Recently, there has been much accusation that Birmingham City supporters are suffering from increased apathy – I myself have been guilty of using that word to describe the support at times. With the continuing ambiguity regarding the ownership and sale of the club, our depressing home record and the humiliation of last Saturday, it could be argued that it would be hard not to become apathetic. However, if the last few days have proved anything to me, it’s that this isn’t the case at all.
So what has happened in the last few days that has caused the apathy to subside? Obviously the news that Gary Rowett is back at Birmingham having taken up the management position has greatly increased the optimism. I for one am delighted. He was a favourite player of mine back in the 1998/99 season. His interview on Tuesday night was impressive.
The Open Meeting facilitated by Blues Trust on Tuesday night was also encouraging. There was a real sense that those supporters that attended had had enough of the apathy too. They want a change for the better, and want to do something that will act as a catalyst for that change.
In this turbulent and challenging time that us Blue noses find ourselves in, there has been a call for unity. With this in mind, I want to find out more about the varied and numerous supporter groups that we have in order that we may find out more about them, and indeed unite. We may be in different parts of the country, or indeed the globe. We may belong to one group or several. The groups may be run in different ways. However, we have all got one common interest – and that is our beloved club. By finding out more about these other groups we may be inspired to work together and quash the apathy that we are sometimes guilty of fostering ourselves.
This week I have been communicating with the Birmingham City Norwegian Supporter’s Club, which was founded by Martin Kolsrud back in 1981 when he was fifteen years of age.
You can read more about this in the pdf document here entitled “Who Knows our Bluenoses? – A Focus on Supporters”.
I am a one man Bluenose band living in the Lake District and I love the Club so much that emotionally I am finding it very difficult to cope with what is going on. All I will tell you is that I told Pannu and the owners to clear off when Hughton left and again on Saturday Pavlakis was given the same message. I also like to think that David Conn in the Guardian does respond when I e-mail him (see the excellent article on the Blues in the Guardian on 29 October 2014)
Make no mistake things are going to get a whole lot worse before they get any better and there will never be any peace whilst the current owners are in post. Would you ever trust them? I certainly wouldn’t. And do not be taken in by Pavlakis. One of my favourite expressions is:
“Fine words butter no parsnips”
Like Mark(with whom I went to school) I am a long standing Bluenose whose earliest memory of St Andrews is being lifted over the turnstile at the age of four( in the early fifties), to sit on my father’s lap in his season ticket seat near the press box.I have many other great memories, some good like being there when Trevor Francis made his debut, and some not so good like a humiliating home defeat 1 -7 by the ‘Baggies’. I left Birmingham for the ‘soft south’ in 1974 but will remain a Blues supporter for life. I wish I could be more active in the current struggle but I thank all those who are actively striving for our club’s survival and wish you the best of luck