Here is a personal article from Margaret, one of our regular forum contributors. I met Margaret earlier in the season prior to the Bolton game. She is a lovely person, and a very popular member of the forum. I hope you enjoy the article.

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I’m now enjoying my third era attending games. The first era started around 1950 when my dad first took me to St Andrews and ended in 1959 when my heart was broken, not in the usual way Blues breaks fans’ hearts by losing games and relegation but by the death of my hero, Jeff Hall. The second era of attendance was from 1991 to 1995, while I was back in Birmingham helping to care for my Mom. After she died, my American husband and I went to live in sunny California and I became a long distance supporter again.

At first I relied on my subscription to the Sports Argus for news of my team, which was very unsatisfactory as the papers took one or two weeks to arrive. Then one day in 1997 I went to the California Museum of Photography and my life was changed forever. There was a computer displaying the museum web site and an invitation to explore. So explore I did, and found my way onto the World Wide Web and to a Blues’ fan site. That’s when I knew that I had to get connected!

From then on, my computer upgrades were driven by the desire to improve access to news of Blues. I started by wanting to know game results and ended up finding so much more. For the first time in my life I was exposed to fans’ dialogues/debates/arguments/battles as they discussed players, tactics, managers and other fans. I was amazed at the animosity some of them displayed when they disagreed. I really shouldn’t have been so surprised because the passion is what I had liked about the game from the start. When I stood with my dad at the Railway End I didn’t understand much about the tactics but I loved the roar of the crowd and the excitement when Blues were attacking.

I have followed games by watching online text commentaries, which is probably the worst way. Online audio commentaries were better but potentially frustrating. It was terrible when the commentary cut out just as Tom Ross’s voice was rising to a scream and I was left staring at a little message saying, “Net congestion”. I even saw some games on American TV, which was great once I got headphones so that I could listen to the commentary without waking my husband at 4 a.m. in the morning or some of the other crazy times the games came on. Relegations were disasters for me because my cable company showed only Premiership games.

After my husband died, I decided to return to England and Blues were one of the factors that made me want to come home. I’d seen the pessimism on fans’ message boards but dismissed that as just coming from the moaners. I couldn’t understand why some fans were saying they didn’t want to go to games any more; supporting Blues has never been easy but surely true fans would always go to games if they possibly could?

When I arrived back in December 2008, I was looking forward to attending games with great anticipation. But I was disappointed. It wasn’t because of the bad football and the losses, as a Blues’ fan I was used to that. What I found depressing was the air of despondency; the crowd didn’t seem to be enjoying themselves anymore. I had never before experienced such a depressing atmosphere at St Andrews. I’d seen Blues lose to Walsall and Kidderminster Harriers; I was there when the Kumars went bankrupt and Blues were in the hands of the receivers. And through all those bad times, the graveyard humour continued; when the situation got worse, the jokes seemed to get better.

That’s what I’d been anticipating when I moved back here and that was what was missing. 2008-09 was the most miserable promotion season imaginable. One friend didn’t even want us to be promoted; she said it was just awful in the Premiership, watching us get beaten nearly every game.

I did want promotion; I wanted to see some of the big teams. I thought we might get relegated again but I couldn’t suppress the hope that rises at the start of every season. And halfway through the season, Blues have exceeded my wildest hopes. Though there’s been a great atmosphere in recent games it’s too early to say whether the crowd have lived up to my hopes. Supporting a winning team is easy; the test will come when we have some poor performances and bad results. If we can support them then I’ll be content, whatever our position in the table.

Margaret.