Michael Henderson

Why Blue?

I can’t say my reasons for choosing City are the noblest in the world. I read ‘Why Blue’ stories, about young lads being taken to see their first City game on their 6th Birthday by their dad. Or maybe they were born into 3 generations of Rags and rebelled by choosing City. I feel a pang of jealousy when I read such passionate stories. My story is about as mundane as it gets.

I first chose City when I was 8. I come from a family who opted out of sports. All sports. And football in particular. We liked chess. Sad but true. One day my mum bought my 2 elder brothers a football mug. One had United and one had City. The only reason my football-hating siblings asked for the mugs was because they recognised the goading potential of choosing rival teams. Then my mum turned to me and asked which one I wanted, something I hadn’t until then, given a moment’s thought. So I had to choose between my two brothers. I chose City.

I spent my schooldays fully aware that an arbitrary mug selection process was in no way supporting a team. But I still said I supported City. Somebody told me a report about how someone during a Manchester derby was attacked with a pair of nutcrackers, in an unspeakable way. Maybe I was gullible or maybe just a plain coward, but it put me off going to a football match for 15 years, though I often wanted to.

One day when I was in my twenties a friend told me he was off to a City match and asked me if I wanted to come. I said yes. Just like that. It was the late 80’s and football violence was a thing of the past. I chose to go to my first City game just as I had chosen to give blood and as I had made my first parachute jump, because I wasn’t doing anything better at the time. The painful similarity of supporting City to giving blood and free-falling only became apparent a number of years later.

So there I was walking to the game thinking about how well behaved everybody was when someone jumped on my back and tried to wrestle me to the ground. During the tussle I thought I am amongst thousands I am the only victim of crowd trouble! After a few seconds I discovered the laughing assailant was a colleague and he was messing. ‘Mike, I didn’t know you were a City supporter!’ So that was it, for the first time I actually felt like a supporter.

When I walked into the ground for the first time and I emerged at the top of the Kippax and felt the atmosphere, I put my arms in the air and thought, this is it, I have come home.

Alas I can’t remember whom we were playing or what the score was.

First printed in: MCIVTA Newsletter #503 on