Through wind, rain, sleet and snow
Family tradition says I have to go
It’s in my blood but I don’t care
If the Blues are playing, I’ll be there
Harvey Andrews

A few months back, an American investment management company – Knighthead – bought a controlling interest in my lifelong football club Birmingham City FC, aka the Blues. Us Brummies are amazed, open-mouthed, as the Americans not only state their intention, underlined by their early actions, that their project will see the club advance to the highest level over the next few years. Already they have spent, as if it were small change, £25m in repairs and improvements to our crumbling old home of 117 years, St Andrew’s Stadium in Birmingham’s inner city. This despite the obvious intention to build, within the next few years, a major new, modern stadium nearby.

Many are the words, podcasts, videos, presentations that set out in detail how this new world will look and how the fans and indeed the wider community of Birmingham will be brought on this exciting ride. Much more will unfold in the months ahead. I’m as excited and impressed as anyone.

But I pause to think, what might we lose in the process?

Fate at a young age meant I was taken to St Andrew’s, by a neighbour, to watch a reserve team game, the details of which are long forgotten. Many football fans will have similar stories. In short, the Blues became my team. I never guessed that, more than sixty years later, they would still be my team. That’s what we footy fans sign up to, whether we like it or not.

I can still reel off the team sheet from the early 1960s.
Schofield
Lynn Green
Page Smith Beard
Hellawell Bullock Harris Bloomfield Auld

In those days before expanded squads and substitutes you could pretty well predict the team who would trot out at 2.55pm. I’d be there at least an hour beforehand to see the crowd growing, to hear the first chants, usually from a band of away fans, the atmosphere thickening and at last the roar which would greet the teams.

Professional footballers were gods – we’d collect cards with their pictures on – but Blues players were the biggest gods. I wasn’t to know then that my gods were just ordinary blokes who were usually to be seen after the match in the pubs and clubs of Birmingham. I recall my shock at actually seeing Mike Hellawell at our local church, Bertie Auld watching a Sunday afternoon parks match.

My father wasn’t interested in going to the football so I used to head off to St Andrew’s on my own once considered old enough – that was aged 10 or 11 I guess. It was a bus ride from outside our house to St Andrew’s in Small Heath – there were extra buses laid on for match day and rivers of blue flowed in all directions towards the ground. After the match it was back on the bus with everyone straining to hear the other results from the transistor radios carried by some blokes.

As I got older I’d go with my mates, maybe meeting up in town for pints beforehand, underage or not. Then a march out to the ground from the city centre and too bad for anyone wanting to travel in the opposite direction.

But looking back at the old records and statistics I’m still surprised to see those Blues gods perennially struggling towards the bottom of the First Division, periodically falling through the trapdoor, perhaps redeeming themselves by climbing back a year or two later.

The good times have been few, like golden nuggets in a sea of mud. Blues fans cling tight to those nuggets. But most often it’s either been mediocrity, or the outright misery that comes from thwarted hope. Many of us are permanently scarred by the events of 9th April 1975 when Blues lost in the last minute of extra time of the FA Cup semi-final replay to Fulham. 48 years later we refuse to speak of it. Blues have still not won that competition.

The most golden of nuggets was the day in 2011 when we beat Arsenal at Wembley to win the Carling Cup. Typically we were relegated that same season and remain in the second tier to this day.

But in 1977 I left Birmingham for Jersey and you’d imagine I’d leave all that behind. Far from it. Although football consumes less of my time, energy and emotion these days I’ll still be listening to the match commentary tonight as Birmingham travel to Blackburn.

But now the Blues are entering a brave new world. If all goes to plan they’ll soon be taking their place amongst the elite of British, maybe European, football. There’s much to do but Knighthead are in no rush – they have a plan, a process and – most importantly – the financial clout. This is desperately needed in these days of nation-state ownership and rotten Russian money. (I don’t think my loyalty would have survived such dubious connections.)

But when the Blues are up there amongst the best I wonder if the supporters will be happier than we were, content to pay our sixpence and watch our heroes win or lose, knowing that at least there was another match to look forward to, with renewed hope, the following week.