What Do You Enjoy About Watching Swindon?

[herthab]

So, after yet another piss poor excuse of a performance on Tuesday night I was talking with my girlfriend (who has no grasp whatsoever of how supporting a football works) when she asked me what I got out of watching Swindon. Bear in mind I've only been seeing her since the end of last November (In that time we've won the grand total of TWO games!)

My argument sounded pretty pathetic even to me and when she started to work out how much I spend in total on going to games I resorted with the: "You don't understand, it's more than a game!" approach.

The problem is that she genuinely wants to understand what I get out of spunking a large amount of cash on following a team that is shit. More than this, she wants to know why I continue with an activity that (By my own admission) usually leads to me being more miserable after it than I was before.

Has anybody else been in this situation and if so, did you present a better defence than me?

[Boeta]

because all the endless games and seasons of drudgery make the occasional highs (like the leeds games last season) so, so, so much sweeter. it's a drug - you want to recapture the feeling of those times but the highs are only so good because you have watched so much shit previously

[walrus]

What Boeta said.  Watching a team that you feel a genuine affinity for, usually due to geographical reasons, means you are so much more connected to the results of the team.  Standing by a piss-poor excuse of team means then when the inevitable(!) highs do eventually come, the emotion is all the stronger, and you can laud it over all the Fair Weather Big Team supporters by stating you were actually there, through the highs and the lows.  You saw them at Oldham at home ('04(?)), where we'd lost seven games on the bounce despite having an extra man for the whole game, but then you screamed your lungs out at Mansfield at home next game and saw the team grind out an incredible 2-1 win.  That useless donkey Eric Sabin smashing in the winner, the winger come striker once compared to a world beater who would have looked better placed on an athletics track than on a football field.  The relief, the belief that the team might actually stay up.

Fast forward six years and you're at Charlton away, the team are down to ten men and losing, slipping out of the playoffs they'd over-achieved to reach.  You know deep down having watched the team that they haven't a hope, that grabbing wins from the jaws of adversity isn't their style.  Then Danny Ward grabs the unlikely equaliser, but you still think ultimately they're going to get pipped.  Somehow, the team survives to the penalty shoot-out, but no matter, Swindon never win on penalties.  And yet.....

[Ginginho]

It's not all about the football, it's nice to occasionally meet people before/after the game for a drink.
I also go with my old man so it's nice for me to spend a few hours with him in misery as we watch that shower of shit.

[Don Rogers Shop]

A couple of hours away from the fucking missus.

That's pretty much it at the moment to be honest.

[Rustle]

I've had the same said to me but not by the mrs as shes a big town fan aswell, My mum questions why i waste my money watching that rubbish (her words)

I think you are right about it being a drug and this season i been asking the same question as to why i bother and then i think back to may at wembley before the game and remember what a great day it was before the game' watching a sea of red white travelling up the M4 and then in the pubs beforehand and realise this could happen again in the future.

It's about expectation and that winning feeling whether you are fighting promotion or relegation.

Plus it beats staying at home or being dragged around the shops.

[herthab]

Plus it beats staying at home or being dragged around the shops.

While I agree with the above, it's not really an argument that she'd be receptive to!

[Arriba]

i get nothing out of it anymore, hence why i've stopped going.

[Peter Venkman]

Because its my religion, thats it basically, its been there pretty much all my life and will be till the day I die, I have no control over it, it bit me and will not let go despite how shit everything is this season there is always one result that makes you think its all worth it (like the Lidls result last season and play offs etc) but its there and however much it pisses me off I still have it there with me ever fucking hour of every fucking day.

Thats what I tell the missus anyway and she fully understands that as you know Steve, mostly because she told you and Flash that Tuesday!

[phelpsieboy]

Due to our awful season I have decided to tear my season ticket up and become an Oxford fan

[Barnard]

It's the anticipation on match day (even though I've been resigned to relegation since Southampton away, there's a little part of me that is quietly hanging on to the deluded belief that we will win every game until the end of the season and stay up.).

It's moments like the Charlton Play-off's, which give me a high that far outweighs the lows of shit seasons like this.

It's the mates that are my mates because of football, who I don't see enough of now, but who I know I will see at certain away games. And in fact, having those mates turn up on my front door on a saturday morning in September with no warning, having woken up with hangovers and decided that they needed to drive to Wiltshire from North London to come to the County Ground.

It's finding that the bar under the stand at Dagenham had Magners on tap.

I've been going to Swindon for over 25 years. There isn't any other hobby/leisure activity/type of entertainment/masochistic urge that has stayed with me this long. It's part of my identity, like it or not.

[juddie]

bang on.

It's moments like the Charlton Play-off's, which give me a high that far outweighs the lows of shit seasons like this.

I've been going to Swindon for over 25 years. There isn't any other hobby/leisure activity/type of entertainment/masochistic urge that has stayed with me this long. It's part of my identity, like it or not.

[juddie]

plus, like ginginho said, it's some rare father and son time, which I hope will continue when/if I have a lad and he decides to continue the cycle of misery.

[Benzel]

It makes the good times feel really good.

This is one hell of a trough compared to the peak of last year. But we're used to it and we'll go back for more next season in the hope of some more highs.

[juddie]

in years to come we'll laugh at going 25 games without a win, Paul Hart, Pericard and co.

Unless we do a bradford.