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.
After an attendance of 9k in our "away" derby in our own stadium last week, it's going to be interesting how many people show up today against Walldorf. With the weather right now and a rather unattractive opponent, I'd say half of that would be a pretty good turnout.
Last week was my first official away game of the year, but that one doesn't really count, so I'm really hoping I can at least make the last two away games before the winter break. With living abroad for the first half of the year to being very buisy with work and studying in the second half, this has been my worst year attendance-wise in a long time.