Originally Posted by
Canterbredve
if you are not from St Helens?
I first started watching Rugby League in the late 60s and early 70s on Grandstand on Saturday afternoons. Eddie Waring commentated. It was often very muddy but then and now Ive always thought it a superior game to Union, which I played for twenty years. (If I watch Union now, and a caption on the screen says 11th phase for ruck and possession, as if thats a wonderful thing, Im bored witless).
I was brought up and lived in rural Suffolk, in a small village called Holbrook (yes, Holbrook) between Ipswich and Colchester.
If my own (Rugby Union) sporting commitments at school were cancelled on Saturday afternoons, I was often the only member of my family in the front room with the telly and it was bliss. A coal fire, a chocolate biscuit (or three) and a match.
St Helens was always the team I (vaguely) followed, even in the years of Wigans hegemony, but of course around then Ipswich Town were doing pretty well under Bobby Robson, so my focus was there.
Ive never been to Knowsley Road, and am vague on Saints legends of the past, but from 2011, when I stopped work, I had time to follow Saints properly, helped of course by the internet and the RedVee site. It followed naturally that Id want to see Saints matches live. As well as Langtree Park, Ive been to every Superleague club bar Huddersfield and Hull KR, and to Newcastle for Magic Weekend (and it was magic) . My partner and I have even been to Avignon and Perpignan for matches in the last World Cup.
So I follow Saints, but back to the question at the top if you dont live and havent ever lived in the St Helens area, can you be a true fan?