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COLLECTIVE SPIRIT AND BELIEF 19-7-04
With all of the excitement about new signings that is currently in the air, with hopefully a couple more to come, it is very difficult to stay real and keep the whole scenario in perspective. Last week's upsurge in season ticket sales says it all really, if the Gazette's report was factually correct. There is a real sense of anticipation about the Boro at the moment, not just locally but nationally as well. We are surely the most talked about club in the country at the moment and that is a very good thing.
There are however, downsides to that and we have experienced those before. Are the national press setting us up to fail? Are we going to have the weight of expectation built up to such a point that we find it impossible to cope with? I do not personally think so but I was witness to the London media's cynical reporting campaign in 97/98 of not just our football team but our town as well. They collectively embarked on what seemed like an anti Boro policy when we brought in the big names during the Robbo era. This time round, and it will happen again, we really must be big enough not to react to it.
The only reason that they did it was to get a big reaction and thereby build a story out of nothing and they succeeded. So when it starts again- and it will - let's show them who we are and how big we are. When the onslaught begins, this 'no reaction policy' can be the start of a new era of collective belief and solidarity that will do wonders for the morale and therefore the success of our team.
Bigger and much more important than that though is something much closer to home. How many times in the past have we felt that we were on the verge of greatness, only to be let down by a team that were not as good as we thought or hoped they were? I can remember several such occasions but I am not going to dwell on those today. I will however, look at a small part of the reasoning for our past disappointments and offer my own personal theory about what we as supporters, can do to help prevent the situation from reoccurring.
Does the attitude of the supporters always carry the team through the difficult times? How often do we start a match, a season or a cup run full of hope, only to let one not so great performance or one slight disappointment change our attitude completely and destroy the hope that we ourselves had created? Us Teessiders can be a very negative lot when we want to be and I strongly believe that this has to change because it can transmit itself to the team and has done on countless occasions in the past.
Amongst the inevitable good times that are coming our way, we are going to have downers this season and we are going to have off days and disappointments. When those days come, that is the time to pull together as supporters and get right behind our team and support them like we have never done before. In the past, when the bad days have come, we have slated and slagged the manager and players, to a point where we have produced so much negativity, that outsiders could have been forgiven for thinking that we didn't want to win. I would really like to see us try to adopt a new approach to our support this season and make that negative vibe a thing of the past.
Real support is not just putting stickers on your car or buying the latest retro shirt. Anybody can be an Arsenal or Manchester United supporter and shout loud for the latest foregone conclusion of a win. Real supporters are different though. Real supporters really get behind the lads when they are losing or struggling to overcome a tough opposition. Do we do that enough? Sometimes, I think we don't and I am well aware that the high admission fees give us the right to complain when the team put in a lousy performance. But this coming season, I would love to see us supporters getting right behind the side, even on the bad days. It will undoubtedly give the team a boost and will more often than not spur them on to go that extra mile and produce performances above and beyond the call of duty. In some cases, we can even encourage our team to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat by willing them on to put in that little bit of extra effort. We, the supporters of Middlesbrough Football Club can make a big difference this season, if we can harbour a realistic collective belief that this side can achieve something big and then not be easily put off when our hopes start looking like they could become tarnished.
So let any negativity that still exists cease and let us play our part and do our bit in helping the Middlesbrough team of 2004/05 go on and achieve the things that we didn't even dare to dream about in years gone by. Let's really get behind the Boro this season, in a way that we have never done before and then you will see what collective belief and spirit can achieve for our club. Onwards Into Europe...
Until next week.
Steve
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