Why are you a football fan?

[Parkfieldswolf]

Playing football at school and after school until the light faded was where I fell in love with the game, the buzz around Mexico 86 was great, the first international tournament I can properly remember. My dad doesn't like football so I had to find my own way to a club, after flirting with the dirty big teams at the time as children do I came to the only logical choice, that team with the same name as the town I live in is the one. Once I started to follow Wolves it became more than just love, more like a South American rabid passion for 11 blokes representing my home town.

Nowadays I don't think I love football very much anymore, the media hype for certain teams, VAR, **** refereeing, the money and the cartel controlling the game, it's all *******s, but the fire is still there for Wolves

Very much how I feel too. The passion remains for Wolves but other football no. I don’t think I’ll even be watching any of the Euros. My dad when he was young used to love football one week he would be up the Wolves next week he would be at the Albion with mates having a drink and enjoying himself. I always thought it was odd how by his 50’s his passion for the game had died and he hardly watched it anymore now I’m getting around the same age the same thing has happened to me. He didn’t have VAR, big 6 love ins, players rolling around like babies etc either to put up with.

 

[crocos]

Some really interesting reads on this thread, that's for sure. As for me, well, I've loved football and Wolves for as long as I can remember; but I also love cricket and rugby, and in fact most sports really. More watching than participating, though I've played and enjoyed them all. I love the emotions and the unpredictabilities of all sport, though football is the top for me probably. Somewhat less so these days than before maybe, but I still love it.

Wolves for me started with the 74 League Cup Final, aged 5 and a half, watching it with my Gran & her bloke in their front room in Shrewsbury - I was hooked by our old gold, and hadn't realised we had Wolves history through what little family we had. The fact we won the game as underdogs sealed the deal, though the deal may well have been sealed already - I had fallen in instant man-love with John Richards, Kenny Hibbitt, Mike Bailey, George Berry, even later on Paul Bradshaw. Living in Glos though as we did back then, I rarely got to see us play in the flesh, except for the odd game at Ashton Gate, and sometimes when back in Shrewsbury staying with our Gran [though we were as likely to go and watch Shrewsbury as we were Wolves]. I still remember scouring the newspapers & magazines for anything Wolves-related and cutting it out into a scrap-album. The thrill of all the coverage in the Shropshire Star / Express & Star whenever we were in Shrewsbury. Listening to night-games on the radio under the bed-covers on cold winter nights [we had no central heating]. The fact that everyone at school was Leeds / Man Yoo / Liverpool / Arsenal etc only deepened things for me.

A huge season for me was 96-97, when I was back in this country for a while as my dad was dying from a horrible brain tumour - that ****ty season mirrored perfectly the ****tiness of that time for me; I've hated Notlob & Palarse ever since then [not Barnsley though]. My great Wolves pleasure these days is seeing our boy, also aged 5 and a half, getting into Wolves in just the same way I did - he knows all the players' names now, and he particularly loves Neto, Adama & Raul. I can't wait to get him to Molineux for his first match.

I still love football itself too, though I'm sometimes a bit weary of it these days - the special moments of World Cups etc when you'd see players whose names you only vaguely read about in the papers etc made those events really special. Now it's more about trying to remember which competition it is you're watching as you see the same players all the time these days. Rugby the same really, and going to Glaaaaarcester as I still sometimes do is not the same these days; I miss the good old "local" days of watching "iron man" [or "mad dog" for some] Mike Teague mixing it up in the mud with Micky Skinner, Gareth Chilcott et al as The Shed roars him on. Seeing the beautiful boys from Bath & Quins get muddied up [but show their mettle too by - very usually - winning the matches!]

What I still do love about football though is like Topcat says in his post - it's the best people-joiner I know of. I've got talking to so many people over the world through football, from going to games in Greece & South Korea & Argentina & Italy. The only country I've lived / worked in where football doesn't happen is Sri Lanka, but there the cricket takes its place and also does its people-joining.