By Inkworm
June 25 2006

Now the early years were a happy simple affair, in a quiet little backwater in deepest Somerset somewhere down a muddy lane (well they all are apart from the M5) many days and evenings were spent enjoying the local tipple that’s made mostly with apples. At this time the nearest rugby was a team way up north called Barf, at the time they were in the now defunct county of Avon so technically Somerset didn’t have a team, as for diveball there’s the giant killers Yeovil town who only in recent years have made the step up from some obscure local conference. That just left cricket which was a wonderful affair for standing around in the sun and stimulating the hayfever as much as possible.

Eventually I discovered that there was a greater world outside the borders, until that point we really did think the world would end with Brizzle. It seems that there are several schemes to help educate the heathens and one ex poly took pity on me so that was it, ten years ago I was off to some place that I knew nothing about called Leicester.

Those three years were a typical drink fuelled haze that had the hallmarks of a good time that would be expected from an art student. At this time I was largely isolated from the happenings of the greater city of Leicester, not even reading a single Mercury if memory serves me correctly so I certainly wasn’t aware of some team called the Tigers.

Bearing in mind this was 96-99 and saw some very great games, big names, a stack of pots and the birth of professionalism. It is without doubt a very interesting period which with hindsight I’m highly annoyed that I missed and was ignorant of. All this was to change and I was to have the error of my ways pointed out to me…

With only a few weeks left to graduation I was single and happy with the prospect of returning to the West Country until one evening at a party meeting a nice young lady, our first date was rather appropriately at the Full Back and Firkin (now the Polar Bear I think) not the most romantic place but it was raining heavily and this was dry. After a few months she was going to a game of rugby, it was some team called Tonga and another one called Italy. Despite the attendance being worse than a Munster home game for the second team there was a great atmosphere from two sets of passionate fans, I think that Tonga took the lead with a drop goal in the dying moments to win the game and that was my first experience of a great game.

After this throughout the season a whole bunch of us went to several more games and I will now apologies for being one of those annoying fair weather fans who arrived at kick off, didn’t really know anyone apart from Johnno and Oz but we still had a good time. Again I can’t remember a huge amount first hand of those games but the team kept winning even with some very tight finishes so that was ok with me.

By now I was getting to a fair few games but never actually made it to that Paris final, maybe as I wasn’t totally committed to the club at this stage, something I’ve since regretted every time that game comes up in conversation

As various friends graduated and left the city I somehow never got round to leaving but went to more and more games, having been to pretty much every game it seemed stupid not to get a season ticket. So there I was a tiger fan sitting on the try line in the members stand, but this still wasn’t enough so in conversation one day someone mentioned the unofficial site so I popped along to see what was going on. Through the site I’ve met some great people and had some very memorable experiences both at home games and away games, plus other excuses to get together. I always enjoy the ‘away’ games at Barf as it’s almost a home game for me, there’s decent stuff to drink, I understand what they say but I’d never bring myself to support them (though I always smile when Somerset beat Leicester in the cricket)

However it wasn’t all over as I seemed to know a fair few people on the Crumbie so the move over was made and I can now be found 2 hours before kick off waiting on the half way line for the game to start. Or I’ll be on the internet keeping an eye on the board.

And what happened to that girl who first introduced me? She’s there every week with me, putting up with my gob and outbursts, mourning the passing of Austin (well nobody’s perfect), and we’re getting married at the end of next season so there won’t be any fixture clashes.