Confessions of a bad football supporter

This is the February article from Scawby magazine:

We're just over half way through the football season and I have been to three matches. That may not seem like very many, but it's about the same as my total for the previous four seasons put together – and unusually two of those matches were to see my team play! I'm a Tranmere Rovers supporter and so since they dropped out of the same league as Scunthorpe, I've had limited opportunity to see them play until this season when they joined the same league as Grimsby and Lincoln.

It's often said that football is a bit like religion. Aside from the tribal nature of supporting teams, the matches themselves share similarities with religious services. Both the players and supporters have match-day rituals, the supporters tend to sit in the same place (and would do so even if they didn't have allocated seats), there is adulation of players past and present and there tends to be a rose-tinted view of 'glory days' in the past, when everything was much better. Then of course there's communal singing and the friendships formed between fellow supporters, and you can probably think of other similarities.

If supporting a football team is similar to being a religious believer, then I am a football supporter in a similar way that a lot of people are believers. The Roman poet Horace described himself as “A remiss and irregular worshipper” (Odes 1.34) and I feel the same about being a Tranmere supporter. If people ask me I'll tell them I support Tranmere, but I don't follow their progress closely, I don't know where they are in the league, and sometimes can't even remember what league they're in. I don't often go to see them play and when I did go to see them play this season I realised I didn't know any of the players and I didn't even know who their manager is! I used to be a season ticket holder and went to most home games and the occasional away match (especially if it was at Wembley!), but even then I wasn't really an avid fan. I'm a Tranmere supporter, but I do very little that would count as 'support' and it hardly ever affects my life.

And a lot of people are the same about Christianity: if asked they would say they are Christians, but aside from occasionally coming to church it hardly ever affects their life. But perhaps worse still are those who come to church most weeks but it still doesn't affect their lives – that's like going to watch Tranmere on a Saturday but wearing a Liverpool shirt for the rest of the week!

Lent is a good time for us all to reassess where our priorities and loyalties really lie. It's a chance for us to explore and deepen our faith, however 'remiss and irregular' we are. It's a chance to reaffirm our identity as Christians and take seriously the need for it to affect our whole lives. Like being a Tranmere supporter, being a Christian isn't always easy and attracts a lot of ridicule, but unlike being a Tranmere supporter the future is certain and it's glorious!

[The motto on the Tranmere crest above means "where there is faith, there is light and strength"]