David Sweeting

Why Blue?

Christmas morning 1974. A small boy was about to wake up and encounter a present which would have a profound effect on the rest of his life. At the end of the bed, inside a thin blue and white cardboard box decorated with the Umbro logo, lay a football strip. My nan had given me a City kit.

This was a bit strange because, at the time, our family lived in Reading, and my nan in North London. Our family were all Londoners with no obvious connection to the North. This mattered very little to me as I proudly put the kit on (what a fabulous colour!), shirt, shorts, socks-and-all. It mattered very little to my nan that she had condemned her youngest grandson, who had previously shown no interest in City (I remember briefly liking Leeds), to a lifetime of supporting the most frustrating, under-achieving, accident-prone football team in the country. Later I found out that she had lived in Manchester for a while – perhaps she was a closet City fan who had admired the breathtaking feats of the team in the late sixties and early seventies, and thought with City I could not go wrong. I’ll never know.

The first game I clearly remember was the League Cup Final of 1976. I remember being on the verge of tears when my dad said I could not watch the game that night on Match of the Day (after my bedtime) but had to wait until The Big Match the next day. I was pleased that Peter Barnes scored. He was my favourite player at the time. By the time my mum deemed I was old enough to go to games, City were poor. Away at QPR in 1987 (with Barnes back in the side) City huffed and puffed and lost 1-0. This game was only memorable because Robert Maxwell had threatened to amalgamate QPR with Fulham and the QPR fans staged a pitch demonstration (on their plastic pitch) to show their disgust. The next season, I contrived to get a place at Manchester Polytechnic. My first visit to Maine Road was an enormous success – we thumped Forest 3-0 in the League Cup. My stay in Manchester didn’t last long though, and before long I was back in Reading, having dropped out of college, and thus away from the Academy of Comedy. The most memorable game so far I have seen City play was again at QPR, this time in the FA Cup in 1993. Typical City – we should have been two down inside ten minutes but won 2-1 with goals from White (a cracker) and Vonk.

For me, supporting City has been a lonely experience. At school, there were plenty of Arsenal, Spurs and QPR fans because of Reading’s proximity to London, and plenty of Liverpool and U****d fans because of glory hunting. I was the only City fan. Another kid had a Man. City bag, but he said it was bought for him and he didn’t like football anyway. Being a Southern Blue is quite painful, and I’ll write about it soon in MCIVTA. Now, my girlfriend comes with me occasionally to see City (she fancies Curle) and she actually has been something of a lucky charm, only seeing City lose once. I still don’t know any City fans who would go to games with me, so the ‘pub before the game’ sounds like a good idea.

First printed in: MCIVTA Newsletter #145 on