How To Measure The Value Of A Fan?

Football fans come as we know in different sizes. There are those who go and follow their team week in and week out. There are those who go and see their team maybe once a year once they’ve saved up enough money.

There are some who are die-hard fans who stay true to their teams and there are some who remain loyal to the cause despite losing faith every so often when there’s a bad result here or there.

There are some who live miles away who spend every spare moment of their time devoting themselves to the team and there are some who may live nearby whom just go to the match and leave it as that.

It doesn’t matter whether you are a Manchester United fan or a Plymouth Argyle fan, but the facts are that every fan can associate certain individuals that they know as a certain type of fan as well as themselves.

Whilst I can’t say that I am a die-hard United fan myself as I don’t believe that I would be considered one by the ‘average’ fan – rightly or wrongly because I’ve only been to Old Trafford to see a game once – I would consider myself to be a good fan of the club.

The reason why I thought about writing this article dates back to an incident in April when I declined to watch our Champions League quarter -final second leg at home to Chelsea at Old Trafford to go and watch my local Non-league side Redbridge FC play our local rivals Romford.

Now without going into the details of Redbridge, I will be frank and say that as much as I love and care about them (as I am the club’s press secretary) they are in a different world to United. Their home ground the Oakside on a good day gets around about 40-50 people turn up (and that number includes club and league officials) whilst United of course as we know on average get only the 75,000 fans coming through the turnstiles every game.

As United made their way through the knockout stages of the Champions League last year, I noticed early on that there was a chance that our second leg of the quaters’s could clash with Redbridge’s game. As soon as it was confirmed that there would be a clash, I thought of an idea that at least in my eyes was a win-win – I would go to the game but listen to the United/Chelsea game on my radio.

My dad and brother immediately looked down on me for even thinking this, basically saying the following:

‘Come on, you’re going to miss arguably our biggest game of the season up to date for that crappy little club you go and report for, why are you taking your radio with, if you don’t want to watch the game why even bother to take your radio with, really I’ve never heard of anything so pathetic in my life’.

I am not going to lie here, but I could understand their views, after all it was a huge game for us with a place at Wembley awaiting the winner of the tie and it wasn’t as if we had gone into the game with a convincing lead. After all we were only a goal ahead and even with Fernando Torres misfiring for the Blues, no United fan would have gone into the game feeling 100% certain that we would do the job given their quality.

But for me, I felt that I was doing the ‘right’ thing by going to my local side where in my role as press secretary I have my duties on match-days to do (aside from writing the match report and interviewing the manager) and that as a club-man it would be unfair of me to not turn up and do.

I thought that by having my radio with me, I would still be fair to United and that even though I wouldn’t be able to watch the game, I would still – even 220 miles away from Old Trafford – at least in my opinion childishly perhaps feel part of that game.

When I got to the game at the small Oakside Stadium, my friends at the club even laughed at me when I answered their question as to why I had headphones on watching the game. I have to admit to getting annoyed at games when I see fans (well those few we do have) following and shouting out the latest goal updates from their phones so I guess perhaps taking a radio along to a game (even if I was going to keep the score to myself) was slightly hypocritical in one respect.

Anyway as we know United won the game 2-1 to advance through to face Schalke in the semi’s of the Champions League whilst Redbridge for those of you who care (which I suspect is probably as many people who have heard about the Ryman League club before) lost their game 3-1.

The question that I would like to ask people is was I right to do what I did that night in April and does it make me any less of a fan for doing so. Obviously there are times when you are unable to watch your team play but should I have stayed at home and watched the game like my dad and brother thought I should have.

Does that make me any less of a fan and what in your opinion are qualities that a good supporter of any club should have?

By Adam Dennehey @ADennehey87