Orville Higgins | I’m a proud ‘waggonist’

A lot of Jamaican men, especially those over 40 years old, are big on the English Premier league. Maybe this is because way back in the 1980s, the old Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation regularly showed English football. Those were the days when we did not have much of a choice in what we watched on local television and, therefore, it is almost natural for many Jamaican men to form bonds with English clubs.

I watched English football on the old black and white TV, too, and yes, I had a ‘soft spot’ for Liverpool because of the John Barnes factor. Unlike many of my peers though, I have not formed the same attachment to English teams since those childhood days. I roll with the tide. I can like one team this year, and support a completely different team the next. My friends and listeners on radio all feel something is radically wrong with me. The rule among real men is that once you support an international football team, you should do so until death do you both part! Any changing of allegiances gets you branded as a ‘waggonist,’ which carries the same negative connotation in Jamaica as being branded a traitor.

These diehard supporters of overseas football teams are strange people. They will change the brand of clothes or cars that they like at the drop of a hat. They will change their diet and choice of food. Many of them will not go back to the small communities where they were born and raised. They will turn their backs on family and friends who were there for them in their formative years. Hell, they will change girlfriends as often as the weather. No loyalty whatsoever. They will however, stick with their football teams forever and ever, amen, and lambaste you for not being like them. I don’t get it!

I have explained often enough that I feel duty-bound to support my primary, high school, or college teams in whatever sports they are involved in. In the All-Island Social Development Commission Twenty20 cricket, I drive miles to cheer on my community where I grew up in Westmoreland. There is a connection there that is “real.” As a Jamaican, I feel obligated to support Jamaican or West Indian teams.

To just blindly support an overseas team, however, that I have never seen live, on whose ground I have never been, with players that I will never ever meet sounds like madness to me. So, I will continue to be just as I am. I will not blindly loyal to any overseas club team because it’s the ‘manly’ thing to do. I was a supporter of Manchester City at the start of the season but they are forming the fool, and now I am going with Liverpool. What is wrong with that? What is wrong with being a waggonist?