Radicalising Mother
How introducing my Mom to football helped reinvent my love for the game
To me, football is a family affair.
On one hand, my lifelong support of West Bromwich Albion gives me a direct linkage to previous generations of my family. My great-grandfather lived less a mile away from the Hawthorns. His passion for the club passed to his son, my Grandad. Through Grandad, the Albion bug was passed to Chelle – my adopted parent – and from Chelle to me. That makes me a fourth generation West Bromwich Albion supporter, the proud bearer of a torch that has been burning for over a century. In truth, my support of Albion is probably the closest thing to a family heirloom I’ll ever inherit.
On the other, football is how my family socialise. I’ve been attending matches regularly since I was 6 years old. Although in those early years it was only myself and Chelle who were going to the Hawthorns, that group has gradually grown. When Chelle and I first picked up away season tickets in 2012, my younger brother jumped on my bandwagon. Then my little sister. Then my girlfriend – now fiancée – Lindsay.
That means for the best part of twenty years, most of my nuclear family have been using the Albion as our primary gathering place. It’s been an excuse for us to travel to every corner of the country from Falmer to Fleetwood, Newport to Newcastle. It’s been an excuse to barrel into the car on a Saturday morning and head for a pre-match pint. Above all it’s been a conduit for us to spend quality bonding time together.
But throughout the past two decades, there’s always been something missing: my Mom.
Make no mistake, this has never been a deliberate policy. As opposed to Chelle, Mom – although local to the Midlands – was never raised in a football loving household. She never played, never had a team handed down to her by her family. In truth, until I started showing an interest in football around the age of 4, I don’t think it the game ever played an active role in her life at all.
All of this has precipitated a situation whereby Mom was generally back at home spending her Saturday in the company of our cats whilst the rest of us were gallivanting around the country following the Albion. I have long harboured guilt for the amount of happy memories and cherished days out Mom has missed. She wasn’t there when Albion were at their Premier League peak under Roy Hodgson and Steve Clarke. She never saw my childhood heroes Zoltan Gera and Kevin Phillips. She didn’t get to experience the visceral delight of Albion beating the Wolves and the Villa away from home.
Whilst she made the effort to come to occasional matches, Mom’s interaction with the fate of the Albion was limited to flicking on Soccer Saturday at 5:05 just to check what sort of mood we’d be in when we got home
But all of that began to change two years ago…
I honestly can’t recall a single trigger moment for Mom’s slow radicalisation.
I suspect it may have something to do with the passing away of our dog – the appropriately named Albi. Whilst Albi was still on the scene, Mom had an alibi for staying at home and avoiding the football. Quite simply, the dog needed looking after. But when Albi moved on to the big nature reserve in the sky, Mom’s weekend calendar suddenly became a lot more clear. Saturday would roll around, the clock would tick to 11 o’clock, and the entire house would empty. All of a sudden, Mom was the archetypical football widow.
The slow shift began when my younger sister – Hope – went off the university. Suddenly, her season ticket was free a few games a season. Mom - reluctantly at first - decided she’d step up and fill the void.
From that point, we got very lucky. The time at which Mom started coming to games coincided with the arrival of Carlos Corberán to the club. That means Mom watched us rise from bottom of the Championship into the play-off places with a remarkable run of 9 wins in 10 league matches in her first few months attending regular football.
Mom’s arrival also coincided with a particularly stressful time in her very high intensity job in the NHS. Having spent weeks struggling to switch off in the evenings at home, coming to the Hawthorns every weekend gave her a genuine distraction. In her own words the ground became a “bubble” where she didn’t think about anything else other than the fate of her increasingly beloved Baggies for 4 hours every Saturday.
It was a lightning in a bottle moment. Mom was exposed to the unique adrenaline of supporting a winning team at a time she needed an escape from the grind of day to day life.
In short, she was hooked.
Mom’s relationship with the Albion can be deftly summarised with the phrase “the zeal of the convert”. Amongst a sometimes weary band of Albion faithful with two decades of painful Hawthorns communion under their belts, Mom remains in a genuinely childlike honeymoon period which imbues the entire match day experience with a new energy.
Having Mom join us for the ride has truly allowed me to engage with football with fresh eyes.
As someone who is not steeped in the intricacies of football culture, she has made footballing phenomena which have become unremarkable to my eyes seem remarkable again. She has made the jaded seem joyful.
I have been struck anew with the hilarity of mockingly shouting “handball” for five minutes after any opposition appeal. I have come to re-appreciate just how irritating it is when an opposition full-back sidles 10 yards down the touchline any time he’s got the ball in his hands for a throw in. Above all, watching Mom engaging with the atmosphere at the Hawthorns – jumping for joy as we score late winners, sinking in her seat as we get torn apart – has re-emphasised to me just how special it is to be able to meaningfully throw oneself into such a visceral, all-encompassing passion as the Albion.
A particularly unexpected pleasure has been Mom’s commitment to trying to complete the 92. Ever a lover of structured fun, Mom has become obsessed with ticking off as many grounds as she can – and has even gone so far as to join footballgroundmap.com to track her progress. For Mom, the away day experience is an experience of thrilling tribality and adventure. It gives her a chance to travel to areas of the country she never has, be involved in an expressive culture that would otherwise remain closed off.
As I sit writing now, I’m sat next to Mom on the train on the way to Millwall.
It’s a classic away day. Me, Mom and my fiancée will arrive at Euston, hop across to London Bridge and meet up with my brother and uncle for a couple of pre-match pints around Borough Market. We’ll suffer through the match, then we’ll head into Peckham to meet a few of our friends. It’s going to be a Saturday spent how any weekend should be – letting off steam in the esteemed company of those you care most about.
It seems particularly apt that we’re off to the capital in the forlorn hope of seeing some footballing ecstasy, because in essence, it’s going to be a day that encapsulates exactly what my Mom’s slow radicalisation into the ways of the Albion has brought back home to me.
There’s a famous old adage, the football is the least important thing about going to the match. In other words, it’s not about the result, it’s about the wonderful memories we make along the way. Having Mom along for the ride has not only reignited my delight in the inane elements of football culture, but it has reinvigorated my love for the game as a conduit for spending my precious free time with those I love most in the world.
Not a day goes by when I don’t feel exceptionally lucky that my family – now my entire family – have something that binds us together. For us, the Albion is a thread, a totemic experience around which we can congregate.
With Mom’s arrival into block G22 at the Hawthorns, the puzzle now feels complete.
This is beautiful! I too, agree that football can be a family affair, building community and connections. That's football at its best, in my humble opinion.
It's interesting to think of too, in light of the work I'm doing with the Fulham Lillies - we're working to develop a charter for clubs to sign onto that shows intention of being "family clubs" - because as of now, so much of the football experience can be difficult for young families (lack of adequate facilities, not allowing young children into stadia, high ticket prices for young children, and more), and often the mother ends up being the one sacrificing her football experience. Here's to working to make football a place for all families!
Josh this is a wonderful piece. As a mum who radicalised her son into football and then he re-radicalised me, it resonates. I first took my son to see Orient when he was 3, then when he was 8 we moved from London to Cambridge. When he was 9, despite efforts to persuade him to go and see Cambridge United, he declared he was “Orient til I die” and begged me to start taking him again which I did. The rest is history…
I always compare it with Stockholm Syndrome - I have to travel hundreds of miles across the country to follow Leyton Orient with my boy and like a hostage falling in love with their captor, I am now obsessed too! Haha