Young Wolves Blog: Schooled
Posted by Thomas on 21st October , 2009Probably the youngest member of the Wolves Blog fraternity, is 14 year-old Louie (I wonder who the oldest is? Hands up please).
He’s a die-hard Wolves fan and when he’s not jousting with EmeraldPete over the quality of our centre-backs, he’s running his own blog about our beloved team, which you can check out by clicking here.
Growing up as a Wolves fan isn't always easy
I asked young Louie to put something together for Wolves Blog and he’s kindly obliged with this little piece. I think it’s something we can all relate to from our school days and even in our working lives.
Anyway, over to Louie:
I don’t know how many of you felt at school, but its pretty hard being a Wolves fan at school for me.
I am constantly referred to as ‘Wolves’ by all the kids who can’t be arsed to learn my name and always the victim of obscene gestures or disgusting chants. If we win, we are crap. If we lose, we are crap. A no win situation for me.
Most of these kids are Man United fans who don’t know where Manchester is (or Wolverhampton which they seem to think is in Walthamstow) or Arsenal fans who have never been to the Emirates, a ten minute walk from my school.
When they ask you when the last time Wolves were the best in the country and you reply with an answer of 1959, you are sure to be laughed at but I don’t get it. In fifty years time their children could be saying the same to mine. Arsenal could easily find themselves without a trophy for a rather long time, especially if Monsieur Wenger leaves, something which is inevitable.
Now to my question, who did all the kids support when you were a young ‘un? If you didn’t grow up in Wolverhampton (like me), I’m sure you have similar stories to mine.
Great post Louie, I can definitely relate.
Despite being born and bred in Wolverhampton, I grew up just as the Man United rocket was blasting off and all the glory-hunting passengers were jumping on board.
I got endless earache from many of that clan.
One of my mates at secondary school was a Chelsea fan and he was probably the worst for giving me grief and smugly pointed to the Premiership badge everytime we won or they lost.
Another friend was a Leeds fan and one morning before we were due to play them in a cup quarter final, he drove outside my house with his dad and shouted obscenities. Needless to say, he was somewhat quieter later on in the day, when Don Goodman chipped home the winner and Hans Segers turned a Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink penalty round the post.
Football is swings and roundabouts and every team eventually has their day. It just takes some longer than others.
Louie. Fair play to you son, how did you end up a wolves fan down there any how?? I have a therory there is only three reasons you can/should support a team. These are in order of importance.
1. It’s your local team, you share a post code with clubs ground.
2. It’s the team your Dad grew up supporting and so has transferred his pasion to you &
3. Religion
As Wolves has no religious bias and North London is not in the same postcode I’m betting Dad supports them too. I would be interested to find out please Louie.
Louie, at my primary school you either suported Wolves or Villa and this is where my deep deep hatered of them comes from. My Fellow Wolves fans and I were in the minority and had to hear them bang on and on.
I particulary remember them gloating all day about a win over inter millan, that was the second worst day of school ever, only just behind the day I got changed for PE before luch, in a rush to get out on to the playground I forgot to put my shorts on and went out in my Y FRONTS!!! A gang of girls took great pleasure in telling everyone.
My Dad took me to the league cup tie against them, both home and away, Spckmen poleaxed Bully when he scored at there place (anyone remember??).
Secondrey school was an more even handed affair, with Wolves wel represented by the majority of the cool and hard kids so they were quite peaceful days
BUT MY GOD DO I HATE VILLA!!!!!!!
I can relate to that Louie. In a number of ways. It’s comforting knowing that some things haven’t changed. I’m 30 BTW!
I wanted to be a Liverpool fan as a kid, and showed signs of being one when I was about 6, and Charlie Nicholas scored 2 for Arsenal against them in the League Cup final in 86/87. I think my old man could sense the green shoots of an allegience, so he promptly nipped them in the bud and got me a Staw Distribution kit, when we were in the 4th division. He then got two Sherpa Van Trophy flags and hammered them into the flower beds – like a father / son way of marking your territory. He must have been worried to go to such lengths!
My first game was Reading at home, in 1988, Phil Chard and Robbie Dennison scored, amazingly enough, with a header! By then, the bug had bitten.
Coming from rural Shropshire/ Herefordshire, none of my mates knew what this gold shirt was all about, let alone who played in it! They were all Liverpool and Everton ‘fans’ and I got laughed at, but stuck at it, and enjoyed being unique!
It is only now I look back and think how lucky I am. 4th division back then and we are now in the Premier League. Pretty remarkable in some ways I suppose.
Keep the faith Louie. What a refreshing blog!
Louie, i know how you feel being 18 myself
Most supported man u and strangely some chelsea fans popped up around the time mr abramovich showed up.
There is nothing better than supporting your home team, it’s great. You win with them and lose with them. This may be easy for me to say as we’ve never been below the championship in my lifetime, but i know if that day comes, i will stick with them on those trips to burton and dagenham or whoever it may be. I don’t know what i would do if we went bust.
Best monday at school? After we beat man u in 2004. Love it
Cheers Tom for putting it up and Pete and Ben for nice replies.
Yeah it’s my Dad but loads of family in Wolverhampton. My Mum is a swansea fan so I look out for their results. I’ve actually just been arguing about Manuel Almunia and Wayne Hennessey. They alll hated him a couple of weeks ago and I made the point that Wayne was better than him. All of a sudden they think he’s amazing!
It’s funny because if I was like all of them and supported Arsenal I would now much less about football and all the teams in England.
Louie – good man. I’ve been a travelling Wolves fan too, was born in Wolvo but moved when I was 3.
Grew up in Auld Gold in Bristol and North Yorkshire. Like you, I now live round the corner from the Emirates in Dalston where I’m yet to see a Wolves shirt wander down the Kingsland Road.
For me though – that’s what’s always made being a Wolves fan a bit more special. It’s always more of a spectacle going back to Molineux and seeing a sea of gold, when what you’re used to seeing the dull reds, blues, whites etc of more shallowly supported ‘big teams’. It’s always more exciting when you meet a Wolves fan too.
Whatsmore – those who aren’t fans but know their stuff respect Wolves. They know it’s a sound club with passionate fans who’ve been through quite a lot (not simply coasting along in Mid-table Premier League mediocrity whilst abondoning their roots as a local club). And they also know that Wolves are the original innovators – one of the reasons that European club footie exists.
So two fingers to the Premier League numbskulls mate. Let your Arsenal crew watch their team in their library of a stadium with their two chants. Up the Wolves!
http://www.mirrorfootball.co.uk/opinion/columnists/david-anderson/How-the-Premier-League-table-would-look-if-teams-were-awarded-points-for-famous-fans-article196227.html
Anybody seen this – my mates don’t believe this (as you might have guessed I’m in school).
Nice one dboy. I live in Ilslington and I’m yet to see a Wolves shirt that’s not mine
Louie – it’s always good to know there’s a young Wolves fan from somewhere outside the West Midlands. Keep it up.
I’ve recently moved down to London myself – disappointingly, I saw a guy in a West Brom tracksuit top here the other day – and it’s good that all the Wolves in the city aren’t just exiles.
Watching the Sunderland game in the pub on my first weekend down here, I was pleasantly surprised to find I wasn’t the only Wolves fan.
Most the kids at school were Villa (if you grow up around the West Midlands and your Dad doesn’t “give” you your team, I’ve found people tend to go towards Villa, the tossers) with a few glory hunters and a healthy dose of Wolves (far far more than West Brom, Blues or Walsall).
Actually bumped into a glory hunting Arsenal fan from school a few years ago at a game – he’s now a Wolves season ticket holder, so it’s not all one way traffic.
Oh – and as for the Mirror article – great that we’re top, but surely Jimmy Page would have something to say about Robert Plant writing Stairway!
It’s all my fault, I guess (I’m Louie’s dad). I moved to London in 89 after just over a decade in Wolverhampton but I’ve got old gold blood and, anyway, a football team is for life if you ask me. I’ve always quite enjoyed being the only Wolves fan at college, at work etc, especially during the good times (I remember standing at a bus stop outside Oval tube station and overhearing a conversation about the 3rd division striker who’d been picked for England – still gives me goosebumps thinking about it now) but I’m full of admiration for Louie and his brothers Joe and Joshua(though my youngest son, Charlie, is an Arsenal traitor – hopefully, it’s just a phase) who are unflinchingly loyal to the cause in the face of all kinds of provocation and make it all so much more fun for me.
Dominic, I’m sure it’s just a phase with your youngest supporting the Gunners. All that admiration for attractive, fast-flowing football will pass in time.
Two out of three isn’t bad!
I love that. Louie clearly says he’s at school messing about on a wolves blog and his dad is just proud he supports wolves.
Im not from wolverhampton originally. I was born in devon and i should support either torquay or exeter if we are going by local team. But my mum comes from wolverhampton and as we were pretty poor when i was growing up i spent every xmas, summer holiday, bank holioday, school break etc in the midlands.
It was always a great place, full of nice people with funny accents, i loved it. Then my uncles and cousins found out i didnt support anyone and took me under their wing. I was about 10 i think. Since then my love for the team has grown and grown.
Ok maybe i should have supported a devon team but since my dad loves football but has no real loyalties i dont feel bad for supporting wolves, especially considering i spent around 4-5 months of the year living there whilst i was growing up. This did mean a lot of stick at school. Most people either supported the local teams of someone in the top division. i did almost start supporting blackburn as i loved shearer but that phase passed very quickly.
I am wolves until i die and even though my misses is a gooner, i think its a dads privalidge to indoctrinate their kids however they feel best. lol.
Here’s my story. I live in Canada. Back in the seventies, I used to watch Monty Python (Eric Idol is another famous Wolves fan).
In one of the sketches, he mentioned the Wolverhampton Wanderers and for some reason, the name stuck in my mind.
Of course, back then we didn’t have the WWW so it was hard to follow English football except for some game shown on Public TV (PBS) in the US so when I played on the high school team I really wasn’t able to follow any team.
A couple of years ago I got fed up with the NHL and the local team (Toronto Maple Leafs) so I decided to look into English football.
Well imagine my surprise when I couldn’t find the Wolverhampton Wanderers in the Premier league. And where was the first division anyway?
It took me a few days to get all of the changes straight in my head and to realize that Wolves was, in fact, the Wanderers.
No one can accuse me of jumping on the bandwagon because the first year I stared following the team, they didn’t even make the playoffs.
I enjoyed last year’s success but it was hard to find anything about them because the big newspapers that I was familiar with only talk about the top 4 or 5 teams in the Premiership.
Anyway, I’ve seen two games on TV with Wolves this year and a couple more with adequate streams and am trying to understand all of the expressions you guys use.
I’m quite amazed how seriously I am taking this, considering I just started following them for a diversion.
Great post Louie! And I’m still on your side against Emerald “I hate Mancienne” Pete! I was born and bred in Stoke (or as the locals would say Smoke on Stench) to a family of Stoke supporters (one arm chair fan and one season ticket holder). In my early years I was mad about Georgie Best and even had a signature strip, however it all changed when I was 7. I was given a second hand subbuteo game. The game contained several teams, however all but one team had injuries (ie the player had been snapped off the round base) and the only full compliment was a team dressed in the famous old gold and black of the mighty Wolves. I decided this was my team as I needed an unfair advantage of having the full compliment because, after all, it was my game! Wolves were featuring on MoTD at the time, and I took an interest in them so I could learn the players names for my subbuteo team and therefore give my own commentry. Hibbitt to Richards ITS A GOAL! etc.
My family were not best pleased but supportive and fortunately my uncle’s work mate lived in Stoke but was a season ticket at the Mol. My first game was November 1977 home against Norwich a 3-3 draw, I was 10. We travelled what seemed an eternity in the back of my uncles mates Vauxhall Viva – the 40 miles seemed to take 3 hours for some reason! As I grew up I was ridiculed by all the Stoke fans in the area – our record was never brilliant against the clay heads and monday mornings was always painful and left me with a severe hatred for all teams in red and white stripes – sod your tesco bags I hate STOKE!
I now live in Alberta Canada where the only football fans here are Man U Chelsea or Juve fans. I too have never seen another Wolves shirt here other than my own, but my car proudly supports the “WOLVES ON TOUR” banner in the back window, and I’m suprised how many people now comment on it as we now sit proudly in the Premier League – long may it continue!
Tim, what a brill story of how you stumbled upon supporting Wolves, I love it. Keep it up mate.
Jed. Get over it…I don’t hate Mancienne, I just don’t think he is good enough for our team, there is a difference.
These stories are all awesome.
Tim, I echo what Pete says. Amazing to hear something like that. Once you get bitten by the bug, there’s no going back. Keep following the Wolves and keep visiting Wolves Blog.
Jed, I’m particularly interested in your story as I’ve moved to Newcastle-Under-Lyme in the last year (which is basically Stoke-on-Trent for those of you that don’t know your geography). I’ve always disliked them as a team and I don’t even know why. It’s even escalated since I moved here. Can’t wait for the match at the Britannia. I’d chew my arm off for a win.
Sam 2.0, another great saga and glad you chose the Wolves. Nice to hear you say some pleasant things about the area as well. I think Wolverhampton gets some bad press but is largely a great place, full of top people.
Pete, I’m only pulling your leg fella, no hard feelings – and I do respect your opinion!
Thomas, I lived in ‘Castle for 20 years before moving over here – it’s a great little town to live in. Watch out for anyone who comes from May Bank though as thats where the majority of the Jnr Naughty 40 idiots come from! I too hope and pray we beat Shity as I still get the banter from my old Stoke mates and it will be nice to shove one up them!
Hey folks it’s Kirsty who writes “The Liver Bird”.
I’d just like to firstly thank you both Thomas & Ben for putting my link up on your website as i never got chance to thank you properly, just to let you know i have returned the favour and your link is also in the sidebar of my blog.
Back to what i wanted to comment for…
I’d just like to say how refreshing it is to see such a young fan put his views across so clearly and to be successfully writing a blog (which i shall be sure to keep visiting) at the age of 14. So many young fans could benefit from actually portraying their thoughts and views in a similar manner rather than picking up their arguments from playing FIFA and reading The Sun.
Well done Louie, keep up the great work.
Kirsty.
I was born in Aldershot and moved to Wolverhampton when i was 4. My Dad is an Arsenal fan and as was his dad etc.
The reason I support Wolves is just from simply living here for so long. And although I do follow the Shots and the Gunners my heart belongs in Wolverhampton
However I am not at the game this weekend due to Aldershot playing Shrewsbury this Saturday. Please don’t hate me.
Also Thomas I was in Newcastle last week to play hockey!
Jed, I know it’s just a bit of banter son, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I just try to look at our boys in an even handed, logical, purley footballing sense, I try very hard not to let my obvious bias come into play and because of my approach I think some of my comments come off as negative or patronising.
I can’t even bring myself to sing the “by far the gratest team the world has ever seen” chant because of that logic!!! This is an unfortunate side affect involved with looking at our team this way. I really don’t mean to sound bad and I hope people can see the sense in my comments.
If you….or anyone for that matter, love Mancienne, then fair play. Opinion is what fuels half the passion in any fan, fuels 99% of this blog and what make the game so intersting for the other 9990 minutes of the week that Wolves arn’t playing.
Long live the difference of opinions, long live the debate, long live the aurguments!!!
Fair play Jed