A Thousand Reasons

So, here we are. My thousandth consecutive blip. The weather wasn't particularly conducive to getting out and finding something memorable in the wide world to mark today, so instead, I've constructed a blip out of one of the most ever-present features of my journal since day one; a constituent part of my life so important that I considered it worthy of noting from the very start in my journal name itself. Yes, folks, my thousandth blip is dedicated to West Bromwich Albion Football Club.

In an age when money dominates football as completely as it does society, and kids all over the country choose a team to support in the same way they'd choose a brand of trainers to wear (unfashionable clubs need not apply), it's become nearly impossible to explain to outsiders why I and thousands like me continue to feel so passionately about a team that has won nothing of note since 1968, and may well continue until 2068 or beyond without adding to the dusty trophy cabinet. The answer, of course, lies in the strong bonds of community and regional culture that underpin the club. Unlike the Manchester Uniteds of the world - whose success has brought them a global fanbase but utterly eroded their sense of local identity in the process - the vast majority of Albion fans worldwide, even in the 21st century, were born into working class families somewhere in the Black Country or the northwestern fringes of Birmingham. We celebrate our local dialect, culture and cuisine as often as we joke about them. Some outsiders - the tennis star Goran Ivanisevic a famous example - understand this, and are accepted into the fold with open arms. Others, notably among the London-based media, don't get it at all and resort to ridiculing what they can't understand.

This spirit of community may use football as a focal point, but its effects are even more far-reaching. The club was at the forefront of breaking down the barriers of racism in society during the late Seventies, fielding three black players (Cunningham, Batson and Regis, "The Three Degrees") at a time when most teams wouldn't even accept one, championing the cause of black athletes in sport and challenging the attitudes of supporters swayed by National Front propaganda. As the industries that once surrounded the Hawthorns have died one by one, so the club has acted as a unifying force in otherwise fractured neighbourhoods. On the evening of September 11th 2001 - a terrible day for all who lived through it - a few hundred solemn Baggies even went along to the scheduled League Cup fixture that went ahead, not to see the football, but just to feel the comfort of being in familiar surroundings among kindred spirits. It may start with wanting to see them kicking a ball around on a Saturday afternoon, but believe me, it swiftly becomes so much more.

In a world that's changed considerably even in the thousand days that I've been blipping, West Bromwich Albion is a constant that was there before my birth, will continue through my lifetime and hopefully be there long after I'm gone. For a thousand reasons, they deserve every photo and line of writing I've dedicated to them, whether in joy or anguish, for the past nearly-three-years. And even if it means an eternity devoid of glory or major achievements, I hope they can continue to resist selling their soul for money as so many Premier League clubs have done, because our love for the club is based on how it represents the people of the Black Country in all our furious, humorous, impoverished splendour.

Boing boing, fellow blippers.