The Blues game away at Derby was not being shown live over here, however it was being shown on a very well known online streaming service that I subscribe to so it would be a great weekend if Blues could win. I’d booked Thursday and Friday off so on the third night of my elongated weekend, I settled down on the couch at around 11:30 PM to enjoy my night of cup football. Chelsea vs Cardiff City was up first and within 30 seconds, that was over. So I tuned the sound down and decided to double dip by watching Southampton at home to Portsmouth as well.

Well, I did until I fell asleep. My Blues alarm woke me up fifteen minutes before the Blues game was due to kick off just as highlights of the Portsmouth – Southampton game were being shown. I saw ’5-4′ in the top left hand corner of the screen and, somewhat sleepier than I was anticipating, tried kicking myself. I kicked myself enough to realise that I was seeing the corner count – or foul count – or some sort of count. For a second I thought it was Robbie Savage. Then I realised that that’s not a count but something remarkably similar.

I lay back down and went into ‘snooze’ mode. I jumped up with a start not long afterwards and realised that I’d missed the first 10 minutes of the Blues game. I fiddled away at my keyboard and connected. I switched Setanta Sports onto the TV too and, again, watched two games at once. I Tweeted occasionally in an effort to keep myself awake. I considered coffee but my kitchen is at least 12 steps away and this is a hell of a long way when I’m asleep.

Par for the course, I told Jerome that he was useless – and then realised that I was talking to Bowyer. The quality of the stream was not up to its usual standard so it was more a game to be endured rather than enjoyed. And endure it we did. When Joe Hart let one slip past him just into the second half, I considered calling it a night. I’ve only ever left one game early in my life (Blues 1-3 Southend United) and I don’t think I’ve turned a game off in Australia whilst watching. But I considered it as my eyes suddenly became suddenly heavier.

Thankfully, I didn’t.

At 3:19 AM, I Tweeted : “CAn’t see us scoring tonight…” Ten minutes later, I was up and off the couch singing songs about Wembley. I’m nothing if not predictable. As soon as Dann scored, I had a sneaking suspicion that we’d go on and win it and win it we did. Spookily, another ‘nose on Twitter asked whether I thought Phillips would make the difference. To be honest, I couldn’t see a nuclear bomb making any sort of difference to the lack of belief I had in Blues scoring that night morning. But cometh the hour, cometh the man. Phillips’ chance was going in anyway and would’ve been his 250th goal in league football but any footballer would’ve made sure of it and Ridge followed up and became the hero.

It’s amazing just how unstupid I feel when I stand up and join in with the Blues fans whilst alone in my living room at 4 AM. There’s a solidarity and a common feeling there and talking to other Blues fans throughout the match on sites like Twitter really is a pleasure and does an amazing job of bridging what sometimes feels like an unbridgeable gap. And FA Cup weekend often feels like an unbridgeable gap.

I love the FA Cup. I’d sacrifice every point we’ve won this season to see Blues win the FA Cup. Stick your financial this, your balance sheet that. I want to see Blues win a meaningful trophy and despite what modern footballing media tell us about the Champions League, the FA Cup is the best competition in the world. And to see Blues in the final of it, well, I’d give almost anything.

Mrs Aff understands this. We’ve agreed that if Blues reach the final of the FA Cup, providing I can somehow bag a ticket, that I can fly home for the game. We’re not exactly flush but it’s always been a dream to watch Blues run out in the FA Cup final at Wembley. I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t give everything I could to see that happen. Silverware is what football is about and the FA Cup is the pinnacle. If you want to argue, don’t. You’re wrong. Okay? Good.

And because of this, FA Cup weekends are particularly difficult to take when living in Australia. It’s only possible to stay up on Saturday night to watch games meaning that all Sunday games (unless Blues are playing) have to be given the elbow because of work on Monday morning meaning that the best I can hope for is highlights on the Monday night. I’m not a highlights guy, I never have been. It’s live or nothing and I haven’t seen the highlights of England beating Australia in the fifth test of the 2009 Ashes despite making all the effort to watch most of the series ‘live’. I couldn’t watch the winning day so therefore, I am not interested in experiencing it in slow motion and chopped up. It has to be organic.

So I feel like I’m missing part of the magic of the FA Cup. I hate missing games, especially in the earlier rounds where clubs who have supporters who don’t see each other often enough to even know the club song are on TV explaining how this game means everything – and they’re only playing against Leyton Orient! The FA Cup is special and missing it is unfortunately, a bad side effect of living in Australia.

Still, Blues have progressed and we’ve been given a thoroughly winnable quarter final tie. Part of me understands that we’re all talking about Wembley and tickets stubs and I’m looking into flights and planning ways of blagging a ticket already so inevitably, Blues will kick us in the nads. But there’s something different in the club, the team and the atmosphere at the moment.

This season, this team… you just never know. And as Mrs Aff has just pointed out “When I said you could go home for the FA Cup, I never thought they’d do it this year. F*ckers.” As I was saying, just as you think you know them…

We’ll gloss over the West Ham Olympic result. We didn’t really turn up with any purpose. We played some pretty stuff occasionally but at no point did we look genuinely threatening or like we might actually score a goal. Once Diamanti rocketed one past Hart, it was always going to be tough and when we started the second half somewhat comatose, the writing was on the wall.

Still, in the words of Mr Gold, West Ham Olympic need the points more than we do. You’re welcome Mr Gold. After all, you did rebuild Blues from nothing and all the time whilst making no money and getting constantly abused by those you were helping. Then, after begging to keep your job, declared that you’d wished you’d been somewhere else along. And then you claimed that you hoped that your new club where you’d always wanted to be despite declaring yourself a Blues fan several times over the last few years would ‘whack’ the club that, for a while, you supported. No, wait, that was all taken out of context, wasn’t it? My mistake.

I’m going off topic already. And actually, before I get on topic, let me just say that I don’t necessarily have any animosity towards West Ham nor their followers. This is purely personal thing with our old board who, despite many years of great service, pissed over Blues fans from a great height in the end and as Mr Gold quite rightly said, people always show their true colours. Seeing the statements that Gold and Sullivan are making at West Ham at the moment just remind me of stuff that Blues fans have heard a million times before. It’s quite refreshing to not have our name associated with it. Hopefully soon enough, Sullivan and Gold will have had enough about talking about us and concentrate on where they are now.

But the point of this blog.

On Thursday morning, after the defeat, I had a cup of coffee. And then I got over the defeat. And then I went online and, naturally, talked to other Blues fans about it. I made a joke about David Sullivan taking credit for the win with his remarks about everyone taking a pay cut and how it would galvanise West Ham and that would lead them to victory. Well, feck me dead, I checked online the next day and there it was, David Sullivan taking full credit for it!

And click here if you would like to read said article. I like that he openly admits that it pisses off the manager but he does it anyway. Clearly, he really doesn’t care who he upsets. In fact, Sullivan reminds me a lot of – to borrow a phrase – ‘a keyboard warrior’. Obviously, he has a little bit more power than anyone who just tip-taps away in the privacy of his office or lounge room but still, he has that air of internet troll about him. “What can I say today to get people’s backs up? What can I do to upset someone? How can I make someone’s blood boil?” And when he achieves it, he appears satisfied for a few weeks. He appears almost malicious whereas, at least Gold tries to do things the right way. His heart is in the right place, even if, he too, gets things wrong.

You may be wondering why I care considering that they’ve gone and are supposedly no longer involved in what goes on at Blues but as I read, I smiled and thought of outbursts like that no longer being our problem and how nice that will be.

What struck me as I read the article and laughed at the fact that I’d predicted it was that our lot had been, on the whole, dignified throughout the whole episode. We haven’t heard from Carson Yeung (probably because the last time he spoke publicly in English, Alex McLeish ended up fearing for his job!) or Sammy Yu regarding the game or the animosity, we haven’t heard from Vico Hui or Michael Dunford and we’ve heard little from Peter Pannu. Alex McLeish has also been dignified (as has Zola who, as far as I’m aware, has said nothing re. Blues although plenty about Sullivan!) and this is despite a gutter journalist from The Mirror trying to get a rise out of him, according to a blog by Tatts. Of course, I daresay it’s this journalist that ended up getting the rent-a-quote style article from Sullivan. And I’m glad he did.

What it’s done is dispel the last remaining oodles of doubt I have in my mind regarding the current board. As I sit back and look at the shit Portsmouth have gotten themselves into, I wonder how Blues are going to afford to lash out £20-40m in the summer with the crowds that we get. All we’ve heard so far is that we shouldn’t worry about the money. Shouldn’t we? Considering how many clubs are facing winding up orders this week, I think we should be extremely worried. Still, having seen the lack of fanfare with which the new board have done things and the professional and dignified way they’ve handled the barbs from the old owners from the outset, I’m convinced that:

a) They’re in it for the long haul and:
b) They want to do things right

And the pleasing thing about point b) is that you never got that feeling with the old board. And as I sit here, 12,000 miles away, I’m pleased because I’ll just about be far enough away to survive when the nuclear reaction ignites and explodes when Hammers fans become as sick of Sullivan’s attitude as we did.

Something that I’ve noticed a lot of people reporting over the last few months is a mark of respect that Blues have been getting. National newspapers, fellow football supporters and the wider footballing community have started to take notice of all the good things that are happening at St Andrews these days. This phenomenon seemed global and I myself have had people mention the club to me in passing on a semi-regular basis… this sort of came to an end this week.

A client came into to see me at work and noticed my St Georges flag that sits atop my monitor. Asking what it was, I explained what it was and that it had been placed there at the beginning of the Ashes several months ago and just never been removed. Excitedly, my client asked whether I follow English football.

“Of course!” said I.
“Who is your team?” asks he.
“Birmingham City!” exclaim I.

And then I sit back and wait for admiration.

“I thought you’d support one of the big teams like Manchester United or Liverpool.” he replies.

Ouch.

“What division are Birmingham in?”
“The Premier League. We are 8th.”
“Oh. Good on you, mate.”

It seems as though we’re not quite as famous as I’d been led to believe. Bollocks to ‘em.

Everyone has already stated what they think and I don’t think that I can really add anything of value here. But somehow, it would be rude to not mention the passing of Gil Merrick. He deserves more than a footnote in the history of our club and I know that a few paragraphs on any web server in the world won’t be able to actually describe the impact that he had on Birmingham City.

It’s fitting that a stand at St Andrews was renamed before the great man toddled off to keep goal for the God’s Personal XI ‘up there’ and from reading about him, you get the feeling that all of these flowing tributes and gushing words would somehow embarrass the man. I hope not because whilst there are Blues fans out there, tributes like this will long be forthcoming.

It’s been fantastic to read so many personal accounts of encounters with Merrick from Blues fans of all ages. I shall now add my own here. It comes from an encounter with a work colleague when I was working back home in Brum. She was recounting a story to me from her youth. She knew I was a Blues fans because of the BCFC scarf that used to hang in my office! She casually mentioned one day that she used to be best friends with the daughter of a Blues manager.

“Which manager?” asks I.
“Gil Merrick” says she.

Immediately, I start badgering her for information about Gil. I want to know what he was like, how well she knew him and if all the stories about him being the most gentlemanly of men were true. Sometimes they say that you should never meet your heroes and I felt as though this was going to one of those times where I may have been let down by finding out what he was like in ‘real’ life. Thankfully, he nor my work colleague let me down.

My work mate recounted many stories of Gil and spending time with his family and at his home. She wasn’t into football so did not know who Gil was. However, it never came up in conversation nor was his job as the manager of Birmingham City ever mentioned. One day, my work colleague casually asked what he did for a living. He replied that he was the manager of Birmingham City FC and left it at that. It was never mentioned again. It was just his job and nothing to be boastful about. Merrick, according to my colleague, was perfectly humble about what he did and what he had achieved as both manager and player with Blues.

That story always seemed to stick out in my mind. Of course, Merrick played and managed in a different time and back then, everything wasn’t played out in a fish bowl and players and managers understood their responsibilities a lot more and also understood their privilege. Players today could learn a lot from the likes of Merrick and his generation and as we say farewell to one of the true greats of Birmingham City’s history, I can’t help but be sad for the future of the modern game, especially considering what is happening with supposedly the most high profile and privileged footballer in the country at the moment.

I’ve decided to do a very quick update. I should’ve done this yesterday as it’s an emergency. I realise that my delay has probably cost dozens of lives already. After all, Blues didn’t sign a new striker in the January transfer window and clearly, that’s the end of the world. For my fellow ex-pats in Australia, here’s a very important link for you during this difficult time:

Clickety-click

You’re welcome.

Secondly, after doing my bit to preserve the Bluenose population Down Under, I must tell you about something mildly sneaky. It reminds me of a Bluenose fanzine article I read some 10-15 years ago. A writer offered to take his wife to Italy for a romantic midweek break to show her how much he loved her. When they arrived, he stated that as they were there anyway, he might as well pop along to catch a local game of football. And remarkably it just so coincided that Blues were playing at that very stadium in the Anglo-Italian Cup!

I’ve done my very own version of this. Not on such a grand scale but nonetheless, I feel like I’ve gotten back some of the investment I’ve put into Blues over the years by winning some major brownie points with Mrs Aff when, in reality, I’ve taken action so that I can catch the whole of the Blues – West Ham game – or so I thought.

Currently, there’s an art display happening in Canberra, Australia. It’s a few hours from where I live and Mrs Aff and mother-in-law Aff are desperate to go and have a look. Something to do with brush strokes and masters and colours and talent and other stuff that, I’ll be honest, I don’t really understand. I considered sitting them both down and showing them Barry Ferguson’s goal at Everton a few weeks ago and explaining that *THIS* is art. Somehow, I don’t think they’d get it.

Anyway, they’ve been talking about going to see these famous blobs for a few weeks now. So me, being the kind soul that I am, offered to take two days off work to take them to Canberra and be quite well behaved as they ‘Ohhed’ and ‘Ahhhed’ at the paintings that, to any normal person the untrained eye, look like pictures that any standard six year old could’ve drawn.

So I announce this to my other half.

“I’m going to book next Thursday and Friday off to take you and your mother to Canberra to see that art thing you’re interested in.”

Nothing, notta, zip, zilch. No reaction. I reiterate and explain.

“It’s okay. I have two RDO’s stacked up so it won’t even come out of my annual leave so I’ll still be right for the week in April. So I’ll get to spend FOUR WHOLE DAYS with you and you get to see the art that you’ve been talking about for a few weeks now. It’ll be great. Don’t you think?”

Still nothing. I’m a bit annoyed. I might as well come somewhat clean.

“Oh course, Blues play West Ham on the Thursday morning so it’s a bonus that I’ll be able to see the whole Blues game before we go. But we’ll be at the museum by midday.”

She wasn’t very happy that I would presume to arrange a date to take her and her mother out. After all, unbeknownst to this blogger, she and her mother had been planning a special Valentines Day trip to Canberra for ME + HER to go and see Rob Thomas in concert and this is when they would conveniently also slip into the art exhibition whilst we were there.

So I’m in trouble because:

a) I’m stupid enough to take a whole day off work to watch the last 20 minutes of a game that we’ll probably lose anyway and:
b) I ruined a perfectly lovely and fabulous Valentines Day present that she can now not give me because we’ll be in Canberra 2 nights early

That’ll teach me for trying to use an obsession with eleven men to score points with my other half, won’t it? Although as I sit here and think about it, I’ve worked out that what I was trying to do to her, she’s done to me. Using something good for me as an excuse to get what SHE wants. Manipulative little… darling!

So, the transfer deadline is happening tonight… I say, tonight, I really should say ‘tomorrow morning’. It slams shut at 5PM in England, which is 4 AM here in New South Wales. I always get excited around transfer deadline day. I think it takes me back to playing old Spectrum games like ‘On The Bench’ when you would always make sure you had 20 players in case you ever had a ‘D, N, A’ and then your best striker was out for the rest of the season. That said, it never made a difference because if you had a goalkeeper on a high rating, you could just change his name and play him up front instead. The amount of times I’ve had Ian Bennett suddenly morph into Andy Saville…

But I used to like transfer deadline week (week 41, a small message would appear saying ‘Transfer Deadline next week’) and the frantic rush of flogging enough reserves to make ends meet whilst still making sure that the squad was strong enough to win the domestic league and cup double and give your out and out striker the best chance of beating the club record for goals in a season (around 85 was my best but dad once managed to get a player to score 104 goals in 42 appearances running on a Spectrum emulator just a couple of years ago. I gave up after that. He also once got his team to beat Burnley 20-0 and Gary Linekar scored eight in one game.) If you’ve never tried ‘On The Bench’, I suggest you get ahold of a copy from one of the many great Spectrum emulators from around the web. It’s fantasy football gone mad and takes you back to a simpler time – for example, it asks you whether you would like 2 or 3 points for a win!

But anywayyy… in a long winded way, I’m trying to say that the buzz of transfer deadline day is fun. Especially in the modern era with 24 hour rumours via the BBC site (Blues linked to Janko) and the non-stop round up of Twitter users who seem to know blokes that cut the grass at every football club in the galaxy and have the scoop on who is going and staying. And in the case of Blues fans, we have Mr Reliable in the shape of Colin Tattum who always lets us know what’s what – Pav not coming, loanee the most likely signing.

Onto Blues and I’m not confident about us signing anyone. I think we’ll all be a bit disappointed if we don’t, especially after we appeared to be spend big with bids for Jones and Babel early in the window. If bids like that were still going in and if there were a chance that Pavlyuchenko might still come, I’d consider setting my alarm for 4 AM to get up and check. That said, the last time I got up super early to check Blues last-minute transfer activity, I saw that we’d signed Dwight Yorke. It wasn’t worth a 25 cents dial up fee.

I’m not on dial up any longer. We’ve progressed a little in Australia and I’m now able to reach speeds of 1 MB, albeit it on a 25 GB a month download cap. Really, they are behind the times somewhere here. Internet speed and packages in Australia are practically third world!

But back to the transfer window and Australia. That’s the problem with living here. You tend to miss a LOT. You can idly flick through the channels on a Friday night or Saturday evening and follow a Championship or League One game in England. You can follow German football at a reasonable hour or watch Champions League football as a passing interest. Watching this sort of football in Australia is an effort. Especially when you have to be in work before the final whistle has gone. You have to be up and ready for work by the time the game kicks off at 6:45 AM and for a game between two German sides who, for all you know, could be the most defensive sides in the universe, well, the incentive is not great.

It’s the same with the Champions League and even the Premier League in midweek. The incentive is just not there to get up a couple of hours early just to watch a game that may or may not be rubbish. I’ll happily do that for a Manchester United vs Arsenal (although annoyingly, that’s always a Monday morning at 3 AM here – just not viable) but for a Bolton vs Hull? No chance.

And this is my problem with transfer windows nowadays. Following football from Australia is hard, mainly because of the time difference and waking up in the morning here means that all the football news has happened and if you want to keep up, it’s a commitment. It’s only when you live away from England you realise just how saturated the news and place is with football. My other half has confirmed that football is so engrained in the UK that’s it’s nigh on impossible to avoid picking some of it up. They don’t have a single sport like that in Australia so no-one really understands.

Following football has become a challenge and I’ve had to make decisions about the types of football that I want to follow. Premier League has become a priority and Championship is a passing interest whilst League 1 is a minor blip on my footballing radar because of some of the teams that are down there. Embarrassingly enough, League Two has become somewhat invisible to me since I arrived here and European football might as well not exist. They don’t even sell FourFourTwo here.

So this year, my enthusiasm is mixed. I want to be excited but it’s a challenge because as time goes on, I’m finding that football is becoming harder to follow and therefore, knowing enough about the players that we’re being linked to to form a proper and right opinion is not a simple thumbs up and thumbs down case like it used to be. I used to know enough but 18 months is a long time in football and these days, I’m having to work to keep up…

One of the good things about living in Australia is that 90% of Blues games are shown live. Through the wonders of modern technology, you can see most Premier League games live anyway but that is on a PC screen on a dodgy internet stream where sometimes, you can’t tell the different between Cameron Jerome and Christian Benitez (well, until the player goes to control the ball, that is!) I know some will say that if you’re prepared to spend a bit, you’ll get high quality streams but I’ve paid for that and no matter how good the stream is, it’s never as good as watching it on TV – which, obviously, is the best you can hope to wish for living 10,000 miles away from St Andrews.

Last night was no exception. Blues vs Tottenham was on Fox Sports 1, due to kick off at 2 AM. I did as I always do and went to bed around 10:30 PM in order to get a few hours worth of shut eye before the game kicked off. I set my mobile phone alarm for 1:55 AM and went to bed. Sometimes, it’s hard to nod off when you know you have to get up in three hours. Sometimes, depending on who we’re playing, I’ll be just slightly too excited to sleep. Even after 20 years of following Blues, I still get excited when we play. It’s something I hope never goes away.

Last night was not one of those nights and when my phone shook me into a state of conscious at 2:55 PM GMT, I was not in the best of moods. I had been in a deep sleep – the first for many a week  – and the idea of being of told that I was no longer allowed this by a small piece of blue Scandinavian engineering was not something I appreciated. Still, I dragged myself out of bed and threw on my dressing gown. I collapsed onto the sofa and switched Fox Sports 1 on just as the introduction was coming on.

I wasn’t really looking forward to the game and being honest, I’d have much preferred to go back to bed. But there’s a sense of duty with following any football club and I wasn’t about to give up my unbeaten record of seeing every Blues game available since I’d arrived in October 2008. I could sleep on Sunday. But I would be seriously pissed off if we were to lose and you know, being Blues, there was no guarantee.

I wasn’t confident about the game anyway and as I sit here and think about it, it feels like it never happened. I remember being frustrated with our general overall sloppiness and thinking that at any moment, Spurs were going to waltz through and score. I usually Tweet about the game as it happens but last night was just a non-event. I couldn’t bring myself to care enough to Tweet and although I was relieved and celebrated Ridgewell’s goal with typical aplomb, I was just happy to be able to go to bed. Sitting there rubbing your eyes for nearly two hours is never really to be enjoyed – especially when for the most part, we were outplayed by a slick Spurs outfit.

General sleepy thoughts included:

- Jerome frustrates me – a lot. But I think I have an irrational thing with him. He’s just one of those players who everyone else seems to rate but I don’t. I find myself getting annoyed with 90% of things he does, even if he’s getting them right. I think the 10% of things he gets wrong, frustrate me to the point of being unable to get past them.

- The unbeaten run has taken its toll. Some of the players are looking leggy and we desperately need reinforcements but with only two days to do it, it’s not looking good. I’ve heard that Pav and Dindane aren’t coming so it looks as though we’ll have to go with what we’ve got for the rest of the season. That’s a crying shame because it means we’ll be in danger of finishing 15th-17th and whilst we would’ve taken that at the beginning of the season, the players who are here deserve far more credit than that.

- Michel. He looks a player. Always looked to want the ball and looked supremely comfortable in possession. There’s nothing better than seeing a player who is 100% comfortable on the ball and the fact that Michel already looks like that and is clearly not afraid to put himself about is an exciting proposition for Blues fans.

- Chucho, it’s hard to ignore some of the misses and for all the good work he does, he needs to start converting sooner rather than later. I still like the guy and believe he’ll come good. His all around play is excellent and I think he’d benefit from more of a ‘big’ partner. Jerome has said previously that he doesn’t like playing the ‘big man’ role and I’m guessing this is what Big Eck was thinking of when he went in for Jones and then Pav.

- Joe Hart, completely won me over. Wasn’t convinced at the start of the season. More than convinced now. England’s #1? I wouldn’t bet against it.

That’s about it for now. All in all, a thoroughly satisfying point if not a satisfying performance and most definitely not a satisfying viewing spectacle at 2 AM. Still, at least it wasn’t minus 15 and covered in snow here…

I start with that title because this is the second time that I’ve attempted to run a Blues site. The first attempt was, if I do say so myself, mildly successful. I started the well-known Blues website Joys & Sorrows. After a good 2-3 years running that, I got burn out and decided that running the blog was no longer for me. I handed control over to a good friend of mine called Kevin Ball and with his able team of Kaje and Aylesbury Blue, they have taken the site from strength to strength and this can be seen in the type of interview they are getting with people such as Joe Gallagher and Kenny Burns. If you have never seen it, I strongly suggest that you click the link above as it is simply one of the best Blues sites out there and also visit the forum where a bunch of happy and knowledgeable posters contribute regularly to a lively debate on all subjects blue.

Most of the articles that I wrote for the site were archived and can be viewed by clicking here. About 500 articles were lost when the server crashed after about 6 months but from April 2006 – April 2008 when I ran the site, every article has been kept so if you would like to get a feel for what sort of thing you may find here, you can do so by clicking the link at the beginning of this paragraph.

The theme of this site is going to be different to Joys & Sorrows. In October 2008, I moved to Australia from Birmingham and have become one of many ex-pats following Blues from afar. It’s a completely different experience and sacrifices that have to be made to follow the club are no less than those who live in the shadows of St Andrews and have to scrimp and save to buy season tickets year in and year out. I hope to document some of those sacrifices here. I also hope to show the fun side of following Blues from a different continent and show how the locals perceive a ‘soccer’ fan and our game in general as well as share stories from other Blues fans who live in other far-flung corners of the world.

The focus will be primarily on following Blues from Australia though and in that, I hope to bring together some of the Blues fans who live in this part of the world and perhaps form some sort of Australian supporters club. Last time I was in Australia (working holiday, 2004-5) I tried to start a Blues Aussie supporters club but it never really took off. This time, I hope it will be a little more successful.

Other plans include general guides on how to follow English football from abroad and how to access services that pertain to following the game from the home of football. Basically, I want to put a few guides together that will not only help Blues fans in Australia but Blues fans – and football fans in general – the world over.

It’s a big project and hopefully people will offer to lend a hand along the way. I hope to work closely with other Blues overseas supporters club and websites in establishing ourselves and finding out about just where Blues fans exist in the world. Again, Joys & Sorrows has done a fantastic job in this in recent months by profiling supporters clubs from all over the world. If you’re interested in this, click the link at the beginning of the article.

For now, that’s it. A basic plan and a botchy looking design. Hopefully, there’ll be much more where all this sort of thing is concerned. Stay tuned, folks.