Being a Reds Fan

Just in case I’ve never mentioned it- I like being a Barnsley fan.
I think it’s the adversity interspersed with the occasional high notes. For me it’s always been a family thing - me, my dad, my grandad and his dad who went to the FA Cup Final replay at Bramhall Lane in 1912.
Don’t suppose I was given much choice really and now my lads are both fanatics.
Been a lot of rubbish but that just makes the good times better.
What made you fall in love with The Reds?

 

I was born there and had no choice. Never swayed from that OARAAR!!

 

I was RL mad( still am) and worked with a load of lads in Pontefract and they talked me into trying ONE game at Barnsley, i didn't have any interest in football and decided i would try ONE game. That was 41 years ago,the rest is History.

 

Well that can't be right,what about all them Manchester Utd,City,Liverpool,Chelsea and Arsenal supporters from London and beyond .

 

My late Dad took me down to my first league game on 10th August 1968. We lost 3-2 against Barrow, but I was hooked. The club represented my town, my people. Even illness cannot halt the love.

 

It would be about 1965 my first match. In the family zone which for me was sitting on the shale heap behind the spion kop probably with a handful of airfix soldiers. Gradually wwhat was going on on the pitch became more interesting though and that was that.

 

Thank you for this, a good thread! And I like your link to the 1912 cup final.

When i was a kid, I used to play at 'football in the community' at the bottom of Grove Street, and in the 94/95 season would repeatedly ask my dad when he picked me up, 'can you take me to a match soon' as we'd walk past the programme sellers (repeat ad infinitum ). He finally relented the following season.

Birmingham at home. 2nd September 1995. A 5-0 loss, 3 days after Birmingham lost 4-2 at Hudds. We had 2 sent off including Dave Watson, and Butler saved a penalty in injury time. I asked my dad 'when can we go again'! A few games in he wasn't feeling it so my mum started taking me. It's always been about family. Going with both parents separately, having pancakes and ash at my nannan's before the match, seeing my cousin, my uncle etc etc. And then going with mates, who felt like family. And then moving away but always coming back.

I've taken my wife-to-be three times and she's yet to see us win. And she hails from... Birmingham! Funny how life works. Barnsley has been the one constant, it's in the heart. You reds!

 

Love football and you have to support your home town team, there is no other option.

 

My grandad took me in 79 to see us play Hartlepool at home. Still remember seeing that pitch for the first time from Upper West Stand. Next game was Grimsby that year - what a night that was. Hooked ever since - moved to uni in Liverpool in 88 and stayed here from.92 onwards when I left. Still have my season ticket and make as many games as I can - work permitting.

Live a few miles away from 2 Premier League clubs but Barnsley is in my blood! There have been some bad times but for a club of our size we have done well.

 

My dad took me and I started going to all the games, that’s it really.

 

Went to a few with mi dad in the 90s. But i only properly started supporting Barnsley in 2003, mi dad never really forced it on me i just liked going as a kid and i got the bug. There was a time where i felt like defecting to supporting Worsbrough Bridge AFC, when Conman Conway forced me to vote with my feet near the end of his dictatorship. I love Barnsley FC, but i believe a good protest on principle is the answer sometimes. I'm just glad we have our club back

 

I was a kid discovering football in the 1990s. I loved watching Manchester United, was a little interested in Sheffield Wednesday as we always seemed to drive past Hillsborough on Saturday mornings and then I'd see later that all the people I'd seen were going to a Premier League game there. I first properly watched football in 1998, memorably the FA Cup final and then France 98. I wanted to watch live football and my Dad supported Barnsley and so took me to Oakwell that following Autumn. Never looked back.

When you think about it... in the last 25 years (and a bit) we've had 4 promotions, played in 4 play offs, won a trophy at Wembley, competed in an FA Cup semi-final, been to the old Wembley, the Millennium Stadium and new Wembley 4 times. We've been relegated 4 times, changed owners 3 times and had various periods of unexpected success alternating almost instantly with bewilderingly bad patches. For a medium sized club from a relatively modest town, it's been quite an entertaining ride hasn't it. If you don't mind taking the bad times between the good... we're a great club to support. Plus we've got a proper ground, with a proper name, in the middle of our town. OK it needs sprucing up but yeah, I love it.

 

I get where you are coming from. But I took my young at the time brother in law to watch barnsley. Throughout his early years. Still meets and sits with me every home game. 40+ years later. Having all his 3 kids season ticket holders. At one time or another.
All from Mexborough/Conisborough.
Lots don't have professional league teams in the town or borough. Thinking of the likes of Wakefield. Pontefract areas. And know lots from those areas who chose tarn. Or were influenced somehow eg Parents. My bro moved to featherstone and has bred a whole army and generations of barnsley fans.

 

I liked watching the FA Cup finals on tv in the 70s and then my dad took me one day to Oakwell after Alan Clarke took over in the 4th division and then that was it!
(Tarn won 3 - 0 vs York City.)

 

Was never going to be anything other than a red it's in the blood First match in the mid 70s with my dad and grandad and was hooked. To be honest despite so bad moments any Red from my generation and later have had it pretty good when compared to previous generations several promotions and trips to Wembley, my Grandad never saw the reds there my dad only the once at the old Wembley where as I saw them once at the old Wembley and 3 times at the new stadium

 

I'd swap all the memories to see us in the Premier League again. For me the joy of winning doesn't last as long as the pain of losing so I'd swap that in an instant.

 

My dad took me in the mid 60s. I then got into music and lost interest for a few years. After I finished my degree at Newcastle Poly, I was unemployed till just before Christmas which just happened to coincide with the start of Clarkie's promotion season in 1978. I was hooked then....

 

Ash? You were lucky, we had to eat the gravel off the street.

 

I had no interest in football until the 1986 World Cup. It might have been the sense of injustice but after that I quickly became obsessed. My dad first took me to Oakwell for a look round shortly after that. I remember being amazed at how odd the ground looked compared with the stadiums I'd seen on telly. No seats, no roof. But Mrs Montague's club shop was an absolute Aladdin's cave for an 8 year old, full of programs, badges, rosettes and replica kits in random sizes, all of which were far too big.

My first match was Plymouth home in September 87. We won 2-1 and went top of the league. Considering how long ago it was, I still remember it pretty clearly. We sat in the West Stand. Block E, Row D, seats 4, 5 and 6, which became our seats for many years until me and @Chef Tyke were deemed old enough to stand by our dad. My overriding impression was just how green and perfectly kept the pitch was.

Despite having no connection to the actual town of Barnsley - my grandparents are from Wath, and the closest I've ever lived is Sheffield - there was never any question of who I'd support.

Nowadays I have next to zero interest in most club football, except watching Barnsley. I genuinely think that if I was a fan of a big Premier League club, I'd have completely lost interest, like a couple of old school Man City fans I know. Spiralling costs and a team full of players with no connection with England, never mind Moss Side, means that the modern day incarnation of their club has nothing in common with the team they started watching in the early 80's. It's nothing I'd ever want to see at Oakwell.