On the Lewes FC forum, one suspends one’s disbelief at the sheer ignorance and arrogance of some people on it. Hardcore fans are leaving in their droves, fed up with the direction of the club and a lack of due attention tour raison d’etre proper grass roots non league football. Dispirited by the actions of the Board they no longer attend. A handful of numpties suggest supporters who do so are not real fans.
Armchair supporters who never go to games you can maybe argue are not real fans. Where do you draw the line ? Is a supporter in a de facto boycott not a real fan. Surely a fan who feels so strongly his club under the current owners is rotten to the core they boycott, is a show of a true fan. Where the health of the club is more important than the quick fix of a match.
The fans in question no longer attending Lewes FC matches were supporting Lewes FC long before the current Board and set up were ever involved and once the current set up have lost interest they will be supporting the club long after they have left.
Over the 10 years of tenure of the current mob practically everybody I used to go with has ceased to attend. 20 or so stalwarts still go, people I have vaguely known and admired over the years. But the mob from the Kings Head, my circle of friends, the guys who used to go on away trips and the crew at the back of the Philcox have nearly all gone. Replaced by a new fan, from outside the town seduced by the slick marketing by the Board.
In many of their eyes the Board have trashed the club and their style of running it is abhorrent so they don’t want to attend for now. It is called priorities, a principle, a change of lifestyle or whatever. It is a feeling. None of these fans have said, I’m just not going ever again. Most have rigidly supported the current set up and have effectively been disenfranchised by them so don’t want to go and never the previous years drifted off. Your favourite band brings out 3 howlers of new discs in a three year period. Do you still have the same love of them no. It is a simple way of life. Life is about choices and standards. For the record NOBODY I know who has left the fold as adopted a new non league team. I have been to three other clubs for matches and none will ever get close to the pure attachment I have with my beloved Lewes and the many wonderful characters at the club
It is not just about a team. Supporting a club is surely 50/50 the institution/the first team. All of us will support the first team through and through. But for many it is difficult to reconcile attending a game where your heart plain and simply isn’t in the outfit currently running the club. I read the Brighton and Hove Albion and Crystal Palace forum. The content is that 50/50 split the club/ the first team. Many people dip out of attending games at those clubs on a point of principle. I went to watch the Palace for every home game for 15 years. For me, I stopped because I felt top tier football was corrupted by the Premier League set up, and on a point of principle I didn’t want to watch spoilt overpaid brats running around a field making money for Rupert Murdoch. But 20 years on from that decision I still love the Palace and always will and will be back when I want to. Isn’t that fair enough ?
But not for the keyboard warriors and board apologists. You know if the type, if the pitch was turned into a car park they’d say, ‘well I guess it’s for the best.’
To them a fan temporarily driven away from their club isn’t a fan. What twattery. What supercilious clap trap and stupidity.
In my eyes anyone who criticises a football fan for temporary non attendance is the one who is not the fan of the club or football because they fail to understand the culture of the game and that the team on the pitch is the result of Board decisions. If you don’t like it, don’t support that Board, don’t attend. It’s your right.
Personally I simply hardly go to watch Lewes. I’m renting out my property in the town and live elsewhere and just don’t feel and inclination to go to a club I don’t believe in any more. I recently left the Labour Party as I got fed up with being a party where racism isn’t a zero tolerance issue. However I will steadfastly always vote for them as it is fundamentally a good party and I support their core beliefs. People who think you join and support and an entity and that is it, better or for worse, fail to see things can never change or evolve unless people can exercise choices
Meanwhile fans who still go aren’t not fans because they support a Board we don’t. No they aren’t bothered or they feel they should still attend or just have a different point of view. I admire them as much as I admire people who make the ultimate football sacrifice of effectively refusing to attend games of their beloved football team. It is the opinions of fans that makes the game so interesting. No club ever changed without forthright opinions and actions.
The Rights of Fans. 