Football has always been a tribal thing, where people come together to belong. own.
In my day, that was though the local footy club, usually in the town you were born in (or lived closest to) or where your dad came from, and where your granny and grandad still probably lived, and where you got taken to with your dad and grandad to see, every time you visited them on match day.
Even back in my day, that started to change a bit with the advent of telly and watching games on TV for the first time and people starting to own cars and transport became easier to follow 'glamour' teams such as the likes of Man United, City and even Liverpool.
From that point on commercialism kicked in, at first you used to see folk wearing United scarfs and some years later United shirts used to be seen on kids on the park or at school in games lessons, etc.
Nowadays, where is our sense of community, what is our tribe?
I've not lived in Bolton for forty years and I don't know anyone (including family and friends who still live there) who speaks well of it.
Our children have been raised on watching all the glamour teams and they want to be part of those 'tribes' and not the crappy ones their dad still follows.
If they still lived in the towns of their parents and their dads still went to the match, then yes their will always be a new generation of Bolton fans but their generation will always be different to ours, they have different life experiences of going to the match as we did - what bonded us together is now completely different than what bonds them together.
For example my generation went to the games - we couldn't watch them any other way, then along came TV and some people stopped going to televised games and watched them on telly instead. Then along came illegal streaming of games down at the pub - why go to the hassle and spend your money on tickets, when you could stay in the local with your mates and spend your money on beer instead?
Now we have iplayer, soon to have BWFC player - people won't need to go to games in the future if they don't want to - just like they don't go shopping anymore and get everything delivered to their home by Amazon or their food shop by Tesco or Asda, etc.
People still want to feel part of a tribe still, it's just that we now have different views about what our tribes are. Many feel their tribe is 'social media' - they want to be 'part' of things like hashtag 'hate Tory' or hashtag 'Remain' or whatever they call themselves, they socialise by Facebook and whatsapp groups (or whatever it is the do these days)
Lets face it, our tribe is long gone.
Walking down Manchester Road, Burnden Park, Lofthouse, Worthington, McGinlay, Big Sam, etc, are all things of the past. Do we identify with the Unibol (I think most of still think of it as the Reebok still don't we?), do we prefer all seater stadiums, did we feel as though we belong here any more?
I follow BWFC because it has been a life long habit but I've long since stopped identifying with the game (too much money) the values (something wrong when kicking a ball is more important than people trained to save lives) even the fans (look at the storming of Wembley or the attacking of players on the pitch).
The blokes at Dial Square are looking for something that they have lost - I can understand that and I hope they enjoy their ride because ultimately they will never find it because it isn't there anymore - that world no longer exists and they (like so many others who simply can't see it) have been left behind and forgotten about.
People can't live in the past, they have to move on and this is how these Arsenal fans are doing so.
Good luck to them as I guess that's what I and one or two others tried to do in setting up Nuts, in a way.
But even internet forums are now a thing of the past unfortunately...
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