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BORO FOREVER AND PROUD OF IT - 11-3-08
Louis Spence
On Sunday my beloved Middlesbrough Football Club gave the worst performance I have ever seen from them in an important fixture.
Believe me when I tell you that there have been some stinkers over the years and I have been a supporter for 54 years, that association having been passed down from my grandfathers to my father to me. A veneration gap.
Enough has been said about the FA Cup performance or lack of it so I want to move on from that as watching the game made me feel sick to my stomach. I'd take root canal surgery over that any day. Congratulations to Cardiff and best of luck to them for winning the match like a stroll in the park. As a contest it lasted only eight minutes.
Being a lifelong fan of the Boro, I've done some hard miles. We all have. It comes with the territory and sometimes it hurts like Hell. You only had to see the despair on the chairman's face to understand that.
Why should a mere game get to us like that when you consider the many more important things we endure? Commit a murder you serve twelve years. Support the Boro you get life.
Doing just that is part of my heritage and is in the blood. I would have crawled over broken glass to play for them. They are my home town team, my comfort and my shield. Not for proper lads the treacherous option of being a glory hunter with a Teesside postcode and a house decked out in Man United/Liverpool buffoonery.
People like that remind me of MPs who 'cross the floor' - it's only ever one way - they never change from the big club to the little one. I have all the time in the world for any supporter who backs his home town club but pass the mallet when I hear of one of these fair weather sailors. Mopey dicks.
People often talk of a siege mentality in football. Believe me our fans are weaned on it. Just like Sunday when one door closes (Aliadiere's punishment) another one slams in your face. We're inured to the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune.
We get horrendous stick from the luvvy media and our own pathetic misruling body - check out Boro's points deduction which led to relegation compared with West Ham's stern treatment over the Tevez debacle. Latterly, try Ali's 'frivolous' ban versus Frank Pampard's treatment. A morally corrupt decision if ever I saw one. (A different committee you see.) Oh?!
Silly old me for thinking there was a London bias. As if...
Middlesbrough fans are a breed apart. Genuine dog loyal supreme champions.
I'll give you an instance. For many years I went on holidays with Steve Gibson and his select travelling outfit to take on the forces' sides in Cyprus. Team members included Terry Cochrane, Bernie Slaven and Archie Stephens.
These are all ex Boro players who loved our much maligned area and its people so much that they all settled happily here despite being born hundreds of miles away. On many lads' holidays I was with Tony McAndrew and Alan Murray, again former players and outsiders who were delighted to put down their roots in this area. Different class the Boro fans they say. How true.
What's done is done. We have a relegation battle on our hands to occupy us now (just for a change). Yet we still have our aces in the hole. We have the best chairman in the world and the funniest and the most stoical fans in the land. And that makes me proud, especially when I see the torch of support being passed down.
One last thing about that match. I know exactly what my dear old Dad would have said and his Dad before him: "Typical Boro, you couldn't have got a bet on that". Oh but you could, Dad, and at good odds. Shame I didn't.
Onward and upward.
Louis Spence.
Note, I am featured on a humorous five star You Tube clip (with over 14000 hits). Just Google '2004 The Stupid Version' to watch.
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