05 May 2016
Confessions of a former Fox
by Frank O’Nomics
I was recently told a story about the late Tony Banks. Opining in a corporate box over lunch before a football match, he said that while it was acceptable to change your bank account, change your name, and even change your wife – it was not, ever, acceptable to change the football team that you support. Then, pointing across the box to David Mellor (famously reported as wearing a Chelsea shirt in bed), he said “and he – used to be a Fulham supporter!” I have a great deal of sympathy with this view. Many of us grow up supporting our local team and it helps develop a strong sense of social identity as we suffer its triumphs and disasters as a community. Others are taken with attributes of a team with a typical high profile as they grow up; the glamour of Chelsea in the sixties, Spurs in the eighties and Man U, well, seemingly for ever. Whatever brings us to that initial burst of fervent support, it feels treacherous to change allegiance from that point on. Why then, as self-proclaimed lifelong Leicester City fans seem to be emerging from every direction, do I, as some who grew up in the county of Leicestershire and was a regular attendant at Filbert Street, not feel able to celebrate along with my family and life-long friends?
I grew up going to Filbert Street in the 1970’s and hero-worshipped the likes of Andy Lochhead and the great Frank Worthington. I suffered the pains of relegation along with the joy of promotion, and who could forget the famous Charity Shield win of 1972 (1-0 vs Liverpool for those of you that need reminding). Until I started playing Saturday afternoon sport myself, I barely missed a home game, from sitting on the wall by the pitch when too small to see if standing (getting knocked off as a defender dispossessed Willie Carlin in the 2nd Division match vs Bolton), to standing in the “Kop” (yes, Leicester had one too) struggling to eat hot dogs through crowd surges. I was too young to travel to away matches but would still regard my self as having been an avid fan. So what changed? As with many transformations there are many factors and it happened by degrees.
Firstly, for me, football disappeared into the wilderness in the 1980s and 1990’s. A combination of crowd trouble and boring football meant that I was more than happy to get involved in playing other sports, rather than spending hard earned beer money on being frustrated. I had to agree with Gary Lineker’s suggestion that Wimbledon were best watched on Ceefax, my view being that this should include most of the other teams in the Football League. The second key factor was that I moved away, and have now lived out of Leicester for far longer than I lived there. This might not make a difference for many die-hard fans but, at a time when the game emerged from the miasma of 0-0 FA Cup second replays, I found myself in London wanting to take my son to football matches and the most convenient option was to go to the Arsenal. Again, this might not have changed my allegiance, but for the fact that the Arsenal team showed the glamour and flair of the 1970’s Leicester City – instead of Shilton, Nish, Weller, Birchnall, and Worthington, I was exposed to the skills of Vieira, Henry, Bergkamp and Pires. The chant of “1-0 to the Arsenal” was all of a sudden ironic and I was back hooked upon the game.
I can chart the shift of my allegiance (for many years Leicester was still the side whose result I sought first) from attending the 1991 League Cup match at Highbury, which Arsenal won 2-0 and I left the match forlorn, to the last match of the 2003-04 “Invincibles” season, where Arsenal needed a win to end the season unbeaten and Leicester needed the points in their regular relegation battle. I was perhaps not as devastated as many fans when former Arsenal striker Paul Dickov opened the scoring for Leicester, but I celebrated like to true Gooner when Henry and Vieira secured the historic win for Arsenal. I now attend every home game just as I did at Leicester 40 years ago and, when games are away, it is for Arsenal’s score that I first scan my phone or newspaper.
Of course there is no doubt that, if Arsenal couldn’t win the league, I wanted Leicester to do so. The achievements of Claudio Ranieri and his side have been nothing short of miraculous and are fantastic both for the game and for the city of my birth. Leicester has so much going for it as a truly multi-cultural city with a long sporting heritage (note that their rugby team has won the top division no less than 10 times and have been European Champions twice) and fans of small clubs everywhere will enthuse that a side costing less than a tenth of those of the big clubs, with a salary bill around one quarter that of Manchester United, can beat them all. The Booker Prize winning novelist Julian Barnes has described how, despite leaving Leicester, he never gave up on his team. For me, however, the boot is now on the other foot. Having experienced the ups and downs of supporting Leicester as a youth, and then celebrated the triumphs at Arsenal, I now suffer the travails of my local team as my old friends in Leicester celebrate the unthinkable. If I were to suddenly announce myself as a lifelong die-hard Fox it would be totally disingenuous and I would be even worse than the kind of person Tony Banks deplored. Ultimately, I am inclined to agree with Samuel Johnson who wrote “no man is a hypocrite in his pleasures”, and with Steven Stills, who once sang “Love the One you’re with”.
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