Why I Became a Brewer

The date was Saturday 8th February 2003, and I did something for the first time in my life. I went to a Burton Albion match. That was the day I started supporting the Brewers and I have been all over the country watching them ever since.

As it happened, at the time I had spent more than thirty years following my hometown club, Portsmouth F.C., through thin and thin. It was during Pompey`s promotion to the Premier League as well, with good old ‘Arry at the helm, steering his band of ageing football mercenaries to the Championship title during what was supposed to be a golden era for supporters of the club. But do you know, for me it wasn`t a golden era. Whilst my friends and family were enjoying the football, what was niggling with me was the fact that every TV report, every radio interview and every newspaper article centred on the riches on offer in the promised land that is the English Premier League. Football, the game that is, rarely got a mention and I recall one game late in the season, possibly the home defeat to a struggling Sheffield Wednesday, where The Times report the following Monday was 90% focused on the fact that those lost three points could see Pompey`s dream of “Premiership Riches” scuppered. At the end there was a tiny paragraph that actually gave the names of the goal scorers.

So anyway, that particular February Saturday my son and I drove across to Eton Park to fulfil an ambition I cursed myself for not having achieved before – to go and see how Nigel Clough was faring in the Conference. The opponents that day were Telford United, which offered a local(ish) rivalry to add a little bit more spice to the game and what a game it was!

At the end of ninety minutes we had witnessed eleven goals, a missed penalty, a sending off and found out where Andy Sinton was playing out his career. Add to that we could stand to watch the match, the atmosphere in the ground was akin to how I remembered watching football in the Seventies and early Eighties and it didn`t cost an arm and a leg to get into the ground. It was fair to say I was hooked.

My family is still asking why I passed on the Pompey Premier League days to go and watch a bunch of part-timers playing at places like Chester, Gravesend, Altrincham and Halifax when I could have been sitting in the refined atmospheres of Old Trafford, Anfield, The Emirates and St. M***`s (sorry, even after “defecting” to Burton I still cannot bring myself to mention the name of that one ground). It wasn`t until I brought some of them across to Eton Park and the Pirelli that the penny finally dropped. All of them old enough to remember remarked on the same thing – “that was just like watching Pompey in the old days”. In fact my dad, a season ticket holder at Fratton Park, now tries to arrange visits so that they coincide with Burton home matches. The tight git has never actually paid to get into a Burton game, but that`s another story altogether….

In the near nine years that I have been regularly watching Burton I have made a whole new group of friends, visited a host of new stadiums and enjoyed every minute of it. I will admit that like a recovering alcoholic there has been the odd relapse and I`ve found myself back at Fratton Park watching Portsmouth, but it is always with an eye on my mobile keeping up to date with the Brewers` score. During the Pompey Premiership era I doubt that I actually got to more than a handful of their matches, whereas the recent Oldham FA Cup match signalled my 250th Burton game. No prizes for guessing where my loyalties lie now!

So that is why I find myself editing a Burton Albion website, having taken up the opportunity to do so just recently. I can`t promise everyone is going to agree with the opinions that I will post on here, but I welcome sensible discussions on all things Burton Albion and hope the Vital Football site will eventually become a place for this discussion to occur. Likewise, if you have an article you want to air, please forward it to me and I will upload it to the site.

Come on you Brewers!