There comes times in the life of every football supporters' group when the group needs to have a look at themselves and stand up and be counted.
For the Vancouver Southsiders, that time is now.
They've seen a lot of growth and development these last three years. Numbers have risen from around 40 guys standing in the Southside in the rain at Swangard and peaked with approaching 900 fully paid up members last season.
The group adds noise, colour and vibrancy to what would be a pretty much sterile BC Place atmosphere on matchdays.
The board works tirelessly, often with little appreciation of the hours of unpaid work they put in, and there have been some excellent community initiatives recently with the group's newly formed charity arm and last Saturday's anti-racism display.
All great, but things are far from perfect.
I'm writing this as a long time Southisder, and a former serving board member, more than a blogger, and I feel it's time for a little editorial rant to get some things off my chest and air some home truths. Those of a non Whitecaps and/or Southsiders persuasion may just want to stop reading now. You've been warned, so no complaining later that you found it all of no interest!
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The biggest home truth is that we're not as good at being a "supporters' group" that we like to think we are and the question needs to be put out there to members - are they supporters or part of a supporters' group?
There is a difference and I couldn't really care less which category people fall in to but a supporters' group should carry certain responsibilities.
At Whitecaps games we can probably break the crowd down into casual attendees, fans, supporters and supporters' group members.
Each is important to the growth of not just the Caps, but the game we all love in this country. None should feel they are any better or worse than the other.
I would personally define them as follows:
Casual attendees are football fans who want to go and support their local side on and off, depending on the opponent and/or what the game means in the grand scheme of things. That's about their commitment to the cause, but without them we'd be looking at a lot of empty seats every game.
Fans are lovers of the Caps. They want to go along, watch the game, hopefully see their team win, cheer when they score, some will wear the colours but don't want to get involved in all the singing and noise and don't spend the time inbetween games trying to get all the information going. Maybe a little, now and then, but the team doesn't consume them.
Supporters are more passionate about the team. At the games they sing, chant, spend time on their feet, wear their colours with pride, in and out of the stadium, read blogs, listen to radio shows, post on message boards. They love the MLS Caps. They might not have been part of the D2 side, but who cares? They're on board now and they love the team and go and watch the team.
Then we have supporters' groups. The Southsiders are obviously the big guns in Vancouver. There are some smaller, newer ones on the go, most noticeably the Curva Collective, set up by members of La Doce and some former Southsiders who didn't like the way that group was going.
So what is a supporters group? What is their purpose? What differentiates them from supporters? What should be the expectation of members?
For me, supporters' groups go that little bit above and beyond that of the supporter.
They go to the odd training session, or reserve game, or residency games. They go and watch an incarnation of their team when time and commitments allow.
Southsiders are standing on the 'terraces' singing "where you play we follow". Except for many, that isn't quite true.
They're happy to be following them at BC Place. Some will make the Southsiders' Cascadia bus trips, some the other odd road trips. Fantastic and we need more like you.
But the support for the Reserve games and the Residency games in the last few months has been frankly awful and an embarrassment to the Southsiders, especially when you look at the ECS and Timbers Army in this regard, more on which later.
We can't try and compare ourselves to these groups in some aspects but not others.
Reading the <a href="http://vancouversouthsiders.ca/forum/" target="_blank">Southsiders Forum</a> recently is depressing at times, exasperating at others.
It's great to see members with ideas but sometimes the reality isn't there or the actual volunteering of help to see things through isn't forthcoming. We shouldn't discourage new ideas, but suggestions need to be backed up by actions, not just complaining.
The group have about ten new chants being suggested every week it feels, when the Southsiders are in a position right now where it's a struggle to get the group on the same page to manage anything more than a couple of sentences and the acoustics of BC Place drown out the excellent work of the capos at the front when you go even just a few rows back.
A lot of time and effort is being spent on complicated tifo displays. Why? Is it because we all see the ECS and TA do epic ones and feel we have to? We haven't had a great success with them if we're being honest here and BC Place is not ideally laid out to let people see what anything says half the time. Simple is better than grandeur, as Curva Collective showed with their two stick displays against Montreal and the national flag display against DC.
Every member of the Southsiders needs to stop worrying about getting the rest of the stadium involved and making noise, concentrate on sorting out our own problems and decide what the purpose of the group truly is. If others don't want to join in, fuck them.
But at what level do the Southsiders want to be at? Saturday supporters or full on supporters group like the ECS and Timbers Army? Are we more interested in the football aspect or the social getting pissed in a pub aspect of it all?
Let's look at this coming Saturday.
The Caps are playing Philadelphia with a 1pm PST kick off. The Caps U18's play at home at 11.30, with the U16's following at 2pm. (<b>EDIT</b> - Kick off times have now changed to 10am for U18s and 12.30 for U16s, so no clash with first team for the first match anymore!)
The latest Southsiders mailing has no mention of either game (an omission which admirably will be corrected next time) and there is no promotion, push or encouragement of attendance on the Southsiders website or forum.
What you do find is promoting sitting in the pub to watch the first team on TV.
For a supporters' group the priority and emphasis should always be on live football over watching football in a pub on a TV screen whenever possible. At least alert the members and give them the option.
Now, in no way am I saying that going to watch a Whitecaps U18 game makes you a better supporter than the next guy. It doesn't. It's just something that interests you or it doesn't.
Going to watch Reserve games and/or Residency games is not going to be for everyone. I don't want to watch the women's team. Some will watch them and think I'm crazy for watching kids football. To each their own, and that isn't the issue here. I'm not advocating everyone attends every little thing, but the need is there to attend some.
Some people have no interest in watching kids football or fringe football and I fully understand, appreciate and accept that.
It is a supporters' group responsibility though to try and get out as many numbers to these games as possible, at every opportunity. And it is a members responsibility to try and get out sometimes.
Now people have lives, jobs, other commitments. Ridiculous 11am weekday kickoffs don't work for everyone. What's the excuse for weekend games? Particularly the weekend games that you choose to sit in a pub watch football on the telly instead of going outside and watching it in person. You can't blame times or other commitments then.
If you look through the Southsiders forum, instead of finding a push by the board to get out to these games we find threads encouraging members to come out and take part in the "Vancouver Marathon Cheer Challenge". It might have a charity element, but fucking hell.
Today there was even suggestions to go and take part in the Pride Parade to back the group's anti-homophobia stance as <i>"walking in the parade would be a very strong statement from us."</i>. So would turning up at the odd U18 match. You know, the statement that we're actually football fans and support the Caps by actually watching football.
Now it's certainly not mutually exclusive to support the Caps and all of these charity events. The football should always come first for a Vancouver Whitecaps FC supporters' group surely? Surely that should be the group's role in the grand scheme of things?
This then brings me to my next issue of whether some in the Southsiders are more concerned with promoting the group than the Caps.
Going to community events like a pride parade before going to Residency and Reserve matches gives the impression that the Southsiders are more concerned about getting exposure for the group and not about the supporting the team at all levels. It smacks of "look at us, look how socially aware we are, we're not football hooligans".
I raised that point on the Southsiders forum today and one reply I got said: <i>To me it smacks of: "Look at us, we're loud and awesome and we love soccer and wouldn't it be fun to join us in supporting your local soccer team?"</i>.
I don't think people will come and watch the Caps because we're there all rainbowed out of our nut?
I'll not even go into why we would think we're awesome in the first place, but instead focus on the "We love soccer" aspect. Clearly not enough to go and watch our fringe or younger players and we'd much happily watch a game on a screen in a pub than go out and watch some actual live football.
Going back to "where you play we follow". They're not playing in a fucking pride parade.
The Southsiders at the moment are way behind the ECS and Timbers Army when it comes to actually supporting the football team at all levels and not just home MLS matches.
At last Saturday's U18 game (which took place seven and a half hours before the first team kicked off), how many Southsiders were in attendance? One. How many Curva Collective, six.
At the Reserve game on Monday. Southsiders numbered five, Curva three and the ECS six. Says a lot when the Southsiders are outnumbered for ANY match in Vancouver by a group that have travelled hours up the I5 for an 11am kick off.
THAT'S the attitude and behaviour I want to see from a supporters' group.
Have a look at this photo on the left. That's the ECS for the U18 match between the Sounders and Caps at Starfire in December. It was a week before Christmas and they got loud numbers out for two youth games.
So here's a challenge I'm throwing down to my fellow Southsiders and the current board.
The Sounders are up here on USSDA action on Saturday April 28th. The U18s kick off at 11.30am, the U16's at 2pm. The first team are away in Columbus with a 4pm kick off.
Let's see a big campaign to get our numbers out to this game. The board managed a pretty impressive media campaign for the red card display at short notice. We have four weeks for them to ramp this campaign up. Get press, arrange car-shares. Get all fans out, Southsiders or not. It's a Cascadia derby after all.
Let's at least match what ECS had at Starfire when we went there, even if it's just for the first game, as I know some will want to make the first team kick off no matter what.
A non Southsider made an interesting point to me last weekend at the U18 game when he asked me where everyone else was. He said that Vancouver has a great pub culture when it comes to sports and said he was expecting the Southsiders to lead the city away from that and into active attendance and participation at live events.
He feels we aren't doing that yet and I agree.
The Southsiders board will argue that they are trying by encouraging their gameday march to leave 75 minute early so as to take in the pre-match build up more. The vote for that scraped through with a majority of two and with less than 50%.
Let's show that we are football supporters group and not just interested in sitting, getting pissed up in a pub. If you want to do that, then that's also fine, but being in a supporters group does carry responsibility and I feel that we, as a group, are starting to slip in these.
We got people out to the PDL games last season, but I do feel our attention and direction has being moving away from football matters recently.
I know not everyone can make these games, but I truly believe it's important that if you have any scope to get along to one, you try your best to do so.
So, rant over. Do you care? You happy with things as they are? Does it matter who goes to what, as long as the team are supported in MLS and atmosphere generated at the stadium? Or should the group step up their actions at all levels?
Let us know what you think.
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