Can your love for a club die?

I was speaking to my mate about all things Football this morning and he asked me this question and it got me thinking whether in certain circumstances it would just go.

We both came to the conclusion that its easy to love your club when its going well and you may feel like you don't when things are not going so well but deep down you do, but could a club be run so apathetically with no hope and no aspiration for anything more than just existing that your love for for club just dies. Many clubs would say Newcastle are lucky as they are in one of the biggest and richest leagues in the world but what's the point without hope?

I personally would rather be in league 1 and have hope and ambition to do well rather than the tortuous state of nothingness that Newcastle are in. My love for the club isn't dead but it's certainly been tested in recent times and I feel like complete Apathy for a prolonged period could kill someone's love for a club they've supported all their life at least until the club found a purpose again.

 

Mines dead, as I feel nothing when Newcastle are beat and have no interest in surviving every year for no purpose.

Ashley is responsible and I would also rather have that ****er gone, dead and buried even if it meant we started again in L2.

 

Yes 100%. In modern football, a club earns fans and has to work to keep them, you can't just do whatever you want and expect people to keep coming back, cheering it on and buying shirts. If you don't conduct yourself properly you'll just fall away and disappear.

This works on every level, how does Tranmere Rovers keep my two brothers as fans, despite being in a lower league? Well, they have fantastic prices, provide a good local experience, have ambition to improve and have a great connection with the fans on a boardroom level.

City do the exact same thing, just on a massive scale and it works. They haven't birthed fans, they've grabbed them from other clubs by doing things the right way.

Deportivo La Coruna, Valencia, Marseille, Leeds, Nottingham Forest. All these clubs have been more successful and more popular than Newcastle United in recent history and all of them have dropped away from their perch. Some more dramatically than others, they've all lose fans, revenue and will need to work to get them back.

I personally don't love Newcastle United anymore, I think it's a bad football club that doesn't do things the right way, why should I support a business that doesn't do things the right way? Would I keep buying Samsung if their phones were all ****?

 

If all you've said is correct then would you keep making comments on a Samsung forum?

It's that you keep commenting suggests deep rooted love

 

I'm commentin on the Spurs board right now and i cant even name their starting 11 bro

I like you guys

this is an 11 year connection with some of you, i aint letting Bruce n Ashley get between us

 

Do you think it could ever reach a point where you are done for good and nothing could bring you back?

 

It depends on the levels, everyone has levels of fandom.

Like take @Hung,Drawn and Quartered he bleeds black and white, he'd support Newcastle and go St James' if they were in the Northern Conference.

Then you take someone like me, who werent even born in the North East, but followed the club my entire life. If things get bad, I'm far more likely to just say "**** it."

I must admit, I've been slowly falling away for a while, not living in England anymore is a massive contributor to my mood about the club.

 

Yeah I know exactly what you mean, I live in the South East but my dad's side of the family are from Bedlington, I despise the club and everything about it at the moment, its bascially unrecognisable to me as the club I grew up watching however no matter how bad it gets I will always have sentimental memories attached to the club like going to the ground for the first time with my dad, all the Newcastle bed sheets and posters I had as a kid, the David Rozehnal shirt (Wtf) so I think my love for the club could fade but could never completely die as its so interwoven In to my life im stuck with it forever

 

Mate, the Newcastle bed sheets were horrid weren't they

The black and white is iconic, but it made the room so dark and depressing, like emo bed sheets

 

They really did! And then between that and my mum refusing to stop buying me them at the age of 20 and trying to explain that to my girlfriend at the time I was not a fan

 

Trust me this is trying the patience of a saint
This pandemic does not help at all either
prior to this lockdown I had went to every game at St. James Park bar 1 in the last 48 years
I have stood in the open Gallowgate End in the pissing down rain (Wrexham) when it was abandoned 78
I've stood in fog where you couldn't see past the 18 yard line (Oxford Utd) waited in the dark during a power cut (Ipswich)
Trudged through deep Snow and helped clear the pitch in the game against Arsenal in the 80's only for the ref to call off the game (twat, as I had to walk 5 miles back home)
I must admit that it is getting very difficult to motivate myself to pay to watch this ****
but I look back at the games on YouTube, seeing me sitting and standing up behind the goal at the Leazes End giving it what for to the lads (mostly the Ref though) like a mad Teenager even though I'm over 60 years old

If I had another past time it may be easier for me to quit but I can't
as people say it's like an addiction, you know you can get high but eventually it will kill you

 

Think mine is on life support right now - I've seen worse (far worse) in the past in terms of performances/squad etc as many of us have, but right now it just feels like the club is rotten to the core.

No semblance of any form of pride in the city and who and what they represent - that may be a symptom of modern football in general, but NUFC seem to have elevated it to another level.

If you look beyond the 1st team, the rest of the structure is in a similar situation - U23s U18s etc all failing and none of this will change until there is a change of owner. What do these other teams/players represent? Nothing that Ashley sees as tangible, barring the odd one he can sell on for profit, so why bother investing?

Clubs must be run as businesses, however, all businesses need investment and the correct management structure in place from top to bottom and we are woefully short in that as well

As I've said elsewhere, even if we survive this **** show of a season, we'll be nailed on to go down next year without root and branch changes to the structure

Will I keep going - yes, will I keep my season ticket - yes, but only because this is part of my DNA and part of who I am, part of what my family is. Probably only in the faint hope that things will change and improve, but as we all know

It's the hope that kills ..........

 

Yes it can, but you've got to not watch, read or have anything to do with the sport for around a year.

I worked nightshifts and I honestly during those years couldn't watch a game and I didnt give a ****.

It's just like anything else... Its hard to stop, but it can be done.

 

Meh it's a ****in life sentence, deal with it.

Ashley won't be around forever, the club will.

 

A defeat still hurts as much as it ever did.
I love the club I chose, nothing will change that.

 

It hurts big style in the manner we are playing

 

I've mellowed with age. Dont get the awful feeling at the pit of the stomach after a defeat, or the massive highs a win gave me and dont get wound up when folk take the piss out of the club. Mainly down to the drudgery of supporting SAFC finally catching up to me, the way football generally is nowadays and more important things to think about. If you had told me in the 90's, during Keegan era, that some point in the future we would beat the town 6 games in a row I would have spontaneously combusted. By the time it happened I found the buzz was gone by the next day. I now even find watching football boring. I look forward to a match, and no matter whose playing, or how entertaining it is, I normally switch the channel over after 10-15 minutes. I mostly get my enjoyment out of forums like this, Soccer Saturday, the radio. I like to read/hear peoples views on the sport alot more than actually watching it. I used to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the game, now I couldnt tell you who last won the FA Cup or who won the last World Cup.

 

As someone who hasn't been to see a game live since 2016 or bough any merch I'm going to say no you can't fall out of love with your team. 25 years of ups and downs for me and while I hate the club as it is and can't support the running of it or giving my money to it, I'll always watch the matches with a (very small currently) sense of hope and optimism.

Honestly couldn't blame people for walking away from the club but for me - a soft southern fairy who works with my second team (AFC Wimbledon) - I'd never lose my love for my 1st team even while it meant watching from a far and not letting myself getting so worked up by the **** show we are currently watching.

 

Anyone that even thinks about not supporting the club anymore should be burned at the stake.

 

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