Pots; Every Fan

It’s that time of year, where we celebrate the great and good of Norwich City FC.

Player of the season, a title often bestowed to one wonderful individual, or Carlo Nash (younger readers may wish to google poor Carlo, the result of one of our less successful seasons). However, this year we have a whole team to pick from, so why not pick the biggest “player” of the season, the fans?

Yes it’s a clich’e, but why not? We give our all every match, we all have random superstitions that have to be followed before a match. Mrs G is getting fed up with keeping my Farkelife tee shirt on a heavy cleaning rotation, because “we haven’t lost when I’ve worn it on a match day”.

Many of us have travelled thousands of miles to support the team, and what support it is. 2,500 at Rotherham, swelling the South Yorkshire town’s population to “by ‘eck” proportions. 5,000 travelling to Wigan, raising their attendance by about 4,500. It’s us fans roaring the boys on, why can’t we have some credit?

Daniel and Stuart have both said how important the support has been this season, like a 12th man. I just can’t stop with the clich’es, sorry. You really get the sense us fans have always believed there’s a goal coming and every time Emi, Onel or Marco come forward, we are all with them. Mentally running and forcing our way towards goal. I’m exhausted after a match, and not just because my dad has a habit of getting us seats in the Barclay Upper.

Do we get the praise for Tom Trybull shimmying past the lunging opposition player? Without the passionate “MAN ON” how would he know? I think we all give these players too much credit. It’s Sharon in row H of the South Stand that is the glue that holds this team together. Jack and Bob in the Barclay upper and their encouraging applause that keeps Ben Godfrey going. It’s the bloke sitting behind Stuart Webber in the City Stand who… ok not all fans deserve Player of the Season.

There’s a gentleman in deepest Suffolk, I forget his name, who says the supporters of his club are tremendous. I’m sure there’s a correlation between their attendances and league position. Whereas, in glorious Norfolk, and the away ends of Rotherham, Wigan and Nottingham (to name but a few), those players in the crowd, let’s call them fans, are there in huge numbers, and their team? Whisper it quietly, especially if, like me you work with Sheffield and Leeds United fans, are on their way to the Premier League.

Let’s personify the stands just to ram my point home. The Barclay? It’s Teemu Pukki, they have that extra something to get you over the line. The River End? Tim Krul. Very little fanfare but solid and dependable. The South Stand? Ben Godfrey, young and promising and glare at the away lot if they dare make a noise. The City Stand? Tom Trybull. Solid and a part of the team you’d notice if it wasn’t there. Snake Pit? Timm Klose, loud, brash and you wouldn’t question the passion.

I’m not for one second suggesting us fans could perform the heroics the actual players have this season. I’ve seen the Along Come Nodge guys, and the less said about the physical attributes of the Canaries Trust the better. However, the bond issue, the rising membership of the aforementioned Canaries Trust and the financial supportforACN and the Barclay End Norwich initiatives goes a long way to showing the big part played in Norwich City 2018/19.

But we have the fan of the year, I hear you shout. Yes, that’s a valid point, but like the team, you always have a stand out performer, and Norwich supporters are a team. For those reasons I’ve outlined, so we can have that Teemu Pukki, because the other 600,000 plus fans are the back 4 who you need to be successful. Without those die-hard yellows we have no club, we keep the team going.

We are bigger than the players. Therefore we are the real Players of the Season, but because we fans are so generous, we’ll let Emi, Christoph or Teemu win it this year.