Welcome to the first Support Your Local Saturday thread - which we will be trialling for the first time today.
The premise is a thread to talk about your local team - something of an amalgamation of the Saturday Non-PL Daily Discussion Thread, and a "match-going fan" thread.
This does not necessarily mean that only comments from fans going to their local that day - but the spirit is a Discussion Thread for people who support their local team, and especially teams from lower or non-PL leagues - who can get drowned out in the pre-existing Daily Discussion Thread.
There is a small but dedicated following in the Non-PL DDT, and we were hoping that something of a re-brand may boost participation and help to build the excellent sub-community there.
We want to keep the focus to Non-PL teams, to prevent it being drowned out by Big 6 fans - but we will soften this slightly, in that comments of PL-supporting fans are valid, providing they were "at the match" that weekend.
It may not work, but worth giving a go, eh...
Rules:
- Discussion must be of your local team - whether they were you local growing up, or are your local now
- Discussion of PL teams is allowed only if you are attending the match that weekend - and hence focused on the match day experience
- Keep a high bar. This is not the DDT. If you want to troll, bait, or shit-talk like it's Football Twitter, use the DDT. Or even better - Twitter.
Love this, mods!
After 17 games, we stood dead last on 10 points with everyone writing us off. But after picking up 16 points in the following 10 games, we now find ourselves at one of the play off spots with 3 games remaining!
Our most recent game was against Jönköping Södra where we, for the first time since the opening game, pulled a respectable away following! We managed to fill our bus (fuck me, organising bus journeys for a bunch of drunk football fans, is fucking stressful!) and plenty of cars drove down as well meaning 80+ on the away stand. It's still a shamefully low number, but for us, it's a massive step in the right direction!
Tomorrow, we face Utsiktens BK at home in a game where sponsors and supporters pay for the entrance fee, meaning it's free entry for the public. Should be a decent attendance despite the horrible weather. Utsikten were once top of the league by some margin but have had a horrendous second half of the season. Their top scorer also managed to get himself suspended in the last game because he went over to the away fans and started shouting abuse after the game was over!
On a personal level, it looks like I'll finally be able to get my perfect season after missing out 2 years in a row by one single game. My old man is heading for his third consecutive perfect season! If we manage to keep our position, the first play off game will be his 100th competitive game in a row he sees in person, mad respect for that!
A perfect season in Sweden is really impressive, I'll probably reach 28/30 this season but Belgium is tiny lol
What's the furthest away game?
28/ 30 is strong, regardless of country!
Furthest would be Östersund, a lovely 1,300 km roundtrip and Sundsvall at ~1,200. The way home from Östersund this year was absolutely fucking brutal due to heavy snow. The first 300 km's was probably the worst time I've spent in a car. Passed two trucks and a handfull of cars that had ended up in the ditch causing delays. Took us nearly 13 hours to get back home...
Lovely stuff!