A Father. A Son. A Football Club.

I have too many favourite memories supporting Wycombe Wanderers to mention. Wycombe Wanderers is the habit I neither can, not want to, kick.

Wembley in 93 and 94, Moss Rose, Maine Road, Sincil Bank in 99, Selhurst Park and Filbert Street in 01. All these are among the memories that will be with me forever. But they’re not my favourite memories. My favourite memories of Wycombe Wanderers don’t often come from the games themselves. My favourite memories involve being on M6 in the back of a coach with close friends, testing each other on where Matlock Town play (Causeway Lane) or who the first team to do the double over us in the league was (Bury). My favourite memories involve reserve team away games with my dad, or FA Trophy quarter final replays at Windsor with my friends.

Friends and family; isn’t that what makes football, what makes life, special? Most of my time going regularly to games, before I moved abroad, was between 99 and 2008. Cup runs excepted, not much happened in that time. We played the same teams, stayed in the same league and in about the same place.  But during those years, I got to spend nearly every Saturday with my dad. I work with kids and teenagers, so I know how precious, and how rare, good father son relationships are. Wycombe Wanderers gave ours time and space to grow. On the motorway he’d tell me stories of Maskell, Birdseye and Horseman, just like I’ll tell my kids about Taylor, Brown and Devine. He told me that he thought Steven Taylor was ‘nearly as good as Keith Mead’ and when we lost to Liverpool, he consoled me with the thought that it took him a week to get over losing to Blyth Spartans in the last FA Amateur Cup.

But my dad was never lost in the past. We’d both gasp when Dave Carroll did something with a ball that mere mortals could only dream of, both celebrate the victories and mourn the defeats just as hard. When we talk now, we talk about Wycombe Wanderers like another member of the family, which I suppose they are.
I love my football club. With all the frustrations and quirks that come from supporting Wycombe Wanderers, I wouldn’t swap light and dark blue quarters for anything. I love our history, I love our former players, it upsets me I’ll never see Jason Cousins play for us again, and whenever I meet someone called ‘Keith’, in my head I immediately hear ‘Ryan.’

My dad gave me that. He reminded me that just as football didn’t start with the Premier League, neither did Wycombe Wanderers in 1993. He gave me a link with our past, our heritage. The Isthmian League, Brian Lee and playing on the side of a hill. My dad gave me Wycombe Wanderers.

And, I suppose, in a small but significant way, Wycombe Wanderers gave me my dad.