Hugging Strangers

The Frequent Lows and Occasional Highs of Football Fandom

Jon Berry

• Publisher: Pitch Publishing
• eBook ISBN:
  9781785317118
• Year: 2020

What is it like to follow one of English football's perennial non-achievers? Hugging Strangers is a celebration of what it means to support your club through thick and thin. It speaks to all who love the game but are lumbered - by way of family, geography or plain bad luck - with a team whose glory days are few and far between. At the end of the 1963/64 season Birmingham City stayed in the first division by winning on the last day of the campaign. In the 55 years that followed, the Blues kept either survival or promotion for the final fixture on a further 12 occasions. Stir in nine relegations, eight promotions, along with play-off failures and embarrassing exits from cup competitions and you'll have an idea of what it means to be a Blues fan. But you don't have to be a Birmingham fan to enjoy this book. This light-hearted collection of tales from a lifelong, hopeless football addict will strike a chord with anyone who has asked themselves quite why they allow this simple game to assume such importance in their lives.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword and disclaimer
• Introduction: Hugging strangers. Perfectly proper behaviour
• 1. I am not saved and I savour the smell of football
• 2. I realise that we may not be the sort of club that wins stuff
• 3. We flirt with competence and become almost attractive
• 4. Football becomes genuinely tragic
• 5. The Barry Frydays. Barminess prevails, quite often in a good way
• 6. The century turns and we have something to cheer about
• 7. We reach the promised land and create some memories
• 8. We think we might belong in the top flight, but we’re not quite sure
• 9. In which we are, indeed, the bride’s nightie
• 10. We sing ‘Oh, Nikola Žigić’ to the tune of ‘Seven Nation Army’ by the White Stripes. Sometimes
• 11. We go to Europe and break a record
• 12. Mayhem, the great escape and the man with the swivelling eyes
• 13. We discover that we were only previously close to mayhem
• Epilogue: The wide blue yonder
• A tableau of mediocrity and very occasional success
• Photos