A Lifetime of Two Shirts
Some fans follow one club their whole life. I've somehow ended up with two, and both feel just as real.
I've been a Burnley Football Club fan since 1972, when I went to my first game as a boy. Decades later, life took me to Cyprus, and I picked up a second footballing home in Pafos FC. Here's how I try to keep faith with both.
Burnley: The One That Started It All
My first game at Turf Moor was back in 1972. I couldn't have known then that it would still matter to me more than fifty years on, but it does, every bit as much.
Living in Cyprus now, I don't get to Turf Moor often. Realistically it's a game or two a season if I'm lucky, when a trip home lines up with the fixture list. That's a world away from the fan who used to go every other Saturday. But the passion was never about how many games I could get to. It's the club that shaped how I watch football, and it's still the result I check first, wherever I am.
Finding Pafos FC
When I settled in Cyprus, I wasn't looking for a new club. But living here, you can't help getting pulled into the local game, and Pafos FC is who I fell for. This is now my fifth year following them.
It's a different rhythm to supporting Burnley from afar. Pafos is on my doorstep, so I get to be a regular again in a way I haven't been able to back home for years. It's scratched an itch I didn't realise I'd been missing: turning up, week in, week out, and watching a club grow.
Home and Away, Whenever I Can
With Burnley, geography mostly decides things for me now. With Pafos, I get to choose, and I try to make the most of it: home games when I'm around, and away trips whenever I can make them work.
The standout so far has to be this year's Champions League game against Chelsea. Watching a club I follow week to week line up against one of the biggest names in the game was a genuinely surreal night, and one I wasn't going to miss. Getting to be there for it, rather than just watching from home, is exactly why I go to the away games in the first place.
Two Clubs, One Passion
I don't think of it as splitting my loyalty. Burnley is the club I was born into, the one that gave me my first game back in 1972, and that will never change no matter how far away I am or how few games I make it to. Pafos is the club I chose, the one that fits the life I have now, and the one I get to follow properly, week after week.
Different countries, different histories, different distances. But the feeling when the whistle goes is exactly the same.
Thanks for the photo owners, some are mine, some i've scraped.