Chris Hughes

Why Blue?

At the moment, I don’t know why I still go and support my beloved club but it must be something along the lines of this;

I was born and brought up in Worsley, Greater Manchester and have three brothers. My dad is a U****d fan and my mother, although she tries to show an impartial front has, I have always suspected, had a Blue leaning. I suppose it’s my parents ‘fault’ that I ended up Blue, since they bought two City kits and two Rag kits one Christmas in our formative years and I was one of the lucky(?) ones who got the Sky Blue.

Anyway, through my early years at school I was always proud to wear my scarf and bobble hat and always stuck up for City even though the area was awash with Rags and Bolton fans and all the arguments with my two Rag brothers were about football. My first match was a ninth birthday treat against QPR – I went with my dad and we sat in the North Stand. This was to be my first example of City’s erratic nature because I remember it being a dire 0-0 draw. Then, the week after I was sitting by the radio and listening to them win 4-2 and wishing my dad had chosen that match to go to instead of the week before. I remember him saying that he didn’t realise they could be at home two weeks running!

The years passed and I have got to admit certain pressures have been exerted on me to change but I managed to overcome them (they insisted I go along to the Swamp with them, but I always thought it was weird with all those different accents). I have always found it a better atmosphere at Maine Road and enjoy the camaraderie of the fans, especially at the away games.

I was, by the time I went to Manchester University in 1985, a Kippax season ticket holder and it was there I began to see the extent of southern Rags. For almost all of them it was their first visit to Manchester. While at Uni, I moved to Levenshulme and at last there were more kindred spirits, although alarmingly there are now quite a few Rags in this area since their recent successes – this in a supposed Blue stronghold.

My job used to take me all over the world and, although I still kept my season ticket in the Kippax, I used to have to miss quite a few games. Why did I keep the ticket – well, I actually did live in hope that someday I may need it to get first option on the semi final/ final tickets. Sad, I know, but true. I hope the boss doesn’t get MCIVTA because I will now divulge a dark secret. I was always so anxious to listen to the matches when I was away on business that I always used the hotel phone to listen to the second half the match with a radio at home tuned into GMR or Piccadilly – and you can imagine that from Australia, Japan or the States that was quite steep. Nowadays, I am office based in Altrincham so I am lucky enough(!) to be able to get to all the home games and some away ones.

For the future, I can only hope that we soon get out of the mess we find ourselves currently and start climbing what is, after all, a very poor league. It is getting difficult not to get depressed and keep my head up faced with Rag barrages from inside my own family but I will never change now. Guess what, my two Rag brothers never go to the Swamp now although, of course, they always buy the shirts etc. My brother who got the other blue kit only went to one match but still follows them as an armchair fan from down in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire – he’s the one without the grey hairs.

Best experiences

• listening to the 76 League Cup final on my tranny,
• the 81 Semi final,
• beating the Rags 5-1 (I went with the two Rag brothers and the journey home was extremely sweet),
• the 5-1 promotion game vs. Charlton in 85,
• the 10-1 vs. Huddersfield,
• standing on the Kippax at exactly the same point where Jim Melrose hit the ball and scored that goal vs. Notts County, and the whole ground going quiet before realising it was in.
• seeing the Rags getting some good stuffings recently.

Worst experiences

• the relegations (83 was the worst because that was my first experience of anything so low),
• losing in the ’81 Cup final,
• losing to the Rags on a more regular basis recently,
• having to watch them win the double,
• vs. Lincoln this season and, of course,
• last Wednesday (vs. Oxford, I really hope it doesn’t go on much longer).

First printed in: MCIVTA Newsletter #253 on