The Generation Game

I took my son to Fratton Park on Saturday as a treat for his tenth birthday. Now many would say that Barnsley at home on a chilly October evening is less a treat than a mandate to call Childline. But there are many reasons why I'm proud that he chose a trip to the south coast and donned the famous blue and white on Saturday.

My family tree has roots in Portsmouth (that I know of) dating back to the birth of my great-grandfather Henry Joseph Duke in Rudmore in 1867. They almost certainly go back further. My grandfather was at Wembley when Pompey beat Wolves 4-1 in the last Cup Final before the outbreak of World War Two. My mother was a Fratton regular during the post war years when they were back-to-back champions of England. My father used to take me to matches in the eary 70s, before hooliganism drove him away, and I still have happy memories of rattles and rosettes, the waft of Bovril and trying to match the scores to the alphabetical placeholders on the half-time scoreboard.

Nowadays, when football is all about Sky TV money, overpaid international superstars and ubiquitous merchandising, it's really important that football stays in touch with its roots.

Football gives a town or city its identity. No disrespect to the burghers of the Metropolitan Borough of Walsall, but who outside the West Midlands would even know where Walsall was were it not for the appearance of the team from the Bescott Stadium on the Pools coupon? For a city of 200,000 inhabitants (smaller, in fact than Walsall) Portsmouth is disproportionately well known around the world. The football club - and its association with being the Navy's team - has to take some credit for
this.

But so what? Is civic pride important? Yes and no. One the one hand, it certainly contributed to the tribalism that was at the root of the worst of the "football" violence of the 70s and 80s. And extreme or inappropriate civic pride leads at worst to jingoism, nationalism and xenophobia. But on the other hand civic pride, often manifested as pride in a local football team, can give citizens a reason for getting out of bed in the morning and getting them through the day in a gloomy climate of economic downturn, social inequality and political corruption.

It's important, to me at least, that we resist the marketeers' globalisation and commercialisation of football. Not just from the point of view of it being generally a good idea to resist big business, but it's also important in football that we retain the diversity that is still on offer, from Manchester United right down the pyramid to Mangotsfield United. It's at the grass roots clubs that kids still have a realistic chance of becoming involved in the game, not only on the playing side but also on the supporting and social side. My son lives in a small village some 75 miles from his nearest Premiership team, and even that's only Swansea, but the Man Utd and Chelsea (and, even worse, Barcelona) shirts are everywhere. I'm so proud when he trots out onto the village pitch in his Pompey shirt. But why are there no Hereford or Bristol City/Rovers shirts on display?

Hello, Childline?

On a personal level, it's important to me that he supports Pompey. He was born in Bristol. He has never been forced to support Pompey. OK, apart from being enrolled as a Junior Blue at birth and being dragged along to matches in a papoose. But since he has been old enough to make the choice, it's been his own decision to be a Pompey fan. It gives us something to bond over. Every time I see him now, he asks me for the latest news, almost before he asks me how I am. It keeps a family tradition alive. It gives him something in common with generations of Hardys before him, none of whom he ever met, but whom he may one day decide to take an interest in. And it marks him as an individual, refusing to follow the Premiership sheep in the playground. He'll get stick for it from his mates, of course, but if he stands up to them over this issue, it will hold him in good stead when the playground bullies inevitably come calling over more serious matters.

The only downside is that, until he gets a bit older at least, I too will have to spend chilly October evenings watching Pompey take on the likes of Barnsley.