By Wordsmith Entry D
January 23 2007

What it means to be a Saint’s supporter.

 

“Never mind, it’s only a game.” “Maybe you will win next week.” “Well at least you can concentrate on the league now.” Words that we have probably all heard at some time or another from well meaning family and friends who know nothing of what it means to be a Saints supporter. Those of us who do support the saints and follow them through thick and thin (more thin that thick of late but that is the way it goes sometimes) know that it isn’t only a game, that there is a lot more to it than that, it is heart and soul stuff that we are dealing with.

 

For me watching the Saints play live is like going to the theatre with a major difference. When you go to the theatre, the script is written, and more often than not you know what is coming. With live rugby the script is being written on the pitch, as we watch, the plot begins to unfold before our eyes; the machinations of the opposition begin to become clear. Sometimes the travail of the guys in Black Green and Gold is fruitful, other times it leaves us in the crowd with eyes turgid and the only noise left to come out of our mouths is pule. Other times however, we can go home in a state of elation knowing that we have been done proud, some of us have been known to gambol around after a good win somewhere we didn’t expect to or against perhaps Leicester!! Going back to my theatre analogy though, it is unfortunate that the type of theatre that we see often could fall into the pantomime category! By that I don’t mean that it is only worth watching at Christmas or maybe never at all. I will explain. You have good guys (Obviously the Saints) the bad guys (This could be the opposition team or the officials, you can take your pick!) these can bring out booing and hissing from the assembled audience. There are catchy songs (oh Wendy et al) and sometimes we even get a bit of slapstick chucked in for free (players bumping into each other, falling over, spilling paint on each other) (ok maybe not the last one I was getting a little carried away there!) we have our vade mecum (The programme so that we can tell who all the characters are) and there in the village is the equivalent of the woman who walks around with the ice cream at the interval (half time)! We also have the lucky ones who win prizes (1^st 15 and tote tickets). Where the similarities end (as far as I am aware) is our lack of a dame and a leading boy played by a girl! (I will leave you to make up your own minds on that one!)

 

As supporters we are united together with a common cause, often one eyed, we want the ref to be Argus-eyed when it comes to the other team but it might suit us quite nicely if he were to miss Toops going in at the side or other such minor misdemeanour. On the message board we might say that we don’t like certain players or we can’t understand why they have been picked but as soon as they run onto the pitch wearing their Saints jersey we will cheer them on like they were our own children! That is what it means, we stand shoulder to shoulder with around 13,000 others at Franklins to try to be the 16^th man for OUR team. We start the season with insouciant attitudes, at the beginning of each new season we talk about on paper having the team this year to efface the opposition and to bring back to Franklins a trophy of great virtu, be that the Premiership trophy, the Heineken cup or the EDF cup. We don’t mind which really; it would just be nice to have some silverware in our trophy cabinet (and something to say to the odd robustious Wasps fan who reminds us that we haven’t won anything for years). We start with an optimism that non-supporters can find difficult to understand and some even find apocryphal but we truly believe that this year could be our year. We have no idea what is actually going to happen once we have finally played some games, when usually after some bootless matches we will perhaps start talking about how our team are only nascent and once they learn to play together and understand what Carlos Spencer is all about then we will be world beaters.

 

Being a female supporter can have its difficulties too, there is the accusation that we are supposititious in our support for the actual game and are just being lascivious watching men in shorts running around for 80 minutes, and while there may be a small element of truth in the fact that we do like to see them running around and getting those lovely legs muddy, that is merely an added bonus! Once you become a supporter you inhere yourselves with the team, the club, the other supporters and all that goes with what it means to be “Saints”. So you see, I, along with the others am no flibbertigibbet, this isn’t about something that we do on a Saturday afternoon, it is about who we are. To take away the Saints would be to stanch a part of our lifeblood! It is something that we take seriously.

 

What goes on on the pitch though isn’t the whole of it, it is a major part but it isn’t all. Some of my best rugby moments have come away from pitchside. Seeing Chris Budgen running for the coach which was going without him from Sale was one of the more amusing moments, as was Tom Smith riding down the Kettering road on what looked to be his daughters pink scooter! Both memories that I will hold in my head for a long time to come. There are also the situations that it leads me to get into. Travelling home from Bath after getting soaking wet. When we got out of the car the sun was brightly shining, I made everyone put on sun cream and left the coats in the car. After what could be described as a freak monsoon over the Rec, we returned to the car slightly damp!!! By that I mean that I looked like I had just been swimming in all my clothes so I drove home in just my underwear and the coat that I had been prescient enough to leave in the car (well I like people to think that I did it on purpose!) All the way home I was praying that I wouldn’t get stopped by the police and have to get out of the car and that I wouldn’t have to stop for petrol!!

There was also the time at Worcester. We went to get the park and ride bus back to the car park and were told by some Worcester supporters that that was the bus we needed, I prefer to think that they did it by accident and that it wasn’t an act of perfidy that we ended up on a bus that was going to a different park and ride. As it was the very kind bus driver did a detour on his way back to drop us off at the right place! What a nice man.

 

Added to all this there is the fact that once you become a Saints fan you join the community. Especially with going on COYS, it is like joining a family. You meet loads of people that without the connection of rugby you may never have come across, we may not always agree on everything (in fact, it might be more worrying if we did) but we are on the same side at the end of the day. This itself can lead to some memories which will stay with us. Who will forget such things as when Lom announced that she was cancer free? Nothing to do with rugby as such but a saints memory non the less.

 

So then, to conclude, to me it is piebald, that to be a saints supporter, it isn’t about it only being a game, it has a life of its own, and as the mastercard advert would say: cost of a season ticket - around £200. Price of a hog in a cob (a pork roll to most of you) in the village - £3.00. Being a Saints supporter – priceless.