With friends like these......

I'm afraid I have a very simple, black and white attitude to supporting your football club.  If you attend the games you are a supporter, if you don't you're not.  Sure, you may have an interest in the results, and would rather the team win, but if you don't attend the games how can you be actively be said to be a "supporter?"  In what way can looking up the score on Teletext be seen as supporting your team?

"I'm sure Yaxley is around here somewhere...."

If you don't see the games how can you pass judgement on the events?  Or have a worthwhile opinion on anything to do with the club?

Worse still, in our current life-or-death situation, choosing not to watch your team play football, or help to ensure their continued survival, may push us over the brink.  Choosing to abandon your club in its hour of need in favour of not attending games, or, God help us, watching another team, is frankly beyond my understanding.

The need to not be seen as supporting Ladak has become poison in the blood of far too many Poppies fans.  How are they going to feel when Ladak departs, but our club doesn't survive?  Will they be devastated?  Will they regret not doing more?  Or will they wrap themselves up in a cloak of self-satisfaction that they didn't prop up Ladak's regime?  True, the club may have ceased, but they kept themselves pure.

If so, hopefully this will keep them warm when they are reduced to continuing to watch fifth rate football on bobbly pitches in our potential post-Poppies future.  Because, let's face it, unless you have a vested interest in one of the teams, low-level football is never likely to provide a sparkling afternoon's entertainment.