Part-Time Supporter Take 2

Here we go again... blogspot.com has more features and is more flexible than myblog.com, so I'm moving...

Well, I've decided that as football is pretty much a large part of my life (even though I'm crap at it) and that a lot of my blog was being taken up by it and that politics and football don't REALLY mix, that I'd create my own football blog, dedicated mainly to Linfield FC, the real love of my life, but also to TeBe Berlin and Gillingham (and any other teams in places I've lived, eg Barcelona and Lyon).

By its very nature, this blog will be composed to a large extent of secondary sources or information gleamed from people ' at the coal face' and as such I'll be grateful to my trusty reporters witnessing all the tensions, the pain and the glory as they happen, but on the occasions I'm actually IN Belfast, Berlin or Medway, I'll give my own version of events.

Being a exiled fan, by choice or due to other commitments, is a totally different experience: waiting for the Saturday evening phonecall that could make or break your night; seeing that Aiden O'Kane scored again and drawing the conclusion that he can't be THAT bad even though your mates tell you he was the usual lapper for the rest of the game, shirked out of tackles and touched the ball 6 times; seeing your team has won 4-0 but yet hearing they played shit, and somehow failing to reconcile the two; listening to the game on the radio via the internet and the strange umbilical experience that this provides (from the high of winning the league vs the Glens in 03/04 (while in Barcelona), to the low of losing it the following year to a last-second goal from a striker we released at the beginning of the season (while in Berlin), being a fan in exile evokes a feeling of helplessness yet comfort at the same time: you can't verbally will your team on, yet you don't have to be there to witness another god-awful performance. It doesn't make you any less of a supporter though, just a different kind of one.