WHAT DERRY CITY MEANS TO ME... Belonging, friendship and camaraderie with your local club!

I feel like I have spent the majority of my life defending why I have lived by the chant of “Support Your Local Team”.

I didn’t begin supporting Derry City because it was fashionable, and I am definitely not hunting glory.

In 28 seasons only 13 have produced silverware, with only one being a league triumph. Everything in between has been a mix of misery, discontent, and anger with the occasional pinch of glee. Football is a results business, but for me, supporting Derry City is more.The matches initially became a reason to spend time with my Granda, Willie Curran.

Every Derry City fan, regular or lapsed since 1944 to the present will have at one time encountered him. On Sunday afternoons he would sneak out the door of Beechwood Avenue around 2:15pm, if he wasn’t already on the road to an away game. I would ask where he was going and my aunt would say “The Derry Match”. “I want to go” I’d respond, and she would tell me of two possibilities; primarily, he was never going to take me, and secondly, if he did I would hate it.

She was wrong on all accounts.Sitting in the “Old Stand” with my Granda, Budgie Breslin and Francie Harkin, I probably witnessed more losses than victories, but the experience taught me so much. I started to learn more about the club’s history.

I was like a sponge absorbing tales of teams from the 50’s and 60’s. My Granda loved to tell me that every player from the 90’s to the current day would never have cut it in a Willie Ross team. Just thinking about it makes me want to watch one of his squads to see if the claim stands.I was often ridiculed for being a Derry City supporter.

While my primary and secondary school friends wore T-shirts with the images of “Fowler the Prowler” and “King Cantona”, I was glorifying the local heroes.Liam Coyle stood apart from everyone in world football in my eyes; Paul Curran I described as harder than Razor Ruddock and Julian Dicks combined and no-one delivered like “The Pizza Man” (a boast Hutton himself made to me when I was 7 while I stood on a low wall at Great James’ Street Health Centre). 

As I got older more of my peer group seemed more interested in the club and together we discovered newer heroes to live through vicariously. I have sung songs about Eddie McCallion that can only be described as “sexually confident”. I have named my only child after Ciaran Martyn.

I’ve bet my house on Ger Doherty saving a penalty without batting an eyelid and Mark Farren will remain my eternal hero.

His death was one I took harder than any other in my life time, and we probably only spoke at length six times.  

The feeling of connection and society around Derry City has helped me combat loneliness, anxiety and unhappiness in my 20’s. The fellowship of supporting this league allows you to interact with complete strangers, developing a kinship and distracting you from the pressures of life.

Away days are special. Being packed into a plane, train or automobile, joking at the expense of your company (not maliciously) in between singing your heart out and laughing till my stomach hurts has made a perceptibly positive impact on my life.In writing this I’m trying desperately to articulate how my wellbeing and happiness has been impacted by a club I may not have loved without my Grandfather’s association.

Dee has supported Derry City home and away for years.

He himself, used matchdays as his escape from the burdens of work and life, developing his own sense of community and assisting the club where he could.

When I look around me on matchdays I observe people of all ages who are there because they love supporting the club and many have probably done it for most of their lives. We all keep coming back even when we’re useless and as payback for this loyalty we get a sense of belonging, friendship and camaraderie from being in the ground and being associated with Derry City FC.