Football How did you end up supporting your team?

TBY, I have noticed you are a regular poster in this thread, do we get to find out your team and how you started to support them?

I do like all the stories so far, even the ones who shamelessly admit to supporting the winning team at the time!
 
As a spotty 17 year old I went to college in London, I scoured the pages of Loot for a suitable property (there was no internet then :o ) and found a property in Avenell road, owned by a very wealthy, very camp Cypriot who had business interests across the globe so was rarely there and employed me as a house sitter and in payment I lived in the attic flat gratis whilst he was abroad for 10 months of the year. I had a very comfortable time and for the other two months I spent them running away from the advances of a portly homosexual Greek man (more in jest than anything else)

Avenell Road is in Highbury, he'd lived there for decades, in fact for so long that Arsenal used to give local residents season tickets for the disruption on match days, so I got to go to every Arsenal home game for free for 3 years. That made me a Gunner, which I remain to this day.
 
I grew up in a nondescript town in the East Midlands where rugby was (and still is) the only game in town, so in geographical terms I had something of a free choice. My father's family were Scousers and my brother duly adopted their team, Liverpool (you might have heard of them; the Manchester United of their day. No, honestly!)

Foolishly, however, as a contrarian I naturally looked to my mother's side of the family, who came from Edmonton in North London and were Spurs through-and-through. My uncle had been a regular during the "glory glory" days of Bill Nicholson and can still brilliantly describe the atmosphere of the European nights in those days.

He took me to my first match, which as it turned out, probably marked Spurs' post-war rock bottom - an away league game at Mansfield Town, in the old Second Division (we drew 3-3, Glenn Hoddle scoring twice). As a student I moved to London and though I've never had the misfortune to actually live in Tottenham, I would estimate I've seen about 400 games at White Hart Lane and counting. Must have done something wrong in a previous life I guess.
 
A charming story, Speshal.

Spurs once held a raffle of match tickets for local residents as some form of compensation for their inconvenience.

First prize was a ticket to a Spurs match of your choice.

Second prize was two tickets for Spurs matches...you get the idea.
 
I don't remember why I support Leeds- I just do. I suppose its quite close to where I come from, is easier to get to than Huddersfield from there and Leeds always had an air of mystique about it when I was young. However, my first match was Liverpool-Villa at Anfield when they commemorated the tenth anniversary of Hillsborough. I guess it was my dad's last attempt to 'convert' me...
 
When I was a kid the big boys would grab hold of you and say "Who do you support City or Rovers?" And as it turned out it didn't matter which one you answered you still got a smack in the mouth, and so after being smacked in the mouth on several occasions I decided to say "neither" This seemed to confuse their superior intellect to the point of where they didn't know what to do and so they left me alone.

And that is why I don't like football....
 
I mainly watch international matches these days, and because one half of my family is british and the other german. The only logical choice is to root for the Italians. :D
Which was fairly frightening in 2006 as I started cheering in an all german crowd.

Concerning football clubs I have sympathies for many of them but don't really support one.
 
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