Our Game, Our Clubs

Introduction

A Game Like No Other - The Football Community in Action

THIS BOOK IS about how being a football supporter is far from a passive experience, on and off the field. It is (or can be) about the transition from friendship, community, identity and tribal loyalty to a real interest in how your club is run, how the game as a whole is being managed and what difference you can make as an ordinary fan. In short, it is concerned with how you can be involved in 'community ownership' and other ways of shaping the game you and I love. It also looks to explore how the governance of the game needs to adapt to protect our clubs and the communities that they represent, even if that is uncomfortable for many who would prefer the status quo to remain intact.

Football is in the Bloodstream

Let's start at the beginning. No matter where you travel in the world, there will always be a football connection waiting to be made to smooth your journey along the way. Whether you are on a beach holiday in Spain, safari in South Africa, or are promenading in Blackpool or Fife, you will find that a football blether allows many ordinary folk to communicate more easily. Football is a conversation starter which opens a door, enabling people to get to know one another incredibly quickly. This is because it's much more than a game. To those of US caught in its spell, it's an emotional aspect of your life that you can't hide. Football really does have the power to unite. It has more global followers than all the religions of the world combined. Through the beautiful game, complete strangers can become friends - and friendly rivals.

The fact that football is loved and revered worldwide means that you will rarely be more than ten feet away from another fan in any public space, no matter what you are doing or where you are visiting. With an estimated global audience of 3.5 billion viewers at the World Cup, as a football supporter you will have a lot in common with very many people on this planet through this unique love. What is guaranteed is that no matter where you are there will be someone in your orbit who cares about the game just as much as you do. So, not only is football a kick-starter for getting acquainted quickly, it is also a uniquely fast means for gleaning all kinds of information from your soon-to-be best pal!

Spotting a fellow fan is now easier than ever, with the football shirt a fashion item just as popular as body artwork. It allows other people a ready way to identify where you are from (unless it is one of those clubs with a significant worldwide reach) and it shows a deep love for the football tribe you belong to. In Scotland we know, of course, that even wearing a Celtic or Rangers shirt it is just as likely that these fans are from Falkirk, Dundee, Peterhead or somewhere even more far-flung, given the way that our supporter bases have evolved over the years.

The dominance of the big two clubs from Glasgow over many years has had, and continues to have, an identification not just with winning, but also with being part of a particular religious, political or cultural group. That can be the challenging side of the game. But, as we shall see, even negative energy can be turned into something much more positive.

In many other countries too, fans decide to follow big teams that win all the time, and which constitute exciting, glamorous brands. Seeing lads and lassies wearing Manchester City, Liverpool or Chelsea kits (among the most popular), can of course be deceptive. These clubs aspire to be global signifiers in their own right, often dissociated from a tangible experience of their community of origin. A new worldwide fanbase has been birthed through massive television and online audiences across all the continents of the globe. Indeed, it is now more than likely that English Premiership fans might be from Baltimore, Sydney, Accra or Tokyo, rather than from around the corner! That is the very reason why billionaires, Arab states and dubious business owners aspire to football club ownership - it is all about the brand and the audience it can attract. The power and reach of football can offer them something that no other business acquisition ever can.

From Local Roots to Larger Horizons

Before the game sold much of its soul to broadcasting, Chelsea fans were from London and Liverpool fans were from Merseyside. Now, as a supporter, it's not that easy to recognise the visible local signs of community, and you would have to work so much harder to make a real connection in that sense. If anything, this book is about renewing those links. It is about how supporters and communities can regain control of a game that they helped bring into being, so that the huge market of football can serve the people who make football what it is, rather than the other way around.

But what about me? Where am I coming from in writing about this extraordinary game and how do I see fans getting involved in reshaping it towards a better future? When someone hears my Glaswegian accent on a foreign trip, or even on a simple cross-border train journey, curious fellow supporters often ask what is for them the most obvious question. Are you a Celtic or Rangers supporter? With such limited exposure to the ins and outs of Scottish football, it is a reasonable starting point given the huge followings these clubs have. By some estimates, indeed, over half of those who support a team in Scotland back one of the Glasgow giants.

Just for the record, the answer I usually give varies according to the audience. The polite version veers towards the mantra adopted by my team, Partick Thistle. We are the great Glasgow alternative to the Old Firm. Of course, my own description makes Partick Thistle sound so much more bohemian and interesting than they really are. The important thing for me is that the Jags are part of my family. It's great to know that out there in the big wide world there are people who actually do know a little about my football club, even if it's just their rather exotic name. It is generally a knowledge limited by the level of exposure they have to the Scottish game. But just as I know that the Spireites are Chesterfield FC who play in blue and white stripes, there will be a collective knowledge out there that Thistle are the Jags, play in red and yellow, are the 'wee team' in Glasgow or more recently were trying to make supporter ownership way more complicated than it needed to be. A small piece of football knowledge becomes the starting point for passing time with a new acquaintance, or even finding a friend for life.

What we always discover through these encounters is that, as football supporters, there is ultimately far more that unites us than can ever divide us. Only the colour of our scarves makes us different on a match day. This is something that many outwith the game fail to understand, and which forms the basis for this book. Yes, we all support different teams, but in coming together as fans who love the game as a whole, we can find a common basis for re-asserting that the beautiful game really does belong to us, and that having true supporters and grassroots neighbourhoods involved in running our clubs is vital for its future flourishing, alongside the globalised, media-driven interest that the digital age offers.

So, the starting point on the long journey towards finding out how supporters can win with community ownership is recognising that the unique football tribe we belong to is central to our being, but also knit into a larger fabric (from the league we are in, right up to the overall national governing body). The beginning and end of the journey is always the team, though. This is the DNA that has been woven into the social environment which we have inherited from our family. Many esteemed anthropologists have explored the benefits and difficulties of fan culture and the importance to us of being part of a wider collective. That remains fundamental in all that follows.

A New Energy for Community Ownership

We all know how a crowd can generate massive energy in the peak moments of a sporting event, driving the athletes or teams we have an emotional investment in to even greater achievement. What we now know is that the collective force which can motivate on-field performance, taking it to a new level, can also have a huge role in involving us in nurturing and shaping the destiny of the club in the widest sense. That means everything that happens off the pitch, as well as on it. The purpose of this book is to give the reader as much background knowledge on how community ownership in football has emerged, what it means, how it is changing the landscape of football forever and why that seismic change can only be good for the health of the game we love. Indeed, it is essential to its flourishing and provides the perfect antidote to the globalisation of the game.

In the chapters that follow, my aim is to take you on a journey. First, we will delve deeper into the unique world of the football community, exploring how the bonds that have been created through sporting experience and love of the game have become an energy that is changing the landscape for future generations. Through a bizarre range of circumstances, I have been involved in many of the purchases, or attempted purchases, by fans across Scotland. I have also been asked to speak about and share those experiences in Ireland, Turkey, Germany, Belgium, Spain and many other places - and of course at more than a few clubs too.

Strange though it may seem, involvement with community ownership has led to me being literally chased around a Premiership boardroom table by an irate club director, working closely...