, and returned you to your natural roots.