Poll: How did you get into supporting North?

[Makeshift Park]

Its a theme I'm certain has done the rounds done before, but...

I'm curious about the current BF demographic.

Did you get into North through family, or something else? And if so, what?

To get things started...

I was born in the mid eighties in Tassie. Nearly everyone I knew back then just picked a Victorian team. I grew up in a family of Fitzroy, Melbourne and Geelong supporters. I distinctly remember collecting AFL trading cards in 1991 -92. There was a day when I knew I had to decide where my loyalties were. I laid out all my cards on my Nan's guestroom floor. I realised Martyn, Carey, and Archer just looked more endearingly bad-ass than everyone else. Then 1993 happened, and the rest is history.

 

[iloveireland]

When I was young, a few decades ago, my family were mad Collingwood supporters but I just couldn’t get into them at all.

Then when I hit primary school two of my closest friends who I played footy with everyday supported north and one took me to one of my first live AFL games.

After talking about North and barracking for North at a few games I realised I liked North and didn’t like Collingwood so I jumped ship. Probably around 8 years old. Barely watched footy before that, got mad into footy after that.

 

[ferball]

I don't even remember.

Maybe after the 76 GF? But honestly i couldn't say. My mum had this dresser with this crockery that is called Cornish blue and I had a pillow with blue dots on it that was favorite one when I was a kid. these are like my oldest memories and I assume they had something to do with why I supported the team with blue and white stripes.

 

[ferball]

She's still got that same dresser and crockery btw... more than 50 years later.

 

[Lomas]

I grew up a Fitzroy supporter, we all know how that ended.
I’d always had a soft spot for North, my favourite family friends were passionate about them. I took a few years off having a team, missed the flags, and finally bit the bullet and got a membership in 2006 I think.
Haven’t looked back, totally born again.

 

[Sillygit]

Dad and brother are melbourne supporters, but dad would just take us to any game that was playing at the g. I was... 8? So i apparently wasnt indoctrinated hard enough cause after a couple north games i was set on them instead. I think it was the stripes that i liked better. Dad just accepted it, melbourne were shit to be fair.

But i am a massive hypocrit because im not affording my progeny the luxury of choice.

 

[nicko74]

I follow East Fremantle in the WAFL. Back in the day watching the winners I saw North Melbourne playing who are Blue and White like East Fremantle. Simple as that really. There also happened to be a few WA guys in there as well.... Glendinning, Krakouer's etc.

Never looked back

 

[Skarrz]

My dad barracks for the bulldogs and so does my sister. My mum and her entire family are one eyed Carlton nuffies.

I decided at 4 when I went to school that all the cool kids went for north and I liked blue and wouldn’t change my mind. No idea how that flew but it stuck. Was too young to enjoy the 90s premierships but I’m as die hard as they come like the rest of you nuffies

 

[The Talent Scout]

Well I grew up in Tassie and watched the VFL on Mum & Dads black & white tv in the early seventy's, my god I loved the game, like most kids around that era, swapped footy cards and seeing the real colours of the teams on the cards
was like a "wow" factor.

When Richmond played Essendon you had to pay close attention to who was who, likewise North Melbourne and Collingwood but after a while you could pick it out pretty easily. Then in 1975 mum & dad got a colour tv and the excitement, was like "oh my god, how good is this", for the kids of today its pretty hard to explain because there were no gadgets and no google but it was still great.

Because of the footy cards { in colour } of all the teams, only two stood out amongst them all and that was North Melbourne and Hawthorn. I liked the colours of the hawks but the blue and white colours of the Roos I literally fell in love with, the kangaroos emblem added to that as well and one of my favourite shows at the time was Skippy {the bush kangaroo}, god I loved that kangaroo!

How funny that the start of the VFL season started of with North Melbourne vs Hawthorn at Princes Park for the first game of the year, which we lost but the team looked mesmerising in those blue and white jumpers so yeah that was it, the first game of 1975, and I was to learn that North Melbourne were the only team in the VFL that had not won a premiership, I didn't care, win lose or draw, they were now my team for life!

Several months later we made the grand final against who do you expect, take a guess, Hawthorn! Fair dinkum, you wouldn't read about it, a massive crowd of 110,551 spectators witnessed history as the mighty North Melbourne football team smashed the hawks by 9 goals and in doing so won their first premiership, I was jumping up and down and so excited as well as crying a little bit because we were orphans no longer, we came of age right there and then and not only did I witness it but that was my first year as a supporter and by god we had won the flag!

Not long after we moved down to the West coast of Tassie where a lot of old mining towns are situated and my parents ran one of the hotels in that region, three years later we came back up the coast and rented a two story place and I remember my dad saying that my uncle Robbie was going to paint my bedroom and what colour I wanted, quick as a flash I quipped back LIGHT BLUE AND WHITE, THE SAME COLOURS AS MY FOOTY TEAM!

 

[The Other Dean]

I suffered the most tragic of all fates - I was born into an Essington supporting family. Before they were burned in a mysterious fire that only claimed a single photo album, I had baby photos of me obliviously sporting Essington scarves in the crib.

So around the age of 5 when I first started to form some awareness of the world around me, I did the only self-respecting thing a 5-year old kid could do. I got a job, got my own flat, filed child abuse claims against my family for the scarf thing, and started barracking for a decent club.

 

[giantroo]

First gen supporter of the early 90s. The King, that is all.

 

[Ardent Roo]

I grew up in a Bulldogs-supporting household, and then one day in Grade 1 or 2 Malcolm Blight came to our school and held a bit of a footy clinic and had a chat with us kids. Requested a trade to North when I got home from school and that was that.

 

[Philosophical Grendel]

I'll drop in with my loooong story here...

First things first, I'm a Yank that chose NMFC as my club in 2020, so feel free to question my judgment all you want. I'm a school teacher here in the States and the beginning of my North fandom started when I took some of my students to New Zealand, Australia, and Fiji on a educational trip in 2017. I knew nothing about footy aside from the bewildering highlights every US kid from the 80s watched on ESPN (they struggled to fill their programming when they originally started the network, and got replays of footy matches for more or less free), but while we were in Sydney, our tour guide (shout out to Shane from EF Tours) tried to convince me to ditch the kids and head over to the SCG to watch a match one night. I couldn't justify leaving the kids with my teacher partner for so long, so we settled on watching in the pub around the corner from the hotel.

Shane tried to instruct me on the finer points of the game, but sadly, he was a super fan but a mediocre teacher. I remember him going on and on about speccies before he even explained how marking the ball worked, so needless to say, I came out of there with almost less understanding of the game than I started with. (I only later figured out it was the Dogs vs. Swans playing).

Fast forward a couple years, and while scrolling through the menu on my TV, I saw that ESPN would be carrying the 2019 AFL Grand Final later that night. In a pique of randomness, I remembered that earlier failed attempt at watching AFL and decided to stay up (approximately 3:00 AM here in Colorado) and give it another shot. I found and watched a quick explainer video, then settled in and saw Richmond take it to Geelong for their last flag. Though I still had almost no idea what was happening, I was pretty much hooked by the intensity, pace, and excitement of the whole thing.

So, I decided to become a fan. I started watching more explainer videos on YouTube, watching match replays on my DVR, and trying to level up my understanding. I spent that winter (spring for you all) trying to get to the point where I could watch games and 100% understand what was happening, which I mostly achieved. Then I wanted to be able to watch live matches, which here in the States required me to get a WatchAFL subscription, and I learned from Reddit that it would be 10-20% cheaper if I paid for it through a club rather than the AFL itself. And that started my quest for a club to follow.

I didn't have the family and social connections to a team that you all have, so I was a tabula rasa and could decide who to cheer for however I wanted. So, I settled on these criteria:

1.) No new team (I'm wasn't choosing a team that had been around since 2005 if there are teams that are almost 200 years old to choose from. GC, GWS, Freo, Crows = OUT).

2.) No teams with red (arbitrary, but I'm not a fan. Demons, Bombers, Swans, Lions, Saints = OUT).

3.) No wack color combos (Port, Hawthorn = OUT).

4.) None of the most popular teams (as a Yank, I didn't want to be thought of as a bandwagon fan. Geelong, Collingwood, Eagles = OUT).

5.) No red, white and blue (again, being from the US, didn't want to go that route. Dogs = OUT)

So, that basically left North.

I set some goals for myself as a fan as I started watching my adopted team. As an athlete and coach myself, my goal for my first year was to just understand enough about the game to have a decent depth of knowledge about all the positions. I watched as many matches as I could each week, kept learning more via YouTube and other social media sources, etc. Year two, my goal was to be able to evaluate individual players. Year three, I started reading Big Footy and following AFL media (maybe a mistake in retrospect) and learning about the history of the game.

Now, I'm no expert, but I feel like I've watched enough and studied the game enough that I have better opinions than some of the AFL posters I see online. I've watched every single North match since 2020, which became its own sort of torture as I learned more about the game, and yelled at every butchered kick and errant handpass and screamed with triumph just like the rest of you with every win (so farking few and far between). It's been rough, but I'm still excited and optimistic about where the boys are headed next. Cheers to all of you fellow psychopaths reading this long.

TL;DR I'm a masochistic North fan from the States, AMA.

 

[Hearts to hearts]

Came to Melbourne from Sydney in 1988 knowing nothing about the game. Realised I had to choose a team to follow. Always liked stripes, the rugby teams I’d followed growing up wore blue and white (Eastwood and Canterbury), and the first place I stayed here was in North Melbourne, so I took those as signs.

 

[Gandolf the Great]

I was born in 1960, Father barracked for Collingwood, 2 brothers followed St Kilda and my sister sort of liked Richmond. I followed North from about six years old. I converted everyone of them to following North. When I die I've asked my wife to spread my ashes on the Arden Street oval. Thats how much I love North.

 

[koshari]

Watching schimma , breidis and later blight and the 70s flags did it for me as a kid.

 

[tricknologist]

The AFL watching parts of my family support either North or Geelong, so those were my choices. I chose North when I was a kid (because I liked kangaroos more than cats) in the early 2000s

 

[Gasometer]

Family took us to a game in 1976 out at Waverley

We won

 

[Ball Dont Lie]

When my mum and uncles migrated here from Italy in the 50s they settled in Oshanassy Street, North Melbourne. They used to sneak in to the games at 3/4 time. they have now indoctrinated 2 more generations including me and my kids.

 

[blackshadow]

I grew up in southern NSW and rugby league dominated the NSW sporting media at the time.
My first recollection of watching footy on TV was at age 9 in the year colour TV (1975) and the first game I saw was North vs Collingwood - I liked the royal blue and white and have stuck fat ever since.

 

[sutcliffe's hotel]

Mum and Nanna insisted we barrack for South Melbourne & worship Peter Bedford. Dad barracked for *.

As soon as we could change teams we all did. Nanna would call us turncoat.

My siblings choose the “big” clubs but I was always a bit more classy. We lived in Seaford so lots of Saints fans but they were not for me. I chose our beloved North Melbourne. The year was 1975.

I think they named a band after this momentous decision.

Ps. I like to say I chose North in August 1975, my guess it was closer to October 1975.

 

[Swallow_Wood]

My family migrated here in the late 80's. Have an uncle who's been here since the 70's and he casually followed North. We all went to a game at the MCG not long after arriving and that was it. A family of North tragics since. We were blessed to arrive when we did, seeing the end of Kennedy as coach, then Schimma and then of course the Pagan era. Watching all those stars of the 90's come through and grow together was pretty special.

 

[Frank Thring]

Back in the 60s when I was acting in Shakesperean plays I had an affair with a lovely lady who happened to be the daughter of a North Melbourne player and she was such a great ball player that I was hooked straight away.

 

[tales129]

Young impressionable type early 90s.

My dad is a smartarse and always pushed against the norm so being here in SA hjs
allegiance was loosely to carltank.

I was a mad Wayne Carey fan - my best mate and I would pretend to be Carey and McKernan. But I dabbled with being a freo supporter at the age of 6 - loved Scott Chisholm. Stuck fat with north and was devastated in 98. My youngest sister ironically was a saints supporter and then switched to north in 98. Cursed she was!

Nowadays there’s myself, my old man, my sister and my oldest younger brother on the bandwagon. I’ve two more yonger brothers who were both north until buddy kicked 13 and they’ve been mad hawthorn ever since.

The oddest part of it all is my 5 soon to be 6yo loves Toby Greene

4

Toby Greene

Age

31

Ht

182cm

Wt

85kg

Pos.

Fwd

Career

Season

Last 5

D

22.7

5star

K

12.5

5star

HB

10.2

5star

M

4.8

5star

T

3.0

5star

G

1.2

4star

D

17.5

4star

K

9.5

4star

HB

8.0

4star

M

4.8

4star

T

1.0

2star

G

2.3

5star

D

26.6

5star

K

12.4

5star

HB

14.2

5star

M

4.8

5star

T

3.6

5star

G

0.0

1star

and the giants!

I’ve seen two flag wins, and plenty of finals in the flesh but never anything of an age that would feel like it’s significant to hold onto. Those 14/15 finals wins were bloody great but I can’t wait to be able to be at a grandy and win it and end up at Arden street on the piss as an adult!

 

[Samsquanch]

As a young kid I wasn't really into footy. By the late 1960s a few school friends were barracking for Fitzroy (zone affiliation), Collingwood (Thorald Merritt affiliation - he was a local), Geelong (geographic affiliation and the Lord twins, who were also locals) and Carlton (don't know why).

If we watched TV replays on Saturday nights I think Carlton got a good run and I was heading in that direction after the 1968 GF against *

But I wasn't locked in and in 1971, my teacher, Frank McCabe was seriously injured and spent time in hospital. Strangely I recall when he returned to teaching that he said he shared a ward with a North Melbourne footballer and he added that several North players were visitors and they were decent people.

When the footy season resumed I watched out for North but these were not good times to be a supporter (the Dixons era).

I might have locked in Carlton, except for one day Dad rounded me up and told me to get in the car. Why? To see a man about a dog (which was the often used phrase for be quiet and don't ask).

Turns out he was catching up with our old neighbour, who happened to be the father of John Rantall.

This was around Christmas 1972. Mopsy was visiting his parents and he quizzed me about what team I followed. Basically, he told me I had to follow North and that the team would soon be premiers.

So I did and they did.

End of story.