Local pride is a terrible thing. Local pride clouds the best judgements of very sensible people. But pride in your small town football club is a far greater affliction - it makes grown men foam at the mouth and weep like babies where, in all other walks of life, they would walk away. I'm talking mostly from the experience of supporting my hometown club, Stockport County, for the last 16 years.
My first game was in the late summer of '98, when County were at a glorious peak of stringing 'Roy of the Rovers' cup runs together with unsustainable joy somewhere in the middle of the old Division One. My grandad took me to see an Atillio Lombardo-led Crystal Palace visit God's Little Acre, Edgeley Park, to escape with a point and the bruises to show for it.
A decade and a half later and it's now me, once a season, who watches out for my grandad as he crosses the cobbles of the 'Little Siberia' estate he grew up on, a stone's throw from County's turnstiles. For County have fallen further than most clubs could contemplate. Despite moments of glory throughout the noughties - a trip to Wembley and John Hardiker scoring two last-gasp goals to turn over Manchester City spring to mind - Stockport's fans have had to endure countless failed managers, administrations, seasonal squad overhauls and relegation after relegation. The club is now a non-league, semi-pro side and is only recognisable by the songs the fans sing and the empty shell of a stadium they play in.
It's a club we still follow but, after being a fan for almost 80 years from the days when he used to sneak in via a broken fence behind the Railway End, even my grandad doesn't have the heart to go and watch the football on display.
Still though, more than a thousand fans regularly turn up on a Saturday and buy the new shirt each season - probably more so for what it represents than the players on the pitch, who no longer get their names on the back on the basis that they'll probably earn more working in Greggs than going to training.
In fact, nearly 3,000 (myself and my grandad included) turned out to watch a recent pre-season testimonial for the clubs long-serving captain, Mike Flynn, who led County during their Division One glory days to places like Ewood Park and White Hart Lane. Swelled by the less faithful fans, hearing 'The Scarf My Father Wore' echoing from the stands as if it was Anfield on a European night took me back to watching County put greater reputations to the sword.
It is also reminded me of seeing grown men so angered by the plummet that the club would undergo that they tore up their season tickets and threw them onto the pitch. It reminded me of grown men who saw County as their escape from a dreary, former-hatting town, who could sink a few and watch the boys in blue take on all comers. That's all fallen away now - and most of the supporters with it. But there is still a hardcore faithful who travel home and away to keep the heart of the club beating.
No existing club in England has fallen as far as Stockport County, and yet people dream of it rising again. I'm not sure what depresses me more.
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