Supporting your Team & Changing Allegience

[goodNumber10]

Just reading the article in Rugby world about Saracens and I realised I’ve really warmed to a team I used to absolutely loath â€"they are a good team and off pitch the things they are doing at the club and their whole approach I find really inspirational. People knock them and yes a lot of it comes down to money

Just got me thinking about who I support team wise (Wasps) and why.

Who do you support, and why do you support them? Have you always supported them?

 

[Feicarsinn]

Leinster. I'm from there and the ground is on my way home. Also, we're dead sexy.

 

[goodNumber10]

Leinster. I'm from there and the ground is on my way home. Also, we're dead sexy.

is their a local club you support?

 

[TRF_heineken]

I'm a Blue Bulls fan, have always been one. I grew up in Blue Bulls country, at age 6, when we start with rugby at school, they call it in Afrikaans: "Bulletjie Rugby" which is loosely translated to "little bull rugby". When I was 10 years old, my dad took me and my brothers to Loftus for the first time. It was the 1995 World Cup and France was playing against Scotland. Since then I've been pretty much hooked on the stadium and the team. When I was 12 years old, I played cricket for the local club, and Victor Matfield's father, who was also my school principal, was our coach. Victor is a bit older than me, and he used to come and help his dad in teaching us to play cricket. When I got to High School, Victor started to play proffessional rugby, he started at the Griquas, and I have been following his career ever since.

So yeah, that's basically how I got to become a Bulls, Loftus and Victor fan.

My brother on the other hand supports WP/Stormers, and hates the Bulls...

Leinster. I'm from there and the ground is on my way home. Also, we're dead sexy.

Every time you say dead sexy, you remind me of:

 

[ratsapprentice]

There are lots of good things about Saracens - unfortunately their loathsome PR department (and Griffiths) would have you believe they are the only club who do those things.

I have supported Bath for the past 3 or so years. I am neither fickle nor parochial - if the club starts to do things that I do not agree with, or I lose interest in their squad then I will stop supporting them.
At the moment and for the foreseeable though, I fully support them. I initially started to support them because I liked their players.

Being a North-West Londoner I do have a big soft spot for both Wasps and Harlequins, and follow them closely, even if I hope they lose against Bath (I should say I hope Bath win!).


At the end of the day I am a rugby fan, and like to support players even if I dislike their club.

 

[SelimNiai]

Been a Bristol fan since I was old enough to know about rugby. Was born in Cardiff and spent my first 6 years there but my family moved over to Weston Super Mare, right into the Bristol combination club system. My dad had been a Bristol supporter way before that so I suspect had we stayed in Cardiff longer I'd still be a Bristol fan. My local teams, Weston Hornets RFC and Nailsea and Backwell RFC have had links to Bristol so was easy.

I still support the Blues as my "hometown" club and a few years back, when Bristol's future was looking bleak there always was the secondary team. I always want the 4 Regions to do well regardless of my Cardiff ties.

 

[TRF_stormer2010]

Born in Blue Bulls country and my dad supports them still but we moved to the Cape early on (I was 7) and I 'made the switch' to WP/Stormers simpy because;

1 I represented WP in athletics
2 It's the place I got sense in, grew up in and know and love
3 I love the way we used to play rugby when I went over
4 close and easily accessable and I went to school with Andries Bekker
5 like the jerseys
6 I don't generally don't get on overly well with people from other provinces bar the Eastern Cape or Free State, would be difficult to put my finger on it but we just see life differently in the different provinces I guess

My granddad played rugby for the Free state and that and the EP is where the family name 'hails from' so I have links with all of WP, Free State, EP and Northern Transvaal (Bulls)

 

[TRF_heineken]

Born in Blue Bulls country and my dad supports them still but we moved to the Cape early on (I was 7) and I 'made the switch' simpy because

Verraaier!!

6 I don't generally don't get on overly well with people from other provinces bar the Eastern Cape or Free State, would be difficult to put my finger on it but we just see life differently in the different provinces I guess

This is actually true!! But then again I think everyone gets on well with Cheetahs fans. But I find Sharks fans to be the most snobbish people in the world (Draggs and Zeke, relax, I mean this towards Sharks fans who actually live in SA).

 

[Geordie]

Pretty obvious by the name but i suppor the Newcastle Falcons.

My home club, far from perfect but ive supported them for so many years that i put up with it.
Things are improving though.

Also we do attract some wonderful players....Hayman, Tuigmala, Matt Burke....etc etc

 

[TRF_stormer2010]

Verraaier!!

This is actually true!! But then again I think everyone gets on well with Cheetahs fans. But I find Sharks fans to be the most snobbish people in the world (Draggs and Zeke, relax, I mean this towards Sharks fans who actually live in SA).

Well, I just don't get 'inherited fandom' LOL.

I find Natalians and proper Transvalers (very generally speaking here of course) unbearable as well but they'll call us 'snobbish'. Agree most Free staters are pretty down to earth friendly people.

 

[TRF_heineken]

Well, I just don't get 'inherited fandom' LOL.

I find Natalians and proper Transvalers (very generally speaking here of course) unbearable as well but they'll call us 'snobbish'. Agree most Free staters are pretty down to earth friendly people.

You know what they say about a man still supporting the Lions? his wife beats him...

 

[LeinsterMan (NotTigsMan)]

was Born in Leicester moved to Cheshire but went to School in the Midlands, Leicester has pretty much always been my nearest club.

I tend to like clubs that former tigers players (that I have met and liked) now play for (outside the Primiership or Toulon) e.g. now Flood is at Toulouse there're my Top 14 team, likewise Mafi and the Western Force.

Hell I have a soft spot for South Africa due to some of my earliest memories at tigers was meeting and watching Joel Stransky and Fritz van Heerden play.

Mind you same could be said about New Zealand with Mauger, Gibson and Kronfeld (although the 2 former were later)

 

[TheRugbyRef]

I support the referee!

(Runs for cover)

 

[Imagine]

I grew up in Jo'burg, on the East Rand to be exact, my dad supported the Sharks and my friends either supported the Bulls or they didn't watch rugby. I never felt loyalty to either franchise and was basically a man without a team. As I got older and my love for rugby grew I started to think about what it is to support a team, do you support them when they are winning? Yeah of course. But then, what if they are losing???? After thinking about this for some time I realised, "I am from Jo'burg and we already have a team!!!", so why adopt one from somewhere else?!! It's not always easy to get to the games because the stadium is located in an unfriendly part of town but it's my town and the Lions are my team.

P.S. We really do need a new stadium though, preferably near Sandton

 

[lynam1104]

Pretty much the same reasons as Feic apart form the ground being nearby. Born in Dublin and lived there for the first 9 years of my life where I basically inherited them as my team, I did only really get into supporting them in 09 after I stared closely following rugby post GS. Always root for other Irish teams when we're not playing them, particularly Ulster.

In Super15 I support the Reds for a few reasons, firstly they were my team in Rugby08 world league and secondly the first time I watched super rugby was Reds V Saders in 2010 where the reds beat them and then went on to play entertaining rugby for the whole season.

 

[big ginger 8]

Yeah support Leinster because I'm from and live in Dublin. Also represented them once at underage level.

If you want a more local club (which a lot of Irish fans won't have due to the provinces being the professional teams) than it'd be St Mary's College RFC, attended and played for the school and playing for the club this year which I also live down the road from. As one of the top clubs in Ireland it has produced a lot of players such as Jonathan Sexton, Tony Ward, Paul Dean, Malcolm O'Kelly, Dennis Hickie, Rodney O'Donnell and John Moloney just to name a few of it's Lions.

 

[Draggs]

Verraaier!!



This is actually true!! But then again I think everyone gets on well with Cheetahs fans. But I find Sharks fans to be the most snobbish people in the world (Draggs and Zeke, relax, I mean this towards Sharks fans who actually live in SA).

Damnit Hein, I had my pitchfork ready to go!
You were in for a good moering!

 

[Groundhog]

I'm from Dublin and have spent and played my whole short life within the Leinster rugby boundaries, but my dad and his family are all from Limerick, and as such I was raised a Munster fan.
I never regret it, even though we've been the worse team for a few years because at the end of the day, it means I don't have to go to a show jumping arena to support Jamie Heaslip's awful barnetted head (although it must be said I go to a lot of Leinster matches in said arena, while it's been a while since I've been to Thomond).

 

[TRF_Olyy]

Sale Sharks,
Dad's side of the family is from that way (various family members have played for Fylde, which has close links to Sale). Although I grew up in the midlands almost equidistant from Tigers/Worcester, with everyone round here supporting Tigers and my cousin in the Warriors academy, I've always supported Northwest sides.

Also, let's be honest here, does anyone actually want to be a Tigers fan if they have a choice?

 

[Big Ewis]

I love how seriously everybody's taking this.

Well for me I'm as much a Toulouse fan as I am of any other Top 14 team or even Premiership, provided the others do shiit I like...I'm what you would call in our modern jargon a "turncoat" extraordinaire. I'm ssssspineless, oh so odorless the stench is unbearable. I'm so transparent I make invisible things that don't exist jealous. I make ocean mollusks like jellyfish look like Rocco Siffredi's penis mid-way through a hardcore, particularly depraved anal scene. I don't go both ways, I go all ways. In fact the concept of a "way" really is quite alien to me all matters thought through...I'm this disgusting, abject matter that compliments all things fecal and mucosal, a level below the standard notion of 'discharge', I am neither secretion nor parasitic, I just can't care for a club or a country, my flag is whichever the wind remotely brings me before and I don't have a second thought about it. Principles are pure science-fiction to me and a funny utopic belief. You say loyalty, I say staleness. You say fidelity I say pish posh boring let's change channels.
I'm so repugnant they wouldn't know where to classify me along with the Draculas, Frankenstein monsters or ghouls.

So that's that...anybody hungry ? No ? Anyone ??