IJN":1mh89qsw said:
Perhaps it is Slim but I still don't get the psyche of people singing 'I'm Argyle 'til I die' when they really mean 'I'm Argyle 'til we're sh1te again'.
As for the disposable income argument, it's possibly a third of what most youngies spend on a Friday night now, so I'm not sure if that is true, but I know it's often used by people who perhaps want to deflect their fickleness (if there is such a word).
Can't argue about the utter garbage on the pitch for a few years, many of the games were totally dire, but again a club is for life not just for Christmas.
Saying that, if I lived any distance from Plymouth, I doubt whether I'd have bothered watching some of those home game when we lost game after game to some not very good opposition.
I remember watching Burton pigging Albion bore us to a 1-0 defeat and then saw that they went up to 6th position in doing so.
Still the embers are there now, I get excited about my team chances now, rather than pray to the football Gods for help, so let's hope that more and more come back, and then we will a sort of self fulfilling prophecy again.
It's tricky though. I know what you mean about what kids will spend on a night out but perhaps that's their lot for the week and they will weigh up whether they want a quiet night out and a (probably) crap Saturday afternoon, or a full-on night out.
Also, as I said, this is not just about the last couple of seasons, more a steady decline during which time the club has done little or nothing to inspire the new generation of supporters that every club needs. Trust needs to be regained and I don't envy the club that task.
I've got to fess up to hardly having been to a game for about three seasons now having got out of the habit and for other reasons. Right now I have a serious health problem which prevents me going ( won't even make the Mansfield game on my doorstep) but I still consider myself an Argyle fan as it still matters. If I lived down there and was in better health I'd be a season ticket holder and would actively contribute to things like the AFT or whatever.
But, having said all that, I still feel a bit alienated by things that have gone on at HP over the last few years and I know I'm not alone in that so I think that the club still has a fair bit of bridge building to do. What with that and the legendary fickleness (I'm not sure either, but hey!!) of the great Janner unwashed I actually dont think the crowds are too bad. Compare them with the darker days of the McCauley era for starters, and I think that, football wise and in terms of hope, we were actually in a better position then than now, by which I mean we didn't really feel like an 'established' fourth tier team the way we have of late, and we never seriously flirted with relegation yo the Conference.
I'm quietly enthusiastic about our prospects now, which is great after all the rubbish of recent seasons, although I'm struggling, if im honest, to ever imagine supporting Argyle being as exciting as the two championship seasons and that all too brief period when it looked as though we may finally get there. Still, that's Argyle innit, we knew what we were signing up for, so I'm grateful right now to just have a club left to support, despite the feeling that the one chance we really had to hit the big time was not only wasted but not even seriously attempted. That, I'm afraid, is a major factor in why the club has never been supported in the numbers it could have been and which makes those glimpses we've had at what might have been, the occasional big crowd, the (dare I use the word) potential all the more frustrating, especially when you look at what's been achieved at clubs like Southampton and Norwich. Never mind 'the likes of' Hull and Swansea, those are the ones who grasped the chance to become 'big' when they had it and they've never looked back. That is what I believe we could have been, but sadly never will, and while the club never displays the kind of confidence - arrogance even - that these do, things like assuring the fanbase that they'll be back when they fall on leaner times, it will alwsys be the same. The club has, in my opinion, pretty much the level of support it deserves.
