Football is the only sport I have any interest in, a truly beautiful game that puts all others in a lesser category, but that’s just my opinion.
But would I ever have wanted to be lucky enough to have made a living from it, no thanks, because it’s the sport with the most pressure and definitely the most intrigue.

I’d hate to be a player, manager or any part of the coaching staff for the simple fact that unlike most other sports you go from a hero whose babies you want to have to manic vile abuse of the lowest order within days from schizophrenic fans whose mood swings match Hitler with raging toothache….I stand back and watch it unfold.
Don’t get me wrong, poor performances need to be criticised but the extremes with mood swings, ups and downs and enough material for a psychiatric convention is like no other sport on the planet.
I always used to think even football violence by fans never happens at athletics meetings do they, no, because they celebrate the winners and console the losers…the pressure in football is the little man demanding perfection he never could hope to achieve in his own life….but that’s not even all football supporters, but it’s by far the biggest percentage and basically the biggest money earner for the businesses and media who put it in peoples heads that success on a conveyor belt, is the the be all and end have turned fans over the years to join in their crusade of we want we demand.
Sometimes it’s not just a welcome distraction from life, like all sport, but sadly a distraction from reality.

Football is most peoples no. 1 sport.
Suppose it's a generation ritual.

Not a patch on Darts we're your more or less guaranteed to be quality entertained.
Ya overreacting to different fans views but ya can do that because you are yourself.
Only keyboard wordage don't mean no shit really.

None of our fans demand wins n success.
But a fare few who really care Hope for better times.
That's Reality Really.

I avoid overreacting to anything, gets you nowhere, just viewing something from a different perspective of something I’ve done myself back in the day.
Some people truly mean it, some people are on a wind up, some are having a laugh and some take it deadly seriously…encountered them all down the years.

Seriously…?
I care and hope for better times, but plenty on here do want wins and success, including me.
People don’t support a club to wallow in the same division, come on …..everyone on here’s talking about the club’s ambition including you and wanting things to get better, it’s the order of the day, it’s normal, a fan without any ambition needs sectioning.

I have never met a Poolie fan who is not ambitious for the club. Kev obviously has cos he never stops talking about it. I can't seriously name any Poolie on here who doesn't want the club to succeed. We have around 4000 fans who regularly attend home games and hundreds who go to away games. Does anybody seriously believe that any of them actually attend these games in the hope that we get beat, whilst spending their time and money to do so. That is too far fetched in my book.

For the same reasons it doesn't make sense for football club owner to be unambitious. Why would anyone buy a club and not want it to do well, particularly successful businessmen who know that success is the only chance of a return on their investment?

I dont think many, if any owners make a return or their investment. Success brings extra cost. Just say team X manages to get promoted to League Two. More money then has to be spent on brining in better players to consolidate being in a stronger division. If the right amount of increased cash is found then team X might get promoted to League One although it may take two or three seasons of increased spending. In League One even more money has to be spent and so and so on. Obviously, success brings extra gate money and publicity/ telly money etc but it never offsets the ever increasing financial outlay. Football is a bottomless pit as far as money is concerned and any club owner who thinks otherwise, is deluded.

i think that ambition varies depending on the age of fans and the length of time they have been supporting pools. might be wrong but i feel older fans have more realistic ambitions for the club. seems its all about success now across football more than just winning more games than are lost. a defeat is seen as a national disaster that should never happen. i want pools to win and succeed but thats tempered with the present facts regarding the club. always remember that it was about 45 years when pools played at the bottom level of the league where fans started watching and died before we won anything. did they pack it in. we need a bit of the middle ground where its not overblown wins and defeats made even worse than they were we talk about.

I se it like you Mr A.

its just a very expensive hobby for an owner who is a saint to fans in the good days but becomes a sinner in the bad ones no matter how much they put into the club out of their wallets.

The Derby County owner found that out…owning or managing a club and pleasing the fans is like riding on a Tigers back, you have to stay on or your lunch.

Darts used to be a pub game, now it's mass entertainment. It's difficult for us old timers to understand how much of 'sport' these days is about dressing up, having a laugh, being part of the entertainment. The cameras spend as much time on the fans as they do on the dartboard. It's the same with one day cricket, T20, the Hundred... American football too. There's so much razzamatazz put on by the organizers that half the time the fans aren't paying attention to the game at all. They're not at 'the match' anymore, they're at an Event - and they're part of it.

I am lucky enough to have attended many 'events' in a sporting context and enjoyed the vast majority of them. I was entertained (or not) and will continue to attend what and when I can. Living near London, I have access to a lot of options.

Perhaps one of the reasons i enjoyed them is because i was not particularly bothered by the outcome. It is different when I watch Pools. It pains me mentally when we lose.

That said, I've got 3 more matches I can get to this season. Definitely coming up on Saturday.. not sure about the away matches at Maidenhead or Dorking - both of which are much closer to home than a game at Pools. Maybe i am getting more precious of my spare time.. and why spend it on something that I'm most likely going to be disappointed by?

I've got mixed feelings myself. Went to the England v New Zealand T20 international at Nottingham last autumn and the MCs did their best to give it the atmosphere of a kids party rather than a sporting occasion.

Gave an NFL game a try at Totteringham's new ground as well. Most of the crowd had spent a fortune on merchandise and seemed more interested in taking selfies than following the game. Great stadium, but if I go again it'll definitely be for proper footie. Spurs v Pools in the FA Cup 3rd Round. I can dream can't I?

I think a lot of people have little interest in the sport aspect and are there for the atmosphere and occasion…I also think a lot of these people really don’t have the ability to focus on the actual sport taking place because they lack the ability to concentrate on any given thing for more than a short time.

possibly a lot of this so called froth is only there to take away the actual boredom of many of these games. people remember things like darts match finishes, final over T20 victories but the vast majority are over well before this happens. used to go to a few rugby league games and watch non pools games on a tuesday night but over the years they became more and more boring if you were not bothered about the final result. a pools result for many affects theirweekend and part of the next week as well. even kids now that go with their parents seem more bothered about what they can get out of club shops, selfies with hangus or their teams version than the game itself. at their age it was the game and replica kits, hats etc. were something for the future.

The stamina and endurance of professional rugby league players is awesome but the game itself is deadly dull.

because its been sanitised so much due to the health and safety of players at the top of the game its become deadly dull now. in the ameteur game that hasn,t fully happened yet and you still get the bad foul tackle and the good old pitch brawls you use to see in the past.